l^ z^X^^"^^-^^ ^2^ HOMES AND HAUNTS MOST EMINENT BRITISH POETS. WILLIAM HOWITT. WITH FORTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS. ^\iit)^ ^h'ltion. LOXDOX : ROUTLEDGE, WARNE, & ROUTLEDGE, FAERIXGDOX STREET. NEW YORK ; 56, WALKER STREET. MDCCCLX II. Lo;:^DON : U. CLAY, SON, AXD TAYLOR, PRINTERS, BREAD STREET HILL. LJMlVKRSrrV OF C.U.fFORNIA SA.NTA BAKJUAllA PEEFACE TO THE THIKD EDITION. The present edition of this work lias been delayed by the author's absence abroad for some years, and by other causes which need not be detailed here. It has now been carefully revised, and enriched with much new matter. Indeed, nothing is so striking as the alterations which this interval has necessitated — the ravages which death has made in the ranks of our great poets since the last edition was issued. Southey, Wordsworth, ]\Ioore, Wilson, Mont- gomery, Elliott, Joanna Baillie, Caroline Bowles Southey, and Rogers, have since then disappeared from the scene. In Rogers, was snapped the link which bound living authors to a long-past period. He tells us himself that he could remember seeing one of the heads of the rebels of 1745 still remaining on Temple Bar. He had seen Garrick act ; he was cotemporary with Johnson and Boswell, Gibbon, Cowper, Horace Walpole, Howard the philanthropist ; and saw General Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia, who said he had shot snipes in Conduit Street. He had associated with Mrs. Piozzi; heard Sir Joshua Reynolds PREFACE TO THE THIKD EDITION. deliver a lecture at the Royal Acadcmj, and Burke and Sheridan's speeches on the trial of Warren Hast- ings; sent his poems to Mason; knew people who had been familiar with Pope and Gray; had dined at La Fayette's with Eochefoucauld and Condorcet; been in- troduced to Robertson, Adam Smith, old Henry Mac- kenzie; saw Lord North in the House; was, he says, within thirty miles of Dumfries when Burns was living there ; was acquainted with Porson, Dr. Parr, Helen Maria Williams, Kosciusko, Madame de Genlis, Lord Erskine, Lord Monboddo, Fox, to whom he introduced Wordsworth, Pitt, Windham, Madame d^Arblay, Wilkes, Home Tooke, &c. ; and saw the body of John Wesley laid in full canonicals on a table in his chapel, in the City Road : and yet was but the other day, as it were, living in the midst of this generation, as if he belonged to it. The removal of this one man seems to have pushed the people of his early days now far from us. No such change can occm* again in our time, rapid and strange as are the shifting scenes of human life. May the few living men of genius who are yet included in this volume long remain amongst us, land-marks of the past, watching the dawning glories of the future ! PEEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. The subject of the present work is very extensive, and it was soon found necessary to leave out the Dramatic Poets for separate treatment. To them may possibly be added such other of our eminent poets as could not be included in the present work. It will be recollected that it is professedly on the Homes and Haunts of the Poets, and is not strictly biographical. For this reason there are some poets of considerable eminence, who will find com- paratively small mention ; and others none, not because they are not entitled to much notice, but because there is little or nothing of deep interest or novelty connected with their homes and abodes. Since the publication of the former edition of this Avork, many fresh incidents in the lives of the poets in- cluded in it have taken place, and a considerable number of those then living are now deceased. In order to notice accurately these changes, the whole work has been care- fully revised. LoNDc:s, 1847. CONTENTS. POETS ILLUSTRATIONS. FAGS CHAUCEE Tabard Inn, Southwark 1 SPENSER Kilcolman Castle on Fire 10 SHAKSPEARE .... Shalcspeare reading to Queen Elizabeth . . 29 COWLEY ffouse at Chertsey 40 MILTON Cottage at Chalfont 46 BUTLER Ludlow Castle 69 DRYDEN Burleigh House 74 ADDISON Holland House 83 POPE Villa at Twickenham 94 SWIFT Laracor Church 116 Stella's House 132 Ruins of Swift's House 140 THOMSON Cottage in Few Lane 141 SHENSTONE .... Leasowes 155 CHATTERTON . . . Muniment Room 158 GRAY 186 GOLDSMITH .... Room at Walker's Hotel 195 BURNS Burns and Mary parting 229 Lincluden Abbey 268 COWPER House at Weston 269 MRS. TIGHE 281 KEATS Tombs of Keais and Shelley at R' lights of virtue that diffuse Through the dark depths of time their vivid flame, Had all been lost with such as have no name. "Who then had scorn'd his care for others' good ! Who then had toil'd rapacious men to tame? Who in the public breach devoted stood, And for his country's cause been prodigal of blood? " Heavens ! can you then thus -waste in shameful wise Your few important days of trial here 1 Heirs of eternity ! ybom to rise Through endless states of being, still more near To bliss approaching and perfection clear; Can you renounce a fortune so sublime, — Such glorious hopes, your backward steps to steer. And roll with vilest brutes through mud and slime? No ! no ! — your heaven-touch'd hearts disdain the sordid crime ! " It is a pleasure to find that the spot where these noble sentiments were penned is still preserved sacred to the memory of the poet of truth and virtue. As far as the restless and rapid change of property would permit so near London, the residence of Thomson has been kept from destruction : changed it is, it is true, but that change has been made with a veneration for the muse in the heart of the new inhabitant. The house of Thomson, in what is called Kew-foot-lane at Kichmond, as shown in the woodcut at the head of this article, was a simple cottage ; behind this lay his garden, and in front he looked down to the Thames, and on the fine landscape beyond. The cottage now appears to be gone, and in the place stands the goodly villa of the Earl of Shaftesbury ; the cottage, however, is not really gone, it is only swallowed up in the larger house of the present time. After Thomson's death his cottage was purchased by George Ross, Esq., who, out of veneration for his memory, forbore to pull it down, but enlarged and improved it at the expense of 9,000/. The walls of the cottage were left, though its roof was taken ofi", and the walla continued upwards to their present height. Thus, what was Thom- son's cottage forms now the entrance hall to Lord Shaftesbury's house. The part of the hall on the left hand was the room where Thomson used to sit, and here is preserved a plain mahogany Pem- broke table, with a scroll of white wood let into its surface, on which is inlaid, in black letters, this piece of information: — " On this table James Thomson constantly wrote. It was therefore purchased of his servant, who also gave these brass hooks, on which his hat and cane were hung in this his sitting room. F. B." These initials, F. B., are those of the Hon. Frances Boscawen, the widow of Admiral Boscawen, who came into possession of the pro- perty after the death of Mr. Ross, whose name, however, still attaches to it, being called Rossdale, or more commonly, Rosedale, House. Mrs. Boscawen it was who repaired the poet's favourite seat in the garden, and placed there the table on which he wrote his poems ; she it was too, no doubt, who hung the inscrijitions there, her initials being again found appended to one of them. Her son, Lord Falmouth, sold the place. No brass hooks are now to be seen, that 1 could discover or learn anything of. 152 THOMSON. The garden of Thomson, which lay behind the house, has been preserved, in the same manner and to the same extent as his house ; the garden and its trees remain, but these now form only part of the present grounds, as the cottage forms only part of the pre- sent house. Mr. Eoss, when he purchased the cottage and some adjoining grounds, and came to live here after Thomson, not only enlarged the house, but threw down the partition fence, and enlarged the grounds to their present extent. A pleasanter lawn and shrub- beries are rarely to be seen ; the turf, old and mossy, speaks of long duration and great care ; the trees, dispersed beautifully upon it, are of the finest growth and of the greatest beauty. In no part of Eng- land are there so many foreign trees as in the grounds of gentlemen's villas near London ; in many of them the cedars of Lebanon are of a gi'owth and majesty which probably Lebanon itself cannot now show. In these grounds are some fine specimens, and one of especial and surpassing loveliness; it is the pinus picea, or silver cedar. The growth is broad, like that of the cedar of Lebanon, though its boughs do not throw themselves out in that exact horizontal direction that those of the cedar of Lebanon do ; they sweep down to the ground in a style of exquisite grace. Heavy, full of life, rich in hue as masses of chased silver, their effect with the young cones sitting birdlike on them resembles that of some tree of heaven, or of some garden of poetic romance. Besides this superb tree, standing on its ample portion of lawn, there are here the evergreen ilex, hickory, white sassafras, scarlet and Ragland oaks, the tuhp-tree, the catalpa, the tupelo, the black American ash, etc. The effect of their large growth, their varied hues and foliage, their fine branches sweeping over the soft velvet turf, is charming ; for trees display the effects of breeding and culture quite as much as horses, dogs, or men. A large elm not far from the house is pointed out as the one under which Thomson's alcove stood ; this alcove has, however, been removed to the extremity of the grounds, and stands now under a large Spanish chestnut-tree in the shrubbery. It is a simple wooden construction, with a plain back and two outward sloping sides, a bench running round it within, a roof and boarded floor, so as to be readily removable altogether. It is kept well j^ainted of a dark green, and in it stands an old small walnut table with a drawer which belonged to Thomson. On the front of the alcove overhead is painted, on a white oval tablet — " Here Thomson sang The Seasons and their change." Within the alcove hang three loose boards, on which are painted the following inscriptions : — " Hail, Nature's Foet, whom she taught alone To sing her works in numbers like her own. Sweet as the thrush that warbles in the dale. And soft as Philomela's tender tale ; She lent her pencil, too, of wondrous power, To catch the rainbow, and to form the flower Of many mingling hues ; and, smiling, said — But first with laurels crowned her favourite's head— THOMSON. 183 These beauteous children, though so fair they shine Fade in my Seasons, let them live in Thine. And live they shall ; the charm of every eye, Till Nature sickens, and the Seasons die." F. B. • Within this pleasing retirement, Allured by the music of the nightingale, Which warbled in soft unison to the melody of his soul. In unaffected cheerfulness. And general though simple elegance, Lived James Thomson. Sensitively alive to the beauties of Nature, He painted their images as they rose in review, And poured the whole profusion of them Into his inimitable Seasons. Warmed with intense devotion To the Sovereign of the Universe, Its flame glowed through all his compositions. Animated with unbounded benevolence, With the tenderest social sensibility. He never gave one moment's pain To any of his fellow-creatures. Save only by his death, which happened At this place on the 27 th day of August, 174S." " Here Thomson dwelt. He, curious bard, examined every drop That glistens on the thorn; each leaf surveyed That Autumn from the rustling forest shakes, And marked its shape ; and traced in the rude wind Its eddying motion. Nature in his hand A pencil, dipped in her own colours, placed. With which he ever faithful copies drew, Each feature in proportion just." On a brass tablet in the top of the table in the alcove is inscribed — " This table was the property of James Thomson, and always stood in this seat." Such is the state of the former residence of James Thomson at Richmond. Here, no doubt, he was visited by many of his literary cotemporaries, though it does not appear that Pope, who was so near a neighbour, was of this number. Poets, with advancing years, gi'ow exclusive. Wordsworth, in his old age, said that he read no new poets, but left them to their cotemporaries ; so, in the correspondence of Pope, you find no further mention of Thomson, than that " Thomson and some other young men have published lately some creditable things;" and Gray, writing to one of his friends, says — " Thomson has just published a poem called ' The Castle of Indo- lence,' which contains some good stanzas." The view down to the Thames, and over the country beyond, which he enjoyed, is now much obstructed by the walla, including part of the royal property, on which the Queen has erected her laundry — sending, it seems, all the royal linen, from Windsor, the Isle of Wight, and elsewhere, to be washed and got up here, suffi- ciently, as one would think, near enough to the smoke of London. 154 THOMSON. The vicinity of the royal washhouse certainly does not improve Lord Shaftesbury's residence here, especially as a tall, square, and most unsightly tower, most probably intended to carry the soot from the drying fires pretty high, overlooks his grounds. But it wiU not disturb the remains of the poet ; and let us hope that the Queen's iinen will enjoy the benefit of all the Seasons, from this close neighbourhood. Thomson is buried in Richmond church, at the west end of the north aisle. There is a square brass tablet, well secured into the wall with ten large screws, bearing this inscription • — " In the earth below this Tablet Are the remains of James Thomson, Author of the beautiful Poems entitled, The Seasons, Castle of Indolence, etc. etc who died at Richmond on the 27th day of August, and was buried here on the 29th, old style, 1748. The Earl of Buchan, unwilling that so good a man and sweet a poet should be without a memorial, has denoted the place of his inter- ment for the satisfaction of his admirers, in the year of our Lord 1792." •' Father of light and life, thou Good Supreme !. O teach me what is good ; teach me Thyself I Save me from folly, vanity, and vice From every low pursuit! and feed my soul With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure. Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss V— Winter. WILLIAM SHENSTONE. No poet of the same pretensions has been so much known through his residence as Shenstone. "Without the Leasowes he wovilcl have been nothing. His elegies and pastorals would have lain on the dustiest of book-shelves, and his Schoolmistress, by far the best of his productions, would hardly have retained vitality enough to make herself noticeable in the crowd of poetical characters. The Leasowes was the chief work of Shenstone's life, and it is the chief means of that portion of immortality which he possesses. Into every quarter of the kingdom the fame of this little domain has penetrated. Nature there formed the grand substratum of his art, and nature is always beautiful. But I do confess, that in the Leasowes, I have always found so much ado about nothing ; such a parade of minia- ture cascades, lakes, streams conveyed hither and thither ; .surprises in the disposition of woods and the turn of walks, with a seat placed here, and another there ; with inscriptions, Latin and English ; and piping Fauns fauning upon you in half-a-dozen places, that 1 have heartily wished myself out upon a good ro\igh heath, with the winds blowing away the cobwebs of so many conceits from my brain. The remarks of Dr. Johnson appear to me, in the case of Shen- stone, who was amiable but trifling, very just : — "Whether to plant a walk in undulating curves, and to place a bench at every turn 156 SHENSTONE. •where there is an object to catch the view ; to make water run where it will be heard, and to stagnate where it will be seen ; to leave intervals where the eye will be pleased, and to thicken the plantation where there is something to be hidden, demand any great powers of mind, I will not inquire ; perhaps a sullen and surly spectator may think such performances rather the sport than the business of human reason." This seems to me the precise merit of Shenstone. He introduced a better taste in landscape gardening, though his taste was often questionable, and may be ranked with Browne and Kent. He was a man of taste rather than of genius, and may claim a full alhance with the lovers of nature, but is as far from the association with great poets — with such men as Milton or Shakspeare, Burns or Elliott, as the glow-worm is with the comet. Poetry is not only the highest art, but, next to religion itself, the most divine principle on earth. It is a religion itself, or rather, forms part and parcel of that of Christ ; for its object is to stimulate virtue, abash vice, raise the humble, abase the proud, call forth the most sjilendid quaUties of the soul, and pour love like a river over the earth till it fills every house, and leaves behind it a fertility like that which follows the inundations of the Nile. We do injustice to Shenstone when we place him beside the giants, and thus provokingly display his true proportions. "The pleasure of Shenstone," continues Johnson, " was all in his eye ; he valued what he valued merely for its looks ; nothing raised his indignation more than to ask if there were any fishes in his water. " His house was mean, and he did not improve it ; his care was of his grounds. When he came home from his walks, he might find his floors flooded by a shower through the broken roof ; but could spare no money for its reparation. In time his expenses brought clamours about him that overpowered the lamb's bleat and the linnet's song ; and his groves were haunted by beings very different to fauns and fairies. He spent his estate in adorning it, and his death was probably hastened by his anxieties. He was a lamp that spent its oil in blazing. * * * He died at the Leasowes, of a putrid fever, in 1763, and was buried by the side of his brother in Hales- owen churchyard. " He was never married, though he might have obtained the lady, whoever she ■^ras, to whom his Pastoral Ballad was addressed. He is represented by his friend Dodsley as a man of great tenderness and generosity, kind to all that wei'e within his influence ; but if once oft'ended not easily appeased ; inattentive to economy, and careless of his expenses. In his person he was larger than the middle size, with something clumsy in his form ; very negligent of his clothes, and remarkable for wearing his grey hair in a particular manner ; for he held that the fashion was no rule of dress, and that every man was to suit his appearance to his natural form. His mind was not very comprehensive, nor his curiosity active ; he had no value for those parts of knowledge which he had not himself cultivated." Gray visited the Leasowes, and his opinion of Shenstone waa SHENSTONE. 157 very similar to that of Johnson. The Leasowes is about six or seven miles distant from Birmingham on the road to Kidderminster, and about four miles from Hagley, in the parish of Halesowen. Arriving at Halesowen, you have to descend a long and steep hill, from the top of which you have a view of the Bromsgrove, Clent, and Dudley hills, which are in the immediate neighbourhood, — Hagley -park being situated on one of the Clent hills, — and of the Clee hills in the distance ; these form a boundary between the counties of Hereford and Salop. About halfway down this descent, which is a mile long, you turn to the left down a shady lane ; this leads to the Leasowes, and in some degree partakes of the character of the place ; winding continually, yet still presenting a beautiful archway of trees, of nearly all descriptions. From this lane you enter the Leasowes ; and crossing a bridge, pass on to the lawn. On your left lies a beau- tiful piece of still water, overshadowed with evergreens, and con- veying the idea of infinite depth. This is nearly the lowest part of the grounds, which here begin to ascend towards the house, com- manding, not an extensive, but a beautifully condensed j^rospect. Going round the house to the right, and still ascending, you gain another prospect equally agreeable, yet different, and in both cases are sui'prised by the skill which presents to the eye the artificial depth of forest which there strikes it. A canal which has been cut through the valley between the house and Halesowen, so far from injuring the prospect, as many of these things are apt to do, rather improves it, giving a rest to the eye, and shutting out, by its em- bankment, sundry forges which would otherwise be visible. In order to discover, however, the true spirit of the place, you must cross the lawn at the back of the house, where you are reminded of passages in Shenstone's pastorals. Let us now suppose the grounds lying in the shape of a Y ; the house not standing at the top, but near the centre of the fork, and the lowest part of the scene, the stem. The lines forming the fork of the Y are beautifully wooded ravines, or dells, down which flow small streamlets, meeting at the bottom of the hill, and in their progress forming numerous small pools, which may well reiDresent " the fountains all bordered with moss." The walks along the sides of these streams are now neglected, but they still conduct you to the natural beauties of the scene. There is one spot which com- mands the view of the whole grounds, and all the poetry of them. Following the course of one of the streams, you arrive at that part of the scene which was Shenstone's favourite spot ; still marked by the remnants of several fallen statues. Still advancing along the brook side, you come to a pool. This may be called the tail or stem of the Y ; and at dusk, on a November day, it gives you no bad idea of the Lake of the Dismal Swamp in miniature. Indeed, the feehng on quitting the place is, that you have been well deceived as to extent ; so small a space really containing great variety of scenery. The Leasowes now belongs to the Attwood family ; and a Miss Attwood resides there occasionally. But the whole place bears the impress of desertion and neglect. CHATTERTON. St. Mary Eedcliffe, Bristol, is a beautiful church ; some of the biographers of Chatterton have declared that it is the finest parish church in England. Mr. Britton was almost as enamoured of it as was Chatterton himself. He wrote a complete history of it, and for years zealously exerted himself to rouse the inhabitants of Bristol to have this ornament of their city put into thorough repair by sub- scription, an object in which I am glad to find that he finally suc- ceeded, and that the restoration, especially of the time-worn exterior, which commenced under the superintendence of himself and Mr. Brayley, is still progressing under Mr. Godwin. " Beautiful exceedingly " is St. Mary of RedcHfFe ; and it is the triumph of this beauty that it awoke the poet in the soul of one of its lovers, and a poet so extraordinary in the circumstances of his life, in the mere boyhood of his age, in the tragic nature of his death, and, above all, in the proud splendour of his genius ; that his passion for this lovely structure, and the facts which have sprung out of it, have flung round St. Mary an everlasting interest, and made it one of the most brilliant monuments of national glory which stand on the bosom of our mother-laud. OHATIERTOIir. 159 If it had turned out that the Rowley Poems produced to the iDubhc by Chatterton had been genuine, and that the fame of so great a poet as Thomas Rowley the priest had been buried for near four hundred years in the iron chest of William Canynge, it would have been a most extraordinary circumstance that it should have been a boy of fourteen who had discovered them ; who had had the taste and discernment to pick them out from amidst the ordinary docu- ments of such a chest, of little interest except to parishioners ; to transcribe them, to press them upon the attention of his townsmen, and the literary public, and to have suffered insult, obloquy, and persecution on their account. Had he only raised that great public astonishment, inquiry, quarrel and controversy, amongst the learned and antiquarian of his time, and had been satisfactorily proved to be only the discoverer, introducer, and champion of the merit of these productions, it would have been one of the most remarkable occur- rences in the whole history of literature, and the boy Chatterton would have still merited the happy epithet of " the marvellous boy." Had he been allowed, on justly admitted grounds, to have taken only the position which he claimed, that of the discoverer of the Rowley MSS., and the writer of his own acknowledged poems, the occurrence would have stood alone in the annals of letters, and Chatterton must have still remained one of the most extraordinary of precocious geniuses. The wit which sparkles through the whole series of his verses, from Sly Dick to his Journal and his Will ; the bold satire, the daring independence of his thoughts, setting defiance to pubhc opinion, even on the most solemn of all subjects — religion ; the indomitable pride, and bold adventure of the lad ; these are facts, in connexion with his great " discovery," supposing it to have been a real discovery, which must have raised the wonder of every one, and have given him a distinguished niche in the WalhaUa of his country. The boy of sixteen, who could pen such a description as that of Whitfield in his Journal, beginning — " In his wooden palace jumping, Tearing, sweating, bawling, thumping, Repent, repent, repent. The mighty Whitfield cries. Oblique lightning in his eyes ;" — the daring description of religion in his Defence ; or who could make such a Will as that which he drew up, when he for the first time proposed to himself suicide, must be pronounced a startling but most uncommon lad. The youth, who, without friends or patrons in the great metropohs, could set out with a small fund borrowed at the rate of a guinea apiece from his acquaintances, to make his fortune and fame ; and there, in the midst of the utter wreck of all his august visions and soaring hopes ; in the depth of neglect, con- tempt, and the most grinding indigence, could issue satire after satire, and launch Junius-like letters from the newspapers at the highest personages of the land, not sparing even the crowned head, can, however we might estimate such productions in an experienced adult, only be regarded with the most profound and unmixed wonder. We may lament over the waywardness of his genius, but we must 160 CHATTERTON. admit its unequivocal reality ; and when its career is closed by self- violence, after appealing to Heaven from the abyss of its agony in stanzas such as the following, we know not whether most to mai-vel at the greatness of the phenomenon, or the dense stolidity of the age which did not perceive it, but suffered it to expire in horror, to the eternal disgrace of human nature and our country. " THE RESIGNATION. O God, whose thunder shakes the sky, Then why, my soul, dost thou complain ? Whose eye this atom globe surveys, Why, drooping, seek the dark recess? To thee, my only rock, I fly ; Shake off the melancholy chain. Thy mercy in thy justice praise. For God created all to bless. The mystic mazes of thy will, But ah ! my breast is human still ; The shadows of celestial light, The rising sigh, the falling tear, Are past the power of human skill ; — My languid vitals' feeble rill. But what th' Eternal acts is right. The sickness of my soul declare. O teach me in the trying hour. But yet, with fortitude resigned. When anguish swells the dewy tear, I thank the inflictor of the blow ; To still my sorrows, own thy power. Forbid the sigh, compose my mind. Thy goodness love, thy justice fear. Nor let the gush of misery flow. If in this bosom aught but Thee The gloomy mantle of the night, Encroaching sought a boundless sway, Which on my sinking spirit steals, Omniscience could the danger see, Will vanish at the morning light And Mercy look the cause away. Which God, my East, my Sun, reveals." But pride and despair triumphed over this deep feeling of trust in Divine goodness. These words were the rending cry of the dying giant ; they were the mighty jaoetry of forloruest misery ; and inde- pendently of the poems of Thomas Rowley, they stamp beyond dispute the high poetical renown of Thomas Chatterton. They show, that notwithstanding the unworthy subjects on which necessity had forced him to attempt the waste of his sublime endowments, and had forced him in vain, for the soul of poesy within him had refused to come forth at the call of booksellers and political squab- blers, there lay still in his bosom the great heart, and the gi'eat mind, of the first-rate poet. But what were all these flashes and indications of the mens divitiior to the broad and dazzling display of it in the Rowley Poems them- selves ; those poems which would have crowned any grown man a king in the realms of intellectual reputation, which yet the towering pride of the boy — " that damned, native, unconquerable pride" which he said " plunged him into distraction," that " nineteen-twentieths of his composition," as he himself asserted it to be — flung determi- nedly from him 1 These poems, now admitted on all hands to be his own boyish compositions, and which indeed were thrust upon him as crimes by those of his cotemporaries who ought to have seen in them the proofs of a genius which should have been carefully and kindly cherished for the good of humanity, and the honour of England, — these are indeed as stately and beautiful as the fair pile of St. Mary, which had first awoke in his spirit the deathless love of poetry and antique romance. Ah ! what a sad, beautiful, but heart- wringing romance is itself the story of Chatterton ! His real history is this. CHATTERTON. 161 There was a little boy, in Bristol, whose fathers, for many genera- tions, had been the sextons of St. Mary Redclifle. The veneration for this beautiful fabric, from the habit of ages, might be said to be woven into the frames and infused into the blood of this family. The office was gone out of the family ; the boy's father had become a schoolmaster, and died three weeks previous to the child's birth. His uncle had been the last to fill this post, but he too was deceased. The boy's mother, however, lived in a small house in a back court, nearly opposite to this church ; and the lad, very likely led by what he heard her say of the former long connexion of their family with it, was in the habit of going into it when open, and wandering about it for hours. At that time, nearly a centmy ago, neither chvu'ches nor churchyards were so rigidly locked up as at present, and ample and often was the time when a little boy on the watch might enter, and while marriage or burial ceremony went on, while the cleaners and sweepers were at work, or while the evening and the morning bell was rung, might stroll to and fro, and gaze, and wonder to his heart's content. That this was his dearest occupation was soon well known to his family. " His mother's house," says one of his biographers, " was close to the fine structure of St. ]\Iary Redchfie, and they well knew that the boy's favourite haunts were the aisles and towers of tliat noble pile. And there they would find the truant, seated gene- rally by the tomb of Canynge, or lodged in one of the towers, read- ing." And what effect this church-haunting had upon him was very early visible. At five years of age he went to the day-school in Pyle-street, which had formerly been taught by his father, but here he was dull and stupid ; and till he was six and a half years old, his master could trace no sign of intellectual progress in him, and his poor mother began to think him an absolute fool. But the objects of the silent church had not fallen in vain on his infant fancy. Those quaint and gorgeous paintings, and those antique letters engraven on floor brasses, had acquired a strong hold upon him, and, without doubt, led him to seize as he did, with an avidity new to hira, on the old musical manuscript in French, adorned with iUumi- uated capitals, which he found at home. " He fell in love with it," said his mother ; and the shrewd woman catching at this discovered charm, brought him an ancient black-letter Bible, which she pos- sessed, to read, and the boy's inner nature came to light, — " he was no longer a dunce." At eight he was a voracious devourer of books. He read morning, noon, and night, from the hour that he awoke to that in which he went to bed. But another cause now contributed to strengthen the impressions of antiquity which he had received in St. Mary's church. He was become an inmate of the blue-coat school of Bristol, on St. Augustine's Back, foimded by Colston, a merchant, in 1708. Here, in an institution which, though not of ancient date, was yet conducted in the ancient fashion, he was arrayed in long blue coat and belt, and scarlet stockings, and tonsure cap. Here, say some of his schoolfellows, he took no part in the poetical and literary emulations which arose. An usher wrote poetry, and his example stimulated others to a hke ambition ; but Chattertou u 162 CHATTERTON. " possessed apparently neither tlie inclination nor ability for literary pursuits ;" he contented himself with the ordinary sports and pastimes of his age. But, in truth, he was secretly gleaning up knowledge wherever he could lay hands on it. Long before, he had begged of a painter "to paint him an angel, with wings and a trumpet to trumpet his name over the world!" This spirit, once awoke, was not likely to die again, even in the bosom of a child. He had continually in his heart that cry which haunted Cowley : — •' What shall I do to be for ever known ? " From the time he had begun to read, a great change had passed over him. " He gi'ew thoughtful and reserved. He was silent and gloomy for long intervals together, speaking to no one, and appearing angry when noticed or disturbed. He would break out into sudden fits of weeping, for which no reason could be assigned ; would shut himself in some chamber, and suffer no one to approach him, nor allow himself to be enticed from his seclusion. Often he would go to the length of absenting himself from home altogether, for the space sometimes of many hours ; and his sister remembered him being most severely chastised for a long absence, at which, however, he did not shed one tear, but merely said, ' It was hard, indeed, to be whipped for reading.' This was before his entering Colston's school, but there he kept up the zealous reading. He is reported to have stood aloot from the society of his schoolmates, to have made few acquaintances, and only amongst those whose disposition inclined them to reflection. His money, all that he could procure, went for the perusal of books ; and on Sundays, and holidays, and half-holidays, he was either wandering solitarily in the fields, sitting beside the tomb of Canynge in the church, or was shut up in a httle room at his mother's, attending to no meal-times, and only issuing out, when he did appear, begrimed with ochre, charcoal, and black-lead. " From twelve to seven, each Saturday, he was always at home ; returning punctually a few minutes after the clock had struck, to get to his little room, and to shut himself up. In this room he always had by him a great piece of ochre in a brown pan ; pounce- bags full of charcoal dust, which he had from a Miss Sanger, a neighbour ; also a bottle of black-lead powder, which they once took to clean the stove with, and made him very angry. Every holiday, almost, he passed at home, and often, having been denied the key when he wanted it, because they thought he hurt his health, and made himself dirty, he would come to Mrs. Edkins, and kiss her cheek, and coax her to get it him, using the most persuasive expres- sions to effect his end ; so that this eagerness of his to be in this room so much alone, the apparatus, the parchments (for he was not then indentured to Mr. Lambert), both plain as weU as written on, and the begrimed figure he always presented when he came down at tea-time, his face exhibiting many stains of black and yellow — all these circumstances began to alarm them ; and when she could get into his room, she would be very inquisitive, and peep about at everything. Once he put his foot on a parchment on the floor, to CHATTERTON. 163 prevent her from taking it up, saying — ' You are too curious and clear-sighted — I -wish you would bide out of the room — it is my room.' To this she answered by telling him that it was only a general lumber-room, and that she wanted some parchment to make thread- papers of ; but he was offended, and would not permit her to touch any of them, not even those that were not written on ; but at last, with a voice of entreaty, said — ' Pray don't touch anything here,' and seemed very anxious to get her away ; and this increased her fears, lest he should be doing something improper, knowing his want of money, and his ambition to appear Hke others.* At last, they got a strange idea that these colours were to colour himself with, and that perhaps he would join some gipsies, one day or other, as he seemed so discontented with his station in life, and unhappy." -f But the true secret was one far beyond the conception of his simple relatives. Coining and forging, indeed, he was bent upon, and meant to join himself, some day or other, to a company which, in their eyes, would have appeared stranger than a troop of gipsies. He was already, child as he was, forging the name and deeds of Thomas Eowley, and fathering upon him the glorious coinage of his own brain. A great and immortal guest was their-s, and they did not know it. One of themselves was marked by the passing angel of destiny, as the one of all his generation doomed to the fearful sacri- tice of a sad but etei-nal fame. The spirit which had stolen i;pon him and taken possession of him as he had roamed the dim aisles of the old church, and gazed on the gi-eat sacred scene of the Ascension of Christ, and on the light avenues of lofty columns, and sat by the tomb of ]\Iaster Canynge, was now busy with him. It was this which had made him gloomy and retiring, which had caused him to burst into passions of tears for which no reason could be assigned. A new world had dawned before his inner vision ! the sensibilities of the poet were now quivering in every nerve ; mysterious shapes moved around him, which one day he must report of to the world — shapes, the offspring of that old church, and its tombs and monu- ments, and traceries and emblazonments, mingled with the spirit of his solitary readings in histoiy, divinity, antiquities; and that me- lancholy foreboding, that Ahnung of the future, as the Germans term it, which, like a present angel of prophecy, unseen but felt, hangs on the heart of youthful genius with an overpowering sadness, was sprejid over him like a heavenly cloud, which made the physical face of life dreary and insipid to him. This was the boy of eleven or twelve years old, who had already commenced satirist, and launched his arrows of sarcasm at offenders, in Fehx Farley's Bristol Journal; where "Sly Dick," and "Apostate Will," were pilloried before the whole city by so yoimg a hand. This was the boy of, perhaps, fourteen, who astonished the worthy pe\vterer, Burgiim, by bringing to him an historic account of his pedigree, with coats of arms all elaborately painted on parchment, * Of a scene supposed to occur in this lutnbcr-room, a beautiful mezzotint engraving Las been published by Mr. l\Iitchell of Bristol, from a painting by Mr. Lewis of that city. is G. Cumberland, Esq. in Dix's Life. m2 164 CHATTEETON. tracing his descent, with minute detail of personages, from no less a distance than the Saxon period, and from no less a person than the great Waltheof, Earl of Northumberland, Northampton, and Hunt- ingdon ! Great has been the laughtfer at poor Burgum, for swallowing the pleasant deceit ; but let any one imagine to himself a charity schoolboy, in old-fashioned costume, and his innocent boy's face, appearing before him, and presenting so matter-of-fact a document, as found in a chest in the muniment-room of St. Mary's church, in which this boy was known to pore and hunt about. Could any sus- picion of such a boy's forgery of the document at first be entertained 1 Would any feelings but those of wonder and curiosity be excited ? Burgum was completely taken in, and a thousand others who have since laughed at him would have been taken in too. And now began to be sounded abroad that famous story of the iron-bound chest of Master Canynge, in the muniment-room over the north i^orch of St. Mary RedclifFe church, from which Chatterton's father had been allowed to carry home whole heaps of parchments, and from which heaps Chatterton professed to have drawn this pedigree of the De Bergham family. This was the prolific source of the strange docu- ments, which from time to time came issuing forth, in the shape of transcripts by the boy Chatterton. His fifteenth yeai', however, saw him, in one day, metamorphosed from a Colston's charity boy into a lawyer's apprentice. He was bound to one Lambert, a man of little practice, and who, besides, is termed " a vulgar, insolent, im- perious man ; who, because the boy wrote poetry, was of a melan- choly and contemplative disposition, and disposed to study and reading, thought him a fit object of insult and contemptuous rage." Need we ask why his mother bound him to such a man ? To whom can the poor bind their children ? Had Lambert been a pleasant fellow, and in great practice, he would have had rich men's sons offered, and would have demanded a fee that would effectually exclude the poor. Here Chatterton's life was the life of insult and degradation, which might pretty safely be calculated upon with such a man, and such a practice. Twelve hours he was chained to the office, i.e. from eight in the morning till eight at night, dinner hour only excepted ; and in the house he was confined to the kitchen, slept with the foot- boy, and was subjected to indignities of a hke nature, at which his pride rebelled, and by which his temper was embittered. Yet here it was, during this life of base humiliation, that Thomas Chatterton worked out the splendid creations of his imagination. In less than three years of the life of a poor attorney's apprentice, fed in the kitchen, and lodged with the footboy, did he here achieve an im- mortality such as the whole Ufe of not one in millions is sufficient to create. In the long solitary hours of this emjity office, — for, not having any business, even the master was very often absent, — he had ample leisure and secure opportunity to give scope to the feelings and fancies which had sprung up in the aisles of St. Mary's ; but which had since grown with the aliment of historic and poetic knowledge, gathered from Fuller, Camdoii, Chaucer, and the old chroniclers. CHATTERTOIT. 165 From time to time, as I have said, came flying forth some precious old piece of local history, which astonished the good people of Bristol, and was always traced to this same wonderful lad, and his inex- haustible parchments from the old chest. A new bridge is built, and in Felix Farley's Journal appears an account of the opening of the old bridge, ages before, with all the ceremonies and processions of civil officers, priests, friars, and minstrels, wnth all their banners and clarions. Then Mr. Barrett, a surgeon, is writing his history of the place, and lacks information respecting the ancient churches ; and lo ! the prolific MSS. of Maister Canynge supply not only his- tories of aU churches, but of castles and palaces, with the directions of the ancient streets, and all the particulars of the city walls, and aU their gates. Never was an historian so readily and so affluently supphed! Whoever now sees the ponderous quarto of Barrett's History of Bristol, with all the wonders palmed upon the author by Chatterton, must be equally amazed at the daring of the lad and the credulity of the man. He restored in a fine drawing the ancient castle, in a style of architecture such as surely never was seen in any castle before. There were towers of a most lofty and unique description, yet extremely beautiful ; there were battlements as unique, as if the ancient knights who defended them had left their shields lying upon them. There were tiers of arches, circles and •stars one above another, in fronts of the most fanciful kind. There were other parts where pilasters ran from ground to battlement, ornamented with alternating cross-keys, human figures, lozenges, ovals, zigzag lines, and other ornaments, such as never could have originated but in a poetical and daring brain ; yet was the whole worthy of the residence of some knight or king of old romance. It was beautiful, and might suggest to architects, in these threadbare days, ideas of a style piquantly original and refreshing. This was the view of Bristol Castle in 1138; Rowlie Canonicus, delineator, 1440, to be seen in Barrett's History. But deeper and deeper does this fortunate youth dive into the treasures of the chest, and more and more amazing are the wonders that he brings iip. Never was so rich a chest stowed away in cloisters of the rich old middle ages. Now came up poets, painters, carvers, heralds, architects, and stainers of glass, besides warriors of proudest renown, all flourishing in times that we are wont to deem barren of such glories ; and a more than chivalric reign of Arthur — a more than Elizabethan con- stellation of genius in arts and arms, astonishes the senses of tho.se deeply learned, who fancied that they had explored all possible mines of the past knowledge. The dark ages grow brighter and brighter as the necromantic stripling rubs his lamp in the office of the attorney Lambert, till the living are almost blinded by the blaze of light from the regions of the forgotten dead. No less than eleven poets of great fame did he bring to light, of whom Abbot John, who flourished in 1186, he says, was one of the greatest that ever lived; and Maister John a Iscam not much less, living in the time of the great Maister Canynge, himself also a fine poet ! But of all men, most versatile and rich in lore and intellect was Thomas Rowley, the friend 166 CIIATTERTON. of Canynge, and priest of St. John in Biistol ; and tnily, if the poems which he put forth in Eowley's name had been Rowley's, Rowley would have been a famous poet indeed — to say nothing of his sermons, histories, and other writings. Spite of the wretchedness of his domestic position in Lambert's house, this must have been the happiest portion of Chatterton's life. His bringing out these treasures to the day had given him gi-eat consideration, amongst not only some of the most leading men, but amongst the youth of Bristol. With his excitable temperament his spirits rose occasionally into great gaiety and confidence. He began to entertain dreams of a lofty ambition. He had created a new world for himself, in which he lived. He had made Rowley its great heroic bard. He had raised Maister Canynge again from his marble rest in the south transept of St. Mary's, and placed him in his ancient glory in Bristol. Beneath his hands St. Mary's rose like a fairy fabric out of the earth, and was consecrated amid the most glo- rious hymns, and with the most gorgeous processions of priests and minstrels. Great and magnificent was Canynge in his wealth and his goodness once more in his native city ; and in the brave lays of Rowley the valiant Ella fought, and the fierce Harold and William the Norman made the hill of Battell the eternal monument of the loss and gain of England. "He was always," says Mr. Smyth, one of his intimate com- panions, " extremely fond of walking in the fields, particularly in RedclifFe meadows, and of talking about these manuscripts, and sometimes reading them there. ' Come,' he would say, * you and I will take a walk in the meadow. I have got the cleverest thing for you imaginable ; — it is worth half-a-crown merely to have a sight of it, and to hear me read it to you.' When we arrived at the place proposed he would produce his parchment, show it me, and read it to me. There was one spot in particular, full in view of the church, in which he would take a particular delight. He would frequently lay himself down, fix his eyes upon the church, and seem as if he were in a kind of trance. Then, on a sudden, abruptly he would tell me, ' That steeple was biu-nt down by lightning ; that was the place where they formerly acted plays.' "His Sundays were commonly spent in walking alone into the country about Bristol, as far as the duration of daylight would allow ; and from those excursions he never failed to bring home with him drawings of churches, or some other objects which had impressed his romantic imagination. This was one of those brief seasons in the poet's life when the heaven of his spirit has cast its glory on the nether world ; when the light and splendour of his own beautiful creations invest the common earth, and he walks in the summer of his heart's joy. Every imagination seems to have become a reality ; every hope to expand before him into fame and felicity; and the flowers beneath his tread, the sky above him, the air that breathes upon his cheek, — aU Nature, in short, is full of the intoxication of poetic triumph. Bristol was become quite too narrow for him and Rowley ; he shifted the field ot CHATTERTON. 167 his ambition to London, and the whole enchanted realm of his anti- cipations passed like a Fata Morgana, and was gone ! There camo instead, cruel contempt, soul-withering neglect, hunger, despair, and suicide ! Such was the history of the life of one of England's greatest poets, who perished by his own hand, stung to the soul by the utter neglect of his country, and too proud to receive that bread from compas- sion which the reading public of Great Britain refused to his poetic labours. Of this, of Walpole, and Gray, and Johnson, and the like, we will speak more anon. Here let us pause, and select a few speci- mens of that poetry which the people of England, at the latter end of the eighteenth century, would fain have suffered to perish with its author. That they may be better understood, we will modernise them. The chief of his Rowley Poems are, — EUa, a Tragical Interlude, or Discoursing Tragedy ; Godwin, the fragment of another Tragedy ; the Battle of Hastings, the fragment of an Epic ; and the Parliament of Sprytes, a most merry Interlude ; with smaller ones. ROUNDELAT, SUNG BY THE MINSTRELS IN ELLA. ' O ! sing unto my roundelay, O ! drop the briny tear with me, Dance no more at holiday ; Like a running river be. My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed, All under the willoij-tree. ' Black his hair as the winter night. White his neck as the summer snow, Red his face as the morning light; Cold he lies in the grave below. My love is dead, etc. Sweet his tongue as the throstle's note. Quick in dance as thought can be. Daft his tabour, cudgel stout; O ! he lies by the willow-tree. My love is dead, etc. ' Hark ! the raven flaps his wing In the briared dell below; Hark ! the death-owl loud doth sing To the nightmares, as they go. My love is dead, etc. ' See ! the white moon shines on high- Whiter is my true love's shroud ; AVhiter than the morning sky, Whiter than the evening cloud. My love is dead, etc. ' Here, upon my true love's grave, Shall the barren flowers belaid; Kot one holy saint to save All the coldness of a maid. My love is dead, etc. ' With my hands I'll bend the briars Round his holy corse to gre:* Elfin fairies, light your fires ; Here my body still shall be. My love is dead, etc. Come with acorn-cup and thorn, Drain my heart's blood all away ; Life and all its good I scorn. Dance by night, or feast by day. My love is dead. Gone to his death-bed. All under the willow-tree. " Water-witches, crowned with reytes,t Bear me to your lethal tide. I die ! I come ! my true love waits ;— Thus the damsel spoke, and died." This roundelay has always, and most justly, been greatly admired for its true pathos, and that fine harmony which charms us so much in the fragments of similar songs preserved by Shakspeare. Not less beautiful is the Chorus in Godwin. There is something singularly great and majestic in its imagery. * Grow. t Water-flags. 168 CHATTERTON. CHORUS IN GODWIN. " When Freedom, dressed in blood-stained vest, To every knii^ht lier war-song sung, Upon her liead wild weeds were sjjread ; A gory anlace by her hung: She danced upon the heath ; She heard the voice of death ; Pale-eyed AtTright, his heart of silver hue, In vain assailed her bosom to acale;* She heard unmoved the sliriekiiig voice of woe, And Sadness in the owlet shake the dale. She shook the pointed spear, On high she reared her shield; Her foemen all appear, And fly along the field. Power, with his head aloft unto the skies, His spear a sunbeam, and bis shield a star, Like two fierce flaming meteors rolled his eyes, Chafes with his iron feet and sounds to war. She sits upon a rock, She bends before his spear, She rises with the shock, Wielding her own in air. Hard as the thunder doth she drive it on ; Wit, closely mantled, guides it to his crown, — His long sharp spear, his spreading shield is gone; He falls, and falling, rolleth thousands down. War, gore-faced War, by Envy armed, arist,t His fiery helmet nodding to the air. Ten bloody arrows in his straining fist." « « « ♦ • Next let us take a poem whose truest criticism is contained in its own title : — AN EXCEHENT BALLAD OF CHARITY. " From Virgo did the sun diffuse his sheen. And hot upon the meads did cast his ray ; Red grew the apple from its paly green. And the soft pear did bend the leafy spray ; The pied goldfinch sung the livelong day : 'Twas now the pride, the manhood of the year. And eke the ground was dight in its most deft aumere.I " The sun was gleaming in the midst of day, Dead still the air, and eke the welkin blue, When from the sea arose in drear array A heap of clouds of sable sullen hue ; The which full fast unto the woodlands drew. Hiding at once the sun's rejoicing face, And the black tempest swelled and gathered up apace. " Beneath an holm fast by a pathway side. Which did unto St. Godwin's convent lead, A hapless pilgrim moaning did abide ; In aspect poor, and wretched in his weed. Long filled with the miseries of need. Where from the hailstone could the almer§ fly ? He had no house at hand, nor any convent nigh. " Look in his gloomed face, his sprite there scan ; How woe-begone, how withered, dry and dead ! Haste to thy church-glebe-ho\ise, || unhappy man I Haste to thy coffin, thy sole sleeping bed. Cold as the clay which will lie on thy head Is charity and love amongst high elves; Now knights and barons live for pleasure and themsel/es. • Freeze. t Arose. J Robe. § Beggar. |] Grave, CHATTERTOX. Ifc9 " The gathered storm is rife ; the big drops fall; The sun-burnt meadows smoke and drink the rain; The coming ghastness* doth the cattle 'pall. And the full flocks are driving o'er the piain. Dashed from the clouds, the waters fly a^'ain ; The welkin opes ; the yellow levin flies, And the hot fiery steam in the wide flashing dies. " List ! now the thunder's rattling, dinning sound Moves slowly on, and then augmented clangs. Shakes the high spire, and lost, dispended, dro^vned, Still on the startled ear of terror hangs. The winds are up ; the lofty elm-tree swings ! Again the levin, and the thunder pours, And the full clouds at once are burst in stony showers. " Spurring his palfrey o'er the watery plain, The Abbot of St. Godwin's convent came ; His chapournettet was drenclied with the lain, His painred girdle met with mickle shame; He backward told his bead-roll at the same ; The storm grew stronger, and he dre>v aside "With the poor alms-craver near to the holm to bide. "His cloak was all of Lincoln cloth so fine, A golden button fastened near his chin ; His autremetc % was edged with golden twine, And his peaked shoes a noble's might have been ; Full well it showed that he thought cost no sin; The trammels of the palfrey pleased his sight. For the horse-milliner§ his head with roses dight. " ' An alms, sir priest ! ' — the dropping pilgrim said ; ' O ! let me wait within your convent door, Till the sun shineth high above our head. And the loud tempest of the air is o'er ; Helpless and old am I, alas ! and poor; No house, nor friend, nor money in my pouch ; All that 1 call my own is this my sUver crouche.' " ' Varlet ! ' replied the Abbot, ' cease your din ; This is no season alms and prayers to give ; J.Iy porter never lets a stroller in ; None touch my ring who not in honour live.' And now the sun with the black clouds did strive. And shedding on the ground his glaring ray. The Abbot spurred his steed, and eftsoons rode away. " Again the sky was black, the thunder rolled ; Fast hieing o'er the plain a priest was seen ; Not dight full proud, nor buttoned up in gold ; His cloak and cape were grey, and eke were clean; A limitor he was uf order seen ;1f And from the pathway side then turned he, Wliere the poor aimer lay beneath the holmtn tree. ' ' An alms, sir priest,' the dropping pilgrim said, ' For sweet St. Wary and your order's sake.' The Lmitor then loosed his pouch's thread. And d'd thereout a groat of silver take ; The wretched pilgrim did for gladness shake. ' Here, take this silver, it may ease thy care; We are God's stewards all ; nought of our own we bear. * Ghastliness. + A small round hat, not unlike the chapournette of heraldry, formerly worn bveccT» siastics and lawyers.— Ch.vtteutox. J Coif. "i '^'^Me- § The sign of a horse-millinpr was till lately, if not still to be seen, m Bristol II Cruci(i.\. ^ Begging friar. 170 CHATTERTON. " 'But oil ! unhappy pilgrim, learn of me, Scarce- any f,'ivf a rent-roll to their Lord. Here, take my semi-cape,* thou'rt hare 1 see; 'Tis thine ; the saints will give me my reward.' He left the pilgrim, and away he strode. Virgin and Holy Saints who sit in gloure.t Or give the mighty will, or give the good man power !" The following preseuts a very living picture of tlie ceremony of church consecratiou formerly : — ON TEE DEDICATION OP OUR LADT'S CHURCH. " Soon as bright sun along the skies had sent his ruddy light, And fairies hid in oxlip cups till wished approach of niglit ; The matin bell with shrilly sound reechoed through the air; A troop of holy friars did for Jesus' mass prepare. Around the high unsainted church with holy relics went; And every door and post about with godly things bespent. Then Carpenter,J in scarlet dressed, and mitred holily. From Master Canynge, his great house, with rosary did hie. Before him went a throng of friars, who did the mass song sing ; Behind him Master Canynge came, tricked like a barbed king. And then a row of holy friars who did the mass song sound ; The procurators and church reeves next pressed the holy ground. And when unto the church they came, a holy mass they sang, So loudly that their pleasant voice unto the heavens rang. Then Carpenter did purify the church to God for aye. With holy masses and good psalms which he therein did say. Then was a sermon preached soon by Carpenter holily ; And after that another one ypreached was by me. Then all did go to Canynge's house an interlude to play. And drink his wines and ale so good, and pray for him for aye." vVe will select just one short lyric more, because its stanza and rhythm seem to me to have communicated their peculiar music to one of the sweetest of our hving poets : — SONG OF SAINT WARBURGH. " When king Kynghill in his hand " Then the folks a bridge did make Held the sceptre of this land. Over the stream unto the hecke. Shining star of Christ's own light, All of wood eke long and wide. The murky mists of pagan night Pride and glory of the tide, 'Gan to scatter far and wide ; Which in time did fall away. Then Saint Warburgh he arose. Then Earl Leof he besped DoflTed his honours and fine clothes; This great river from its bed, Preaching his Lord Jesus' name Round his castle for to run ; To the land of West Sexx came, 'Twas in truth an ancient one ; Where yellow Severn rolls his tide. But war and time will all decay. '' Strong in faithfulness he trode " Now again with mighty force, Over tlie waters like a god, Severn in his ancient course. Till he gained the distant hecke ■,§ Rolls his rapid stream along. In whose banks his staff did stick With a sand both swift and strong, Witness to the miracle. Whelming many an oaken wood. Then he preached night and day, We, the men of Bristol town, And set many the right way. Have rebuilt tliis bridge of stone. This good staff great wonders wrought. Wishing each that it may last More than guessed by mortal thought, Till the date of days be past, Or than mortal tongue can tell. Standing where the other stood." Now, would it ever have been believed, had not the thing really taken place in its unmitigated strangeness, that such poetry as this — poetry, indeed, of which these are but mere fragments, which, while they display the power, poetic freedom, and intellectual riches of the writer, do not show the breadth and grandeur of his plans, to be seen only in the works themselves, — that they could have been * Short under-cloak. t Glory. I Bishop Carpenter. § Height. CHATTERTON. 171 presented to the public, and passed ovei' with contempt, not a cen- tury ago ? Would it have been credited, that the leading men of the literary world at that time, instead of flinging back such poems at the boy who presented them as a discovered antiquity, were not struck with the amazing fact, that if the boy were an impostor, as they avowed, if he indeed had wriilen them himself, he must at the same time be a glorious poet ? Yet Horace Walpole, Gray, Mason, Dr. Johnson, and the whole British throng of literati were guilty of this blindness ! That was a dark time in which Chatterton had the misfortune to appear. Spite of the mighty intellects, the wit or learning of such men as Johnson, Gray, Goldsmith, Thomas and Joseph Warton, Burke, and Walpole, poetry, and the spirit of poetry, were, as a genei'al fact, at a low ebb. It was the midnight succeeding the long dechning day of the imitators of Pope. The great crowd of versifiers had wandered away from Nature, and her eternal fountain of inspira- tion, and the long array of Sprats, Blackmores, Yaldens, Garths, and the like, had wearied the ear and the heart to death with their polished commonplaces. The sweet muse of Goldsmith was almost the only genuine beam of radiant light, before the great dawn of a more glorious day which was about to break ; and Goldsmith himself was hasting to his end. Beattie was but just appearing, publishing the first jjart of his Minstrel the very year that Chatterton perished by his own hand. The great novelists, Richardson, Fielding, and Sterne, had disajipeared from the scene, and their fitting cotemporary, Smollett, was abroad on his travels, where he died the year after Chatterton's suicide. Akenside died the same year ; Falconer was drowned at sea the year before ; Sheridan's literary sun appeared only above the horizon five years later, with the publication of his Rivals. Who then were in the ascendant, and therefore the influential arbiters of public opinion ; they who must put forth the saving hand, if ever put forth, and give the cheering " aU hail," if it were given % They were Gray, who, however, himself died the following year, Armstrong, Austey of the Bath Guide, Mason, Lord Lyttelton, Gibbon, the Scotch historians and philosophers, Hume, Robertson, Adam Smith, and the like. There were, too, such men about the stage as Foote, Macklin, Colman, and Cumberland ; and there were the lady writers, or patrons of literature, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Macauley, Mrs. Montagu. Macpherson was smarting under the flagellations received on account of his Ossian, — and that was about all. Spite of great names, is that a literary tribunal from which much good was to be hoiked ? No, we repeat it, so far as poetry, genuine poetry, was concerned, it was a dark and wintry time. The Wartons were of a more hopeful character, and Mrs. Montagu, the founder of the Blue- Stocking Club, had then recently published her Essay on the Genius and Writings of Shakspeare. She, a patron and an advocate of Shakspeare, might, one would have thought, have started from the herd, and done herself immortal honour by asserting the true rank of the new genius, and saving him from a fearful death. But it is one thing to assert the fame of a Shakspeare, established on the 172 CHATTERTOX. throne of the world's homage, and another to dlxnovcr, nnich more to hymn, the advent of a new genius. The Hterary world, warned by the scarifying castigation which Macpherson had undergone for intro- ducing Ossian, as if, instead of giving the world a fresh poet, he had robbed it of one, shrunk back from the touch of a second grand im- postor — another knave come to forge for the public another great poet ! It was a new kind of crime, this endowment of the republic of literatm'e with enormous accessions of wealth ; and, what was more extraordinary, the endowers were not only denounced as thieves, but as thieves from themselves ! Macpherson and Chatterton did not assert that they had written new and great poems, which the acute critics proved to be stolen from the ancients, Ossian and Eowley ; that and their virtuous indignation we might have comprehended ; but, on the contrary, while the critics protested that Chatterton and Macpherson themselves were the actual poets, and had only put on the masks of ancients, they treated them, not as clever maskers, joining in the witty conceit, and laughing over it in good-natured triumph, but they denounced them in savage terms, as base thieves, falsv coiners, damnable impostors ! And of what were they impostoi-s ? Were not the poems real ? Were they not genuine, and of the true Titanic stamp 1 Of what were they thieves ? Were not the treasures which, they came dragging into the literary bank of England genuine treasures ? and if they were found not to have indeed dug them out of the rubbish of the ruined temple of antiquity, were they not their own ? Did the critics not protest that they were their own ? What, then, was their strange crime ? That they would rob themselves of their own intellectual riches, and deposit them on the altar of their country's gloiy.* Wondrous crime ! wondrous age ! Let us rejoice that a better time has arrived. Not thus was execrated and chased out of the regions of popularity, and even into a self-dug grave, " The Great Unknown," " The Author of Waverley." He wore bis mask in aU peace and honour for thirteen years, and not a soul dreamed of denouncing Sir Walter Scott, when he was compelled to own himself as the real author, because he had endeavoured to palm oS" his productions as those of Peter Pattison, or Jedediah Cleishbotham. The world has grown >iriser, and that through a new and more generous, because a more gifted, generation which has arisen. The age which was in its wane when Chatterton appeared upon the stage, was lying beneath the incubus of scholastic formahty. Dr. Johnson ruled it as a growling dictator, and the mediocre herd of copyists shi'unk equally from the heavy blow of his critical cudgel, and the * This fact of two poets at the same period producing estraoi-dinary compositions, which they protested were not their own, and whn, rather than enjoy the glory of them, died steadfastly re'.udiating them, amid one universal yell of execration as impostors, is one of the most inexplicable phenomena in the history of literature. The Spiritualists would solve the whole by declaring them unconscious mediums. And, curiously enough, Macpherson belonged to the country of second-sight, and Chatterton exhibited all the symptoms of mediumship. His trance-like appearance in the RedclifFe meadows, in which he made sudden oracular declarations ; his wonderful architecture ; and the splendour of his poetry, so far above his years, all favour their supposition, and without pronouncing upon it, we may allinu that it is, at least, curious. CHATTERTON. 173 sharp puncture of Horace Walpole's wit. But the dawn was at hand. Bi.shop Percy had ah-eady, in 1765, pubH&hed his Rehques, and they were beginning to operate. Men read them, went back again at once to nature, and, at her inspiration, up sprung the noble throng of jjoets, historians, essayists, and romance writers, which have clothed the nineteenth century with one wide splendour of the glory of genius. The real crime, however, which Chatterton committed was, not that he had attempted to palm off upon the world his own produc- tions as Rowley's, but that he had succeeded in taking the knowing ones in. He had caught in his trap those to whom it was poison and death not to appear more sagacious than all the world besides. He had showed up the infallibility of the critics, — an unpardonable crime ! These tricks of mere boys, by which the craft, and the owl- gravity of the greybeards of literary dictation, might any day be so lamentably disconceiied, and exposed to vulgar ridicule, was a dan- gerous practice, and therefore it was to be put down with a genuine Mohawk onslaught. Walpole, who had been bitten by Macpherson, and was writhing under the exposiu'e so agonizing to his aristocratic pride, was most completely entrapped again by Chatterton. Spite of his cool denial of this, any one has only to read his letter to Chatterton, despatched instantly on the receipt of Chatterton's first packet, to be quite satisfied on this point. He " thinks himself singularly obliged," he " gives him a thousand thanks for his very curious and kind letter." "What you have sent," he declares, "is valuable, and full of information ; hut instead of correcting you, ai?; you are far more able to correct meP Think of the cruel chagrin of the proiid dilettante, Walpole, when he discovered that he had been making this confession, to a boy of sixteen I What was worse, he had offered, in this letter of March 28, 1769, to print the poems of Rowley, if they had never been printed ! and added, " The Abbot John's verses which you have given me are wonderful for their harmony and spirit ! " Never was a sly old fox so perfectly entrapped by a mere lad. But hear with what excess of politeness he concludes : — ■ " I will not trouble you with more questions now, sir ; but flatter myself, from the urbanity and politeness you have already shown me, that you will give me leave to consult you. I hope, too, you will forgive the simplicity of my direction, as you have favoured me with no other. " I am, Sir, " Your much obhged and obedient servant, " Horace Walpole." This was before Gray and Mason, who had seen the ]\IS. sent, declared it to be a forgery ; and before Horace had discovered that he had been thus complimenting a poor lawyer's clerk, and his poems ! He thought that he was addressing some gentleman of fortune, pursuing antiquarian lore in his own noble library, no doubt ; but he was stung by two serpents at once — the writer was a poor lad, and the verses were his own ! 174 CHATTERTON. There has been a great war of words regarding the conduct of Walpole to Chattertou. Some have declared him guilty of the fate of the poor youth ; others have gone as far the other way, and exempted him from all blame. In my opinion, nothing can excuse the conduct of Walpole. If not to prevent the fate of Chatterton, was, in his case, to accelerate it, then Walpole must be pronounced guilty of the catastrophe which ensued ; and what greatly aggravates the offence is, that he made that a crime in Chatterton of which he himself had set the examisle. Chatterton gave out that his poems were written by Rowley ; Walpole had given out that his Castle of Otranto was the work of an old Italian, and that it had been found, not in Canynge's chest, but " in the library of an ancient catholio family in the north of England." Nothing is more certain, then, that, brought into close communication with this extraordinary youth and his brilliant productions, he either did not or would not see, that if Rowley were nobody, Chatterton was a great poet, and as a boy, and a poor boy, was an extraordinary phenomenon ; and that both patriotism and humanity demanded that he should be at once brought under the notice of the good and wise, and everything pos- sible done to develop his rare powers, and secure them to his country. Walpole coolly advised him to stick to his desk, and left him ! Sir Walter Scott has said that Walpole is not alone to blame ; the whole country partakes the censure with him, and that he gave the boy good advice. This is not quite true. The whole country did not know of Chatterton, of his wonderful talents, and his peculiar situation ; but all these were thrust upon the attention of Walpole, and he gave him advice. True, the advice in itself was good ; but, unluckily, it was given when Walpole by his conduct had destroyed all its value with Chatterton — when the proud boy, seeing the con- temptible way in which the aristocrat, wounded in his vanity, turned round upon him, had torn his letters to atoms, and stamped them under his feet. Had Walpole, when he discovered the real situation and genius of Chatterton, kindly taken him by the hand, — had he, instead of deserting him on account of his povei-ty, and of his having put on him the pardonable trick of representing his own splendid pro- ductions as those of a nonentity, Thomas Rowley, then and there advised him to adhere to his profession, as a certain source of fortune, and to cultivate his poetic powers in his leisure moments, promising to secure for him, as he so easily could, a full acknow- ledgment of his talents from the public, — it is certain that he might have made of Chatterton, who was full of affection, what he would. He might have represented to him what a fair and legitimate field of poetry he had chosen, thus celebrating the historic glory of his nation, and what an injustice he was doing to himself by giving the fame of his own genius to Rowley. Had he done this, he would have assuredly saved a great mind to his country, and would have deserved of it all honour and gratitude. But to have expected this from Walpole was to expect warmth from an icicle. Spite, therefore, of the advice of Walpole, " given with as muck CHATTERTON. 17 Z kindness and tenderness as if he had been his guardian," no ai-gu- ment or eloquence can shield him from the blame of posterity. There stands the fact — that he turned his back on a great poet, when he stood before him blazing like a star of the first magnitude, and suffered him to perish. He did more. When that poet had perished, and the great soul of his country had awoke to its error and its loss, and acknowledged that " a prince had fallen in Israel," then, on the publication of Chatterton's letters to him in 1786, did this mean-souled man, in a canting letter to Hannah More, absolutely deny that he had ever received these letters ! — " letters jweiended to have been sent to rue, and which never were sent." * After this, let those defend Walpole who like ; would that we could clear that rough, dogmatic, but noble fellow, Samuel Johnson, from a criminal indifference to the claims and fate of Chatterton ; but, with that unreflecting arbitrariness of will, which often led him into error, we learn from Boswell, who often urged him to read the poems of Rowley, that he long refused, saying, " Pho, child ! don't talk to me of the powers of a vulgar, uneducated stripling ! No man can coin guineas but in proportion as he has gold." When at length he was induced to read them, he confessed — " This is the most extraordinary young man that has encountered my knowledge. It ia wonderful how the whelp has written such things." It had then been long too late to begin to admire ; and the giant prejudices of Johnson had driven poor Chatterton as completely from him, as the petit-maitre vanity of Walpole repulsed him in that quarter. Miss Seward, a woman who, with all her faults as a writer, had always the tact to discern true genius, would have dared to acknow- ledge the vast powers of Chatterton, had it been in her own day of popularity ; but at the death of Chatterton, she was a country girl of twenty-three. What she says of Johnson's conduct is very just : — " Though Chatterton had long been dead when Johnson began his Lives of the Poets, — though Chatterton's poems had long been before the world, — though their contents had engaged the literati of the nation in controversy, — ^yet would not Johnson allow Chatterton a place in those volumes into which Pomfret and Yaklen were admitted. So invincible were his grudging and surly prejudices, enduring long-deceased genius but ill, and contemporary genius not at all." Thus we have traced the course of Thomas Chatterton to that eventful crisis of his fate, when he found himself rejected, as it were, by the literary senate of his nation, and thrust down the few steps of the temple of fame, which he had dared to ascend, as a forger and impostor. He was thrust away, in a manner, from the heart, and what was more, from the intellect of his country ; yet his proud spirit spurned the ignominious treatment, and he dared to make one ga-and effort, one great and final appeal against the fiat, in the face of the whole world, and in the heart of the British metropolis. Alas ! it was a desperate enterprise, and our hearts bleed as we follow him in his course. There is nothing, in my opinion, so utterly iiielancholy * Horace Walpole's Letters, vol. ii. 1S4C. 176 CHATTERTON. in all the history of the calamities of authors, as the four fatal months of Chattertou's sojourn in London. It was his gi'cat misfor- tune, from the hour of his birth till that moment, that he never had one suitable friend — one wise, generous, and sympathising friend, who saw at once his splendid endowments, and the faults of his character, and who could thus acquire a sound, and at the same time au inspiring influence over him. Born of poor people, who, however they might love him, did not and could not comprehend him, — living in a town devoted to trade, and nailed to the desk of a petti- fogging attorney, — he went on his way alone, conscious of his own powers, and of the inferiority of those around him, till his pride and his passions kept pace with his genius, and he would have been a miracle had he not had great and many faults. If we, therefore, sigh over his religious scepticism, and regret the occasional symp- toms of a sufficient want of truth and high principle in his literary hoaxes, esj)ecially in foisting fictitious matter into grave history, we are again compelled to acknowledge that it was because he had no adequate friend and counsellor. He was like a young giant wander- ing solitarily over a wilderness without guide or guide-post ; and if he did not go wrong in proportion to his unusual ardour, strength, and speed, it were a wonder. But from the moment that he sets foot in London, what is there in all biography so heart-breaking to contemplate 1 With a few borrowed guineas he sets out. Arrived in this great ocean of human life, where one living wave rushes past another as unrecognizant as the waves of the ordinary sea, his heart overflowing with domestic affections, he expends the few borrowed guineas in presents to his mother and sister, and sends them with flaming accounts of his prospect of honours for himself, and of wealth for them. If any one would make himself acquainted with the true pathetic, let him only read the few letters written home by Chatterton, from Shoreditch and Holboru. He was to get four guineas a month by one magazine ; was to wTite a Histoiy of Eng- land, and occasional essays for the daily papers. " What a glorious prospect ! " He was acquainted with aU the geniuses at the Chapter coffee-house. " No author can be poor who understands the arts of booksellers ; this knowledge I have pretty well dipped into ! " Ah ! poor Chatterton, one frog more gone to put himself under the pro- tection of I^ng Stork ! Mr. Wilkes knew him by his writings ; and he was going to visit him, and use his interest to secure the Trinity House for a Mrs. Ballance. He wrote to all his young men acquaint- ances : they were to send him up compositions, and he would have them inserted in all sorts of periodicals. Songs he was to write for a Doctor in Music ; and such was the good fortune pouring in, that he could not help exclaiming — "Bravo, my boys, i

/e, if it were long enough." Johnson growled at this reply for some time, but at last, recollecting himself, " Well, Sir, I have desei-ved it ; I should not have provoked so foolish an answer by so foohsh a question." This house, in 1770, was the oldest tavern in London but three, and is now pi-obably the oldest. Mr. Walker, the landlord at the time I visited it, who had lived in it fifty years, and had then reached the venerable age of ninety, was proud of the ancient honours of the house. On his card he duly informed his friends, that it was here that " Johnson, Garrick, Goldsmith, and other literary characters of eminence," used to resort. The house is old, spacious, and quiet, and well adapted for the sojourn of families from the country, who are glad to escape the noise of more fre- quented parts of the city. By permission of Mr. Walker, I present at the head of this article a view of the room once honoured by Johnson and Goldsmith. It is pleasant to find the author of The Traveller and Deserted Village, amid all his labours, ever and anon escaping to the country, which no man more profoundly enjoyed. It is delightful to imagine with what intense pleasure he must have traversed the groves ot Ham, and the lovely scenes of Dove-Dale. He made many similar rambles into Hampshire, Sussex, Suffolk, Yorkshire, Leicestershire, and Lincolnshire. When he wanted at once to enjoy country retire- ment and hard work, he would " abscond " from his town associates GOLDSMITH. 227 without a word — dive into some queer obscure retreat, often on the Harrow or Edgeware roads, and not be visible for two or three months together. One of these retreats is said to be a small wooden cottage, on the north side of the Edgeware-road, about a mile from Paddington, near what is called Kilburn Priory. At such places it was his great luxury, when tired of writing, to stroll along tlie shady hedge-sides, seating himself in the most agreeable spots, and occa- sionally setting down thoughts which arose for future use. AVhen he was in a more sociable mood, he got up parties for excm-sions into the neighboui'hood of London, in which he and his companions had a good long i-amble amongst the villages, dined at the village inn, and so home again in the evening. These he called " trades- men's holidays," and thus were Blackheath, Wandsworth, Fulham, Chelsea, Hampstead, Highgate, Highbury, &c., explored and enjoyed. " There was a very good ordinary," says Conversation Cooke, who was occasionally of the party, " at Highbury Barn about this time, at ten-pence per head, including a penny to the waiter ; and the company generally consisted of literary characters, a few Templars, and citizens who had left ofi' trade. The whole expenses of this clay's fete never exceeded a crown, and were oftener from three and six- pence to four shillings." On those occasions Goldsmith gave himself up to all his love of good fellowship and of generously seeing others happy. He made it a rule that the party should meet and take a splendid breakfast at his rooms. The party generally consisted of four or five persons ; and was almost sure to include some humble person, to whom such a treat would never come from any other quarter. One of the most constant of these was his poor amanuensis, Peter Barlow. Peter had his oddities ; but with them a spirit of high independence. He always wore the same dress, and never would pay more than a certain sum, and that a trifle, for his dinner, but that he would insist on paying. The dinner always costing a great deal more, Goldsmith paid the difference, and considered himself well reimbursed by the fund of amusement Peter furnished to the party. One of their frequent retreats was the well known Chelsea Bun-house. Another of these companions was a Dr. Glover, a medical man and author of no great note, who once took Goldsmith into a cottage in one of their rambles at West End, Hampstead, and took tea with the family as an old acquaintance, when he actually knew no more of the people than Goldsmith did, to his vast chagrin on discovering the fact. A temporary retreat of Goldsmith's was a cottage near Edgeware, in the vicinity of Canons. There he lived, in conjunction mth his friend Bott, and there he worked hard at his Roman History. It had been the retreat of a wealthy shoemaker of Piccadilly ; and, having a pleasant garden, they christened the place " The Shoemaker's Paradise." The last country lodging which he had was at Hyde, on the Edgeware-road. It is described by Prior as " of the superior order of farm-houses, and stands upon a gentle eminence in what is called Hyde-lane, leading to Kenton, about thi'ee hundred yards from Q2 228 GOLDSMITH. the village of Hydo, on the Edgeware-road, and commands a view of an undulating country directly opposite, diversified with wood, in the direction of Hendon." From Mr. Selby, the occupier of the pro- perty, Mr. Prior obtained this information. He was himself a lad of sixteen at the time Goldsmith lodged there, and remembered him perfectly. He had only one room there, up one pair of stairs, to the right of the landing. There he wrote She Stoops to Conquer. He bo8.rded with the family, but commonly had his meals sent up to his own apartment. When he had visitors to tea, — for his friends used to come out from London, take tea, and then drive home, — he had the use of the parlour immediately under his own room. Occasionally he would wander into the kitchen, and stand with his back towards the fire, apparently absorbed in thought. Sometimes he strolled about the fields, or was seen loitering and musing under the hedges, or perusing a book. In the house he usually wore his shirt-collar open, in the manner represented in the portrait by Sir Joshua. Occasionally he read much in bed, and his mode of extinguishing his candle, v/hen out of immediate reach, was to fling his slipper at it, which in the morning was found near the overturned candlestick, bedaubed with grease. There, then, Goldsmith spent the last days of his life, except what he spent on his sick-bed, in the full enjoyment of those two great charms of his existence, nature and books. There he forgot all his bitter .struggles, his ill -paid, endless work for the publishers, and even the empty honours of his latter years, which he expressively styled " giving him ruffles, when he wanted a shirt." There he could forget that great disease of hunger, which he said killed so many who were said to die of broken hearts, some of whom he declared that he had known. He was still poor, but famous, and in these moments happy. Occasionally he would indulge in a festive diversion — have a dance got up amongst his visitors ; and on one occasion took the young people of the house in a carriage to Windsor, to see a company of strolling players, and made himself and his juvenile party very merry by his remarks on the performance. From these quiet enjoyments and field musings, death called him away. He returned to town, and died in his lodgings in the Temple, on the 4th of April, 1774, only five months more than forty-five years of age. His constitution is said to have been exhausted by his labours and his consuming anxieties. He died two thousand pounds in debt, and Dr. Johnson, on hearing this fact, exclaimed, " Was ever poet so trusted before?" He was privately interred in the Temple buria,l- ground, and a tabular monument to his honour placed on the walls of Westminster Abbey. That great and noble building does not hold the remains of a nobler or better heart. Ohver Goldsmith was a true Irishman, generous, .impulsive, and improvident ; but he was more, he was a true man and true poet. Whether we laugh with him or weep with him, we are still the better for it. ROBERT BURNS. We come now to the man who is the great representative of a class which is the pecuUar glory of Great Britain ; that is, to Robei-t Burns. It is a brilliant feature of English literature, that the people, the mass, the multitude, — call them what you will, — have contributed to it their share, and that share a glorious one. We may look in vain into the literature of every other nation for the hke fact. It is true that there may be found in all countries men who, born in the lowest walks of life — orphans, outcasts, slaves even — men labouring under not only all the weight of social prejudices, but under the curse of personal deformity, have, through some fortunate circumstance, generally the favour of some generoiis and superior person, risen out of their original position, and through the advantages of acade- mical or artistic education have taken their place amongst the learned and illustrious of their race. We need not turn back to the iEsops and Terences of antiquity for such characters ; they are easy to select from the annals of the middle ages, and modern art and learning ; but there is a class, and this class is found in Gieat Britain alone, which, belonging to the body of the people, has caught, as it were passingly, just the quantum of education which had come within the 230 BURNS. people's reach, and who, on this slender participation of the general intellectual property, have raised for themselves a renown, great, glorious, and enduring as that of the most learned or most socially exalted of mankind. These extraordinary individuals, who are found in the literature of all civilized nations, — these men who, admitted from the ranks of the people to the college or the studio, have dis- tinguished themselves in almost every walk of science or letters, — these have vindicated the general intellect of the human race from every possible charge of inequality in its endowments. They have shown triumphantly that " God is no respecter of persons." They have thus vindicated not only man's universal capacity for greatness, but the Creator's justice. They have demonstrated that " God has made of one blood all the nations of the earth ;" and still more, that he has endowed them all with one intellect. Over the whole bosom of the globe its divine Architect has spread fei'tility ; he has diffused beauty adapted to the diversity of climes, and made that beauty present itself in such a variety of forms, that the freshness of its first perception is kept alive by ever occurring novelties of construc- tion, hue, or odour. It is the same in the intellectual as in the physical world. In the universal spirit of man he has implanted the universal gifts of his divine goodness. Genius, sentiment, feehng, the vast capacity of knowledge and of creative art, are made the common heritage of mankind. But climate and circumstance assert a great and equal influence on the outer and the inner life of the earth. Some nations, under the influences of certain causes, have advanced beyond others ; some individvials, under the like causes, have advanced beyond the generahty of their cotemporaries. But these facts have not proved that those nations, or those individuals, were more highly endowed than the rest ; they have rather proved that the soil of human nature is rich beyond all conception, — the extent of that wealth, however, becoming only palpable through the opera- tion of peculiar agencies. The causes which developed in Greece, in Some, in India, in Egypt, such manifestations of grace, spirit, and power at certain periods, as never were developed even there at any other periods, before or since, jjresent a subject of curious inquii-y, but they leave the grand fact the same ; and this fact is, that the soul of universal man is endowed with every gift and faculty which any possible circumstances can call upon him to exert for his benefit and the adornment of his life. He is furnished for every good word and work. He is a divine creature that when challenged can prove amply his divinity, though under ordinary circumstances he may be content to walk through this existence in an ordinary guise. Every great social revolution, every great popular excitement of every age, has amply demonstrated this. There never was a national demand for intellect and energy, from the emancipation of the IsraeUtes from the Egyptian yoke, or the destruction of the Thirty Tyrants of Athens, down to the English or the French Eevolution, which was not met, to the astonishment of the whole world, with such a supply of orators, poets, warriors, and statesmen, speakers and actors, m- ventors and constructors, in every shape of art, wisdom, and abihty, BURNS. 231 as most completely to certify that the powers which slumber in the human bosom, are far beyond those which are called into activity. The fertility of the soil of the earth is there in winter, but it lies unnoticed. The sun breakf out, and, like a giant alarmist thundering at the doors of the world, he awakens a thousand hidden powers. Life, universal as the earth itself, starts forth in its thousand shapes, and all is movement, beauty, sweetness, hurrying on through a charmed being into an exuberant fruit. Those men, then, who have risen through the medium of a finished education to literary, artistic, or scientific eminence, have, I repeat, vindicated the universality of intellectual endowment ; but there is still another class, and that, as I have said, peculiar to these islands, who have shown that a finished or academical education is not abso- lutely necessary to the display of the highest order of genius. Cir- cumstances, again, have been at work here. The circumstances of this country are difierent to those of any other. We have preserved our liberties more entire. The British people have disdained from age to age to sufter the curb and the bit that have been put upon the neck, and into the mouth, of the more pliant nations of the Continent. Whether these circumstances are to be looked for in the pecuhar mixture of races, or in this particular mixture coexisting with peculiarities of climate aud insular posiiion, might aftbrd scope to much argument ; enough, these circumstances have existed, and their results do exist in a race, proud, active, free, and indomi- table. "Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, I see tlie lords of human liind pass by ; Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band. By forms unfashion'd, fresli trom nature's hand. Fierce in their native hardiness of soul ; True to imagined right, above control ; While e'en the peasant boasts these rights to scan, And learns to venerate himself as man." Goldsmith, The Traveller. Thus it is that this free constitution of the British empire ; this spirit of general independence ; this habit of the peasant and the artizan of venerating themselves as men, has led to an universal awakening of mind in the people. In other countries few think ; it is a few who are regularly educated, and arrogate the right to think, aud write, aud govern. If the poor man become an acknowledged genius, it is only through the passage of the high school. The mass IS an inert mass ; it is a labouring, or at best a singing and dancing multitude. But in Great Britain, there is not a man who does not feel that he is a member of the great thinking, acting, and govern- ing whole. Without books he has often caught the spark of inspi- ration from his neighbour. In the field, the workshop, the alehouse, the chartist gathering, he has come to the discussion of his rights, and in that discussion all the powers of his spirit have felt the arousing influence of the sea of mind around, that has boiled and heaved from its lowest depths in billows of fire. Under the opera- tion of this oral and, as it were, forensic education, which has been going on for generations in the British empire, the whole man with 232 BURNS. all his powers has become wide awake ; and it required only the simple powers of writing and reading to enable the jjeasant or artizan to gather all the knowledge that he needed, and to stand forth a poet, an orator, a scientific inventor, a teacher himself of the nation. To these circumstances we owe our Burns, Hogg, Bloomfield, Clare, Elliott, Allan Cunningham, Bamford, NicoU, Thom, Massey ; our Thomas Miller, and Thomas Cooper. To these circumstances we owe, however, not merely poets, but philosophers, artists, and men of practical science. Such were Drew, Opie, Smeaton, Brindley, Arkwright, Strutt, Crompton, Watt, Hugh Miller ; such men are William Fairbairn, one of the greatest civil engineers in the world, Sir Joseph Paston, the architect of the Crystal Palace, Joseph Barker, the religious reformer of the peoijle, and Carlton, the vigorous delineator of Irish actual life. For such men we look in vain abroad ; and at home they constitute themselves a constella- tion of genius, such as more than one country of continental Europe cannot muster from all the gathered lights of all its ages. It is with pride, and more than pride, that I call the attention of my countrymen to this great and unique section of their country's glorious literature. I look to the future, and see in these men but the forerunners of a numerous race springing from the same soil. * They are evidences of the awakened mind of the common people of England. They are pledges that out of that awakened mind there will, as general education advances, spring whole hosts of writers, thinkers, and actors, who shall not merely represent the working classes of our society, but shall point out the people as the grand future source of the enrichment of our literature. They are luminous proofs, and the forerunners of multitudinous proofs of the same kind, that genius is not entirely dependent upon art ; but can, having once the simple machinery of reading and writing, seize on sufficient art to enable it to exhibit all the nobler forms of intellec- tual life, and to speak from heart to heart the living language of those passions and emotions, which are the elements of all human exertion after the good and the great, which console in distress, harden to necessary endurance, or hre to the generous rage of conquest over difficulties, and over the enemies of their just riglits. These men are the starry lights that glitter on the verge of that dawn in which mankind shall emerge to its true position, — the many being the enlightened spirits, and the few the weak exceptions, shrinking hke shadows from the noonday of human progress. At the head of this great class stands, first in stature as in era, Robert Burns. True, before him there had been a Stephen Duck, and a Robert Dodsley, — glow-worms preceding the morning star ; wonders, because the day of genuine minds had not yet come ; re- spectable men, but not geniuses of that Titanic stamp which, by its very appearance, puts an end to every question as to its rank or nature in the utter astonishment at its colossal presence. There have been many small geniuses paraded before the public as cuiio- BURNS. 233 sities, because they were uneducated ; but when Bums came forth from the crowd of his fellow-men, it was as the poet of the people ; issuing hke Moses from the cloud of God's presence, with a face so radiant with divine light, that the greatest prophets of the schools were dazzled at the apparition. He needed no apologies of want of academic discipline ; he was a man with all the gifts and powers of a man, fresh and instinctive in their strength, as if direct from the Creator's hand. Burns was the representative of the common man in representative perfection. He was a combination of all the powers and the failings, the strength and the weakness, of human nature. He had the great intellect of such a specimen man, awakened to its full consciousness, but not pohshed to the loss of any of its prominences. He was manly, blunt, daring, independent ; full of passion and the thii'st of pleasm-e ; yet still, tender as a woman, sensitive as a child, and cai:)able of sinking to the humblest penitent at the suggestions of his conscience, or rising to the dignity of a prophet or the sanctity of an apostle, as the oppressions of man or the sublimity of God aroused or exalted his spirit. He had the thrilling nerves and the changing moods of the poet ; quick, versatile, melancholy or humorous, he reflected all the changes of the social sky. His sensations were too acute to obey the sole dictates of mere reason, — they carried him to every extreme. He was now bursting with merriment in the midst of his convivial comrades, singing like the lark or the nightingale in the joy of his heart ; now thundering against the outrages of the strong and arbitrary, or weeping in con- vulsive grief over his follies or his wounded affections. But if his sensations were too acute to obey reason at all times, his moral nature was too noble not to obey the clear voice of a conscience, which he often outraged, but never strove systematically to destroy. There are numbers who have wondered that David should be called " a man after God's own heart ; " but to me there is nothing wonderful in such an appellation. God knows that we are weak and imperfect, that in proportion to the strength of our passions are we liable to go wrong, and he does not expect miracles from us. What he expects is, that errors committed in the hurricane of passion shall be abhorred and repented of, as soon as they are fully displayed tc our consciences. To endeavour to do right, yet, if overtaken with error, to abhor oiu* crime, and to repent in the dust and ashes of prostrate remorse, marks a heart frail, yet noble, — and such is human nature at best. The evidence of a corrupt spirit, of a truly criminal nature, is that leaven of malignity, which goes doggedly wrong, sub- stituting the base purposes of its selfishness for the broad commands of God, and finding a satanic pleasure in working evil against its fellow-men. Such was not Robert Burns. He was no faultless monster, nor yet a monster with all his faults. His vivid sensibili- ties, — those sensibihties which gave him the capacity for poetry, those qualities which were the necessary requisites for his vocation, — often led him astray, often stained the purity of his mind ; but they never succeeded in debasing his moral nature. That was too generous^ too noble, too true to the godhke gift of a great human 234 BURNS. heart, which was to feel for all mankind, and to become the inspirer of the general mass with truer and higher ideas of themselves, and of their rank in creation. Woefully fell David of old, — the poet taken from the sheepfold and the solitude of the wilderness to sit on the throne of a great people, — and bitterly in the sight of that people did he lie in the dust and deplore his errors. Greatly went Kobert Burns astray, — the poet taken from the plough to sit on the throne of the realm of poetry, — and bitterly did he, too, bow down and weep in the ashes of repentance. God gave, in both instances, im- pressive proofs to the world, that glorious talents given to men leave them but men still ; and that they who envy the gift should not forget that they too, with the gift, would be exposed to the imminent danger of the fall. There is a comfort and a warning, there is a great moral lesson for mankind in the lives of such men — a lesson of humihty and charity. Who shall say that with a nature equally igneous and combustible, his delinquencies wonld not be far greater ? Where is the man in ten millions, that with such errors on one side of the account, can place the same talents and virtues on the other ? In the words of Burns himself : — " AVho made the heart, 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us ; He knows each chord — its various tone, Each spring — its various bias : Then at the balance let's be mute, We never can adjust it ; Wliat's done we partly may compute, But know not what's resisted." The errors of Burns were visited upon him severely in his day ; they stand recorded against him ; no man can plead his example, for he condemned himself, and the consequences of his aberrations stand warningly side by side with the deeds themselves : but who is he that, with all the perfections of a monotonous propriety, shall confer the same benefits on his country and on his fellow-men ? There was in the nature of Burns a manliness, a contempt of every- thing selfish and mean, a contempt of all distinctions not based on nature, a hatred of tyranny, a withering scorn of hypocrisy, which, had he not possessed the brilliant genius that he did, would, a,mongst his cotemporaries, have diffused that tone of honest uprightness and justness of thinking which are the truest safeguards of a country's liberties and honour, and would have stamped him as a remarkable man. But all these quahties were but the accompaniments of a genius the most brilliant, the wonders and delights of which stand written, as it were, in lightning for ever. Besides the irresistible contagion of his merriment, the flashes of his wit, the tenderness of his sentiment, the wild laughter of his satiric scorn of cant and priestcraft and self-righteousness, the ardour of his patriotism, the gaiety of his social songs, there is a tone in his graver writing which breathes over the hearts of his coimtrymeu, and of all the world, that high and dignifying feeling which ever hallows the heart of man. With Burns, to be a man is the grand distinction. All other dis- BURNS. 235 tinctions are but the clothes which wrap the figure — the figu)-e itself is the real thing. To be a mau, in his eye, was to be the most glorious thing that we have any conception of on this side of heaven ; — to be an honest man, was to be " the noblest work of God!" That was the great sentiment which animated him, and made him come forth from between the stilts of his plough, from his barn or his byre, into the presence of wealth and title, with a calm dignity and a proud bearing which astonished the artificial creatures of society. Titles, carriages, gay garments, great houses, what were they but the things which the man had gathered about him for his pride or his comfort ? It was for the man that they were created and gathered together. Without the man they were nothing, had no value, could have no existence. Without that solid and central and sentient monarch, titles are but air, gay clothes but the furniture of a Jew's shop, great houses but empty useless shells, carriages no better than wheelbarrows. From the man they derived all they were or counted for ; and Burns felt that he and his poorest bi'other of the spade, and poorest sister of the spindle, were as entirely and essentially that as the king upon his throne. The king upon his throne ! He was set there and arrayed in all his pageantry, and armed with aU his power, solely for the man and by the man. In the man and his inner life, the heart, the soul, and the sentiment, — that wondrous mystery which, prisoned in flesh and chained by matter to one corner of the limitless universe, yet is endowed with power to range through eternity — to plunge down amidst innumerable worlds and their swarming life — to soar up and worship at the footstool of the Framer and Upholder of suns and systems, the Father of all being. In him the poet recognised the only Monarch of this nether world. For him, not for lords, or mil- lionaires, or mitred priests, but for him was this august world created. For him were its lands and waters spread abroad ; for him the seasons set forward in the harmony of their jsrogress ; for him were empires and cities framed, and all the comforts of life, and the pre- cious flowers of love and intellect breathed into the common air, and shed into the common heart. That was the feeling of Robert Burns, which made him tread down all other distinctions as he did the thistles of his own fields. That was the doctrine which he was created and sent forth to preach. Eobert Burns was the apostle of the dignity of man, — man, in his own proper nature, standing calmly and invincibly above every artful distinction which sought to thrust him from his place in God's heritage, and set over him the selfish and the base. When contemplating such delusive distinctions, the winged words " h man's a man for a' that ! " burst like a lightning flash from the poet's bosom, and became the eternal watchword of self-respecting himianity. " The kinfi can make a belted knight, A marquis, duke, an a' that ; The rank is but the guinea stamp, A man's a man for a' that 1 " 236 BURNS. Brave words ! glorious truth ! The soul of poetry and the whole science of social philosophy compressed into a single stanza, to sei-ve as the stay and comfort of milUons of hearts in every moment when most needed. The preeminent merit of Burns, independent of his beauties as a fine poet, is the vigorous inculcation of these sentiments of a just self-estimation into the people. To teach them to regard themselves as objects of worth from their own human nature and destiny, irrespective of the mere mode by which they live, is to confer on the million the noblest benefaction. It is to give them at once a shield against " the proud man's contumely," and the degradations of vice. It is to set their feet on the firm rock of an eternal truth, and to render them alike invulnerable to envy and despair. The man who breathes the soul of a rational dignity into the multitude is the greatest of possible patriots. He who respects virtue and pm-ity in himself will respect those qualities in others ; and a nation permeated with the philosophy of Burns would be the noblest nation that the sun ever yet shone upon. But it is not merely that Robert Burns teaches his fellow-peasants and citizens to fling out of their bosoms the fiends of envy and self- depreciation ; taught by those errors for which he has been so severely blamed, he has become, without question, the most efficient, wise, and tender counsellor that they ever had. He knows aU their troubles and temptations, for he has experienced them ; and he gives them the soundest advice under all circumstances. He weeps with them, he rejoices with them, he worships with them, in such a brotherly, and occasionally such a fatherly sympathy, that his poems have become to the poor of Scotland, as they have told me, a sort of second Bible. How beautifully are blended in these stanzas the in- dignant sense of those oppressions which never crushed more directly the labouring poor than they do at this day in wealthy England, and the consoling truth of a divine retribution : — ' Many and sharp the numerous ills Inwoven with our frame : More pointed still we make ourselves Regret, remorse, and shame ! And man, whose heaven-erected face The smiles of love adorn, Man's inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn. If I'm designed yon lordling's slave. By nature's law designed. Why was an independent wish E'er planted in my mind ? If not, why am I subject to His cruelty and scorn ? Or why has man the will and power To make his fellow mourn 1 See yonder poor o'erlaboured wight, So abject, mean and vile, Who begs a brother of the earth To give him leave to toil ; And see his lordly fellow-worm The poor petition spurn. Unmindful, though a weeping wife And helpless offspring mourn. ' Yet let not this too much, my son, Disturb thy youthful breast; This partial view of human kind Is surely not the last ! The poor, oppressed, honest man, Had never, sure, been born; Had there not been some recompence To comfort those that mourn !" Robert Burns ran off" the railroad line of morality ; but Usten to the advice, warned by his own folly, which he gives to a young friend : — BURNS. 237 " The sacred Inwe o' weel-placed love, " The fear o hell's a hangman's whip Luxuriantly indulge it ; To baud the wretch in order ; But never tempt the illicit rove. But where ye feel your honour grip, Tho' naething should divulge it: Let that aye be your border : I waive the quantum o' the sin, Its slif^htest touches, instant pause — The hazard of concealing ; Debar a' side pretences ; But, och ! it hardens a' within, And resolutely keep its laws, And petrifies the feeling ! Uncaring consequences. ■' To catch dame Fortune's golden smile, " The great Creator to revere Assiduous waii upon her; Must sure become the creature, And gather gear by every wile But still the preaching cant forbear. That's justified by honour: And ev'n the rigid feature; Not for to hide it in a hedge. Yet ne'er with wits profane to range. Nor for a train attendant ; Be complaisance extended ; But for the glorious privilege An Atheist laugh's a poor exchange Of being independent. For Deity oflended 1 " When ranting round in pleasure's ring, Religion may be blinded ; Or if she gie a random sting, It may be little minded. But when on life we're tempest-driven, A conscience hut a canker— A correspondence fixed wi' Heaven Is sure a noble anchor ! " These are golden words, worthy to be committed to memory by every young person ; they are full of the deej^est wisdom. But such wisdom, such golden lines, we might quote from almost every page of Burns. In his Epistle to Davie, how cordially does he enter into all the miseries of the poor, yet bow oioquently does he also dwell on those blessings which God has given to all, and which no circum- stances can take away ! " To lie in kilns and bams a* p'en. When banes are crazed and biuid is thin. Is doubtless great distress ! " Yet there are other seasons when Nature, even to the most abject tramp, pours out royal pleasures. " What though, like commoners of air, We wander out we know not where, But either house or hall ? Yet nature's charms, the hills and woods, The sweeping vales, and foaming floods. Are free alike to all. In days when daisies deck the ground, And blackbirds whistle clear, With honest joy our hearts will bound To see the coming year. On braes when we please, then, We'll sit and sowtb a tune : Syne rhjTne till 't, we '11 time till 't. And sing 't when we hae done. •' It's no in titles nor in rank ; It's no in wealth like Lon'on bank. To purchase peace and rest : It's no in makin muckle mair ; It's no in books ; it's no in lear ; 1 make us truly blest ; If happiness hae not her seat And centre in the breast, We may be wise, or rich, or great, But never can be blest. 238 BtJRNS. Nae treasures, nor pleasures, Could make us happy lang : The heart ay's the part ay, That makes us right or wrang." So S25eaks the humble ploughman of Ayi-shire, the still humbler exciseman of Dumfries, but the greatest poet of his countiy, and one of the noblest and wisest men of any country or age, spite of all his practical errors. We must now make our pilgrimage to the spots which were his homes on earth. The old town of Ayr, so intimately connected with the memory of Burns, by his birth near it, by his poem of the Twa Brigs, by the scene of Tam o' Shanter, by the place of his monument and the festival in his honour, and by other particulars, is a quiet and plea- sant old town of some twenty thousand population. It lies on a level, sandy coast, on land which, in fact, apjaears to have been won from the sea. Though lying close on the sea, it has no good harbour, and therefore httle commerce, and no manufacture of any account. These circumstances leave much of the town as it was in Burns's time, though there are also evidences of modern extension and im- provement, in new streets and public buildings, especially of a county jail lying between the town and the shore. The moment you step out of the station of the Glasgow railway, which terminates here, you come upon the mouth of the river Ayr, and behold the Twa Brigs. That which was the New Brig in Burns's days, is the one over which you pass into the town. This bridge, whose guardian sprite is made to swagger over the Auld Brig, if it has not fulfilled the prophecy of the Auld Brig, and been swept away by a flood, has been in danger of demolition, having grown too narrow for the increase of traffic. It has been saved, however, no doubt, by the preseiwing power of Burns's poetry, which has made it sacred, and it was undergoing the process of widening at the time I was there, in July, 1845. The Auld Brig is some hundred yards or so higher up the stream, and seems re- tained really for little more than its antiquity and poetic classicality. It is now used only as a footpath, and not being considered safe for carriages, has posts set up at the end to prevent every attempt with any carriage to pass it. One is irresistibly reminded, on going upon it, of the haughty query of the New Brig, — " Will your poor narrow footpath of a street, Where two wheelbarrows tremble when they meet, Your ruined fornile.>s bulk o' stane an' lime. Compare wi' bonnie brigs o' modern time 1 " Mr. Chambers says that the Auld Brig is reported to have been built in the reign of Alexander III. by two maiden sisters, whose effigies are still shown in a faded condition on a stone in the eastern parapet, near the south end of the bridge. There certainly is such a stone, and you may rather fancy than distinctly trace two outlines of heads. The whole bridge is, as described by Burns, very old and time-worn. " Auld Brig appeared o' ancient Pictish race The very wrinkles Gothic in his face; He seemed as he wi' Time had warstlcd lang, Yet, teughly doure, he baide an unco bang." BURNS. 239 There is a peculiar pleasure in standing on this old Brig, so exactly has Burns enabled you to place yourself in the very scene that he contemplated at the moment of conceiving his poem. " A simple bard, Unknown and poor, simplicity's reward, Ae night, witliin the ancient burgh of Ayr, By whim inspired, or haply pressed wi' care, He left his bed, and took iiis wayward route, And down by Simpson's wheeled the left about; The drowsy Dungeon clock had numbered two. And Wallace tower had sworn the fact was true ; The tide-swollen Firth, wi' sullen sounding roar, Through the still night dashed hoarse aiong the shore. All else was hushed as Nature's closed e'e ; The silent moon shone high o'er tower and tree; The chilly frost, beneath the silver beam, Crept, gently crusting, o'er the glittering stream." From this scene " the drowsy Dungeon clock " is removed, the old jail having been pulled down ; but " Simixson's " is still to be seen, — a public-house at the end of the bridge on the side most distant from the town ; and "Wallace tower, — I believe, however, almost wholly rebuilt since then, and presenting now a very modernized aspect, — rears itself in a distant part of the town. Along the river side the " ancient burgh of Ayr " presents its antiquated houses, roofs, and gables, much as they did to the eye of Burns. Ayr, though it stands on a flat, has still great charm of location ; and this you perceive as you set out to visit the birthplace and monument of Burns, which he about three miles south of Ayr. You may, if you please, take the way along the shore ; and here you have the sea, with its living billows, displaying at a distance opposite the craggy mountain heights of Arran, and the Mull of Cantire. North- ward, Troon, with its new houses, may be seen standing on its naked promontory ; and southward, the tower of Dunbere is a bold but sombre object on an elevated knoll on the margin of the ocean, and far out south-west, Ailsacraig is descried, towering amid the waters. It is a fine and animated scene. It was Sunday forenoon as I ad- vanced over the very level ground near the shore, towards Alloway. People were walking on the beach enjoying the sunshine, breeze, and glittering world of waters ; lovers were seated amongst the broomy hillocks, children were gathering flowers amid the crimson glare of the heather ; all had an air of beauty and gladness. To my left lay a richly-wooded country, and before me, beyond Alloway and the Doon, stretched the airy range of the Carrick hills. It was the direc- tion which I was pursuing that Tarn o' Shanter took from the town to Alloway, for the old road ran that way ; but there is a new and more direct one now from Ayr, and into that, having been showia the cottage where Mrs. Begg, Burns's sister, still lived, I struck. This agreeable road I soon saw diverge into two, and asked a poor man which of the two led to Burns's monument. At the name of Burns his face kindled with an instant animation. " I am going part of the way. Sir," ho .said, "and will be proud to show it you." I begged him not to put himself at all out of his way. " Oh," .said he, " I am going to look at my potato plot, which lies out here." "We fell into 240 BURNS. conversation about Bums ; the way again showed a fresh branch ; that was the way to his potato field — but the poor fellow gave a hesi- tating look, he could not find in his heart to give up tallying about Burns, and begged that I would do him the honour to allow him to walk on with me. " But your potatoes, my friend ? " " Oh ! they'll tak no harm, Sir. The weather's very growing weather — one feels a natural curiosity to see how they thiive, but that will do next Sunday, if you would allow me to go on with you ? " I assured him that nothing would give me greater pleasure. I only feared that I might keep him out too long, for I must see Burns's birth-place, Kirk Alloway, the Brig of Doon, the monument, and everything of the kind. It was now about noon, and must be his dinner-hour. He said, " No ; he never had dinner on a Sunday ; for years he had accustomed himself to only two meals on that day, because he earned nothing on it, and had ten children ! But he generally took a walk out into the country, and got a good mouthful of fresh air, and that did him a deal of good." I looked more closely at my new comjianion. He was, apparently, sixty, and looked like a man accustomed to dine on air. He was of a slight and grasshopper build ; his face was thin and jjale ; his hair grizzled ; yet there was an intelligence in his large grey eyes, but it was a sad intelligence, one which had long kept fellowship with patience and suffering. His grey coat, and hat well worn, and his clean but coarse shirt collar tm-ned down over a narrow band of a blue cotton neckerchief, with its long ends dangling over his wai,st- coat, all denoted a poor but a cai'eful and superior man. I cannot tell what a feeling of sympathy came over me : how my heart warmed towards the poor fellow. We went on ; gay groups of people met us, and seemed to cast looks of wonder at the stranger and his poor associate ; but I asked myself whether, if we could know, as God knows, the hearts and merits of every individual of those well-dressed and laughing walkers, we should find amongst them one so heroic as to renounce his Sunday dinner, as a perpetual practice, because he " earned nothing on that day, and had ten children." Was there a man or a woman amongst them who, if they knew this heroic man, as I now knew him, would not desire to give him, for that one day at least, a good dinner, and as much pleasure as they could ? " My fiiend," said I, " I fear you have had more than your share of hardship in this life 1 " " Nay," he rephed, he could not say that. He had had to work hard, but what poor man had not ? But he had had many comforts ; and the greatest comfort in life had been, that all his children had taken good ways ; " if I don't except," and the old man sighed, " one lad, who has gone for a soldier ; and I think it a little ungrateful that he has never written to us since he went, three years ago. Yet I hear that he is alive and well, in Jamaica. I cannot but think that rather tmgrateful," he added ; " but of a' Robin Burns's poems, there's none, to my thinking, that comes up to that one — Man was made to mourn." BURNS. 241 I could not help again glancing at the thin, pale figure, which went as softly at my side as if it were a ghost, and could not wonder that Burns was the idol of the poor throughout Scotland, and that the Sunday wanderer of his native place had clung so fondly to the southei-n visitor of the same sacred spot. " Can you explain to me," I asked, " what it is that makes Bums such a favourite with you all in Scotland 1 Other poets you have, and great ones ; out of the same class, too, you had Hogg, but I do not perceive the same instant flash, as it were, of an electric feeling, when any name is named but that of Burns." " 1 can tell," said he, " why it is. It is because he had the heart of a man in him. He was all heart, and all man ; and there's nothing, at least in a poor man's experience, either bitter or sweet, which can happen to him, but a line of Burns springs into his mouth, and gives him courage and comfort if he needs it. It is hke a second Bible." I was struck with the admirable criticism of the poor artizan. What acuteness of genius is like the acuteness of a sharp experience, after all ? I found that, had I picked the whole county of Ayr, I could not have hit on a man more clearly aware of the real genius of Burns, nor a more excellent guide to all that related to him here- abouts. He now stopped me. We were on the very track of Tarn o' Shauter. " Kirk Alloway was drawing nigh, Where ghaists and houlets nightly cry, — By this time he was cross the ford, Where in the snaw the chapman smoored ; And past the birks and meikle stane Where drunken Charley brak 's neck-bane. And through the whins, and by the caim Where hunters found the murdered bairn ; And near the thorn aboon the well Where Mungo's mither hanged hersel." The whins, the birks were gone : all was now one scene of richest cultivation ; but in the midst of a cottager's garden still projected the " meikle stane " from the ground in a potato bed. To this, by permission of the cottager, we advanced, and from this spot my guide pointed out the traditionary course of Tarn on that awful night when — " Before him Doon pours all his floods ; The doublin' storm roars through the woods, And lightnings flash from pole to pole." Some of these scenes lay yet far before us ; as the well " Where Mungo's mither hanged hersel ; " which is just on the banks of the Doon itself. Anon we reached the cottage in which Burns was bom. This stands on the right-hand side of the road, about a quarter of a mile from Kirk Alloway and the Brig o' Doon. It is a genuine Scotch cottage of two rooms on the ground floor, thatched and whitewashed. It is now, and has been long, a little public-house. It stands close to the road, and over the door is a portrait of Burns, an evident cojjy from the portrait by Nasmyth, and under it, in large and 242 BURNS. noticeable letters—" Egbert Burns, the Ayrshire Poet, was born UNDER THIS ROOF, THE 25TH JaN. A. D. 1759. DiED A. D. 1796, AGED 37|- TEARS." It is well known to most readers that this house was built by Burns's father, and that about a week after Robert, his first child, was born, the roof fell in diu-ing a tempest at midnight, and that mother and child had to be carried forth in a hurry through the storm and darkness, to a cottage, which still remains, not far oii", on the opposite side of the road. Robert Burns was born in what is now the kitchen, in one of those recess beds so common in Scotch cottages. This is still shown to visitors by the occupiers of the house. The better room, in which the guests are entertained, that nearest to the town of Ayr, bears abundant marks of the zeal of these visitors. The walls are well written over with names, but not in that extraordinary manner that the waUs of Shakspeare's birth-place at Stratford are. The rage here has taken another turn, that of cutting the names into the fm-niture. There are two plane- tree tables, which are cut and carved in the most singular complete- ness. There does not seem to be left space, neither on the top, the sides, nor the legs, even for another initial. There were formerly three of these tables, but one of them was sold some years ago. There is a cupboard and chairs all cut over, the chairs having been obliged to be renewed, but the fresh ones are now as much cut as ever. We were informed by Mrs. Goudie, the widow of the old miller, John Goudie, of Doonside mill, who had lived in the house nearly forty years, that the lease of the property had been bought of Burns's father, by the Shoemakers' Company of Ayr, for one hundred and sixty guineas ; but that the property now let for .£45 a year ; and that the said Shoemakers' Company wishing again to raise the rent, the widow was going to quit at Michaelmas next, and that another person had taken the house, and a small piece of ground adjoining, at a rental of .£60 a year. Mrs. Goudie said that she had been once bid £15 for one of the tables, but had refused it ; that, however, being now about to quit the premises, she had sold the chairs and tables to a broker at Glasgow, who was announ- cing them as the actual furniture of Burns ; though it was well known that when Burns's father left this house for Mount Oliphant, a few miles off, when Robert Burns was not seven years of age, he took all his furniture with him. Conspicuous amongst the carved names in this room was that of an ambitious Peter Jonos, of Great Bear Lake, North America. Burns's father, who was, when he lived here, gardener to Mr. Ferguson, of Doonholm, was a man of an excitable temperament but of a most upright disposition ; and his mother, like the mothers of most remarkable men, was a woman of clear, clever, and superior mind, of a winning address, and full of ballads and traditions. From both sides the son drew the elements of a poet ; and we can weU imagine him sitting by the humble fireside of this cottage, and receiving into his childish heart, from the piety of the father, and the imaginative tales of the mother, those images of genuine Scottish BURXS. 243 life, which poured themselves forth, as well in Tarn o' Shanter, as in the grave and the beautiful Cotter's Saturday Night. Having insisted on my worthy guide getting some refreshment, we again saUied forth to make a more thorough exploration of the youthful haunts of the poet. And now, indeed, we were surrounded by mementos of him, and of his fame, on all hands. The cottage stands on a pleasant plain ; and about a quarter of a mile onward you see, on the left-hand of the road, the monument erected to his memory — a dome, surmounted with a lyre and the significant wine- cup, and supported on Corinthian pillars. On the oj^posite, that is, on the right-hand side of the road, is the old Kirk of Alloway ; beyond, away to the right, is heard the sea ; while the airy range of the Carrick hills stretches across, closing the landscape before you. At their feet a mass of trees marks the com-se of the Doon ; but, before you reach any of these objects, you pass on your left the large open field in which was held the Burns festival, on the 6th of August, 1844. The place where the waU had been broken down to admit the procession was plainly discernible by its new mortar ; and a fine crop of corn was now waving where such thousands had, but a year before, met in honour of the immortal exciseman. Of this festival copious particulars are to be found in all the newspapers of the day ; but in none so complete and accurate as "The Full Eeport," pubhshed by Mr. Maxwell Dick, the worthy publisher of the Ayrshire News Letter at Irvine, one of the most enthusiastic admirers of the genius of Burns, and of genius in general. By this report it appears that the procession, forming on the Low Green of Ayr, near the county buildings, met at ten o'clock in the morning, and consisted of the magistrates of the town, public bodies, farmers, numerous freemasons' lodges, societies of gardeners, archers, and odd-fellows. King Crispin in his most imposing style, with Souter Johnny in character, accompanied by attendants with banners floating, and band.s playing music of Burns's songs. In this procession were seen gentlemen and noblemen, and hterary men of the highest distinction, from aU' parts of the empire. It reached a mile along the high road, three abreast. The whole number of persons present — that is, in the procession and on the ground — was calculated at eighty thousand. A splendid triumphal arch was erected at the cottage where the poet was born ; and, as the pro- cession drew near it, the band played " There was a lad was born in Kyle ; " the vast multitude uncovered at once, and the flags were lowered as they passed the humble but much respected spot. Plat- forms were erected in various places, so that j:)eople could get a coup-d'ceil of the procession. As it approached Kirk Alloway, the old bell, which still occupies the belfiy, was set a-i'ingiug, and con- tinued so while the procession marched under the triumjihal arch along the new bridge. Deploying round towards the old bridge of Doon, the circling line, partially obscured by the houses and trees, had a truly picturesque efl'ect ; the waving banners, the music of the bands, mellowed and echoed by "the banks and braes o' bonnie Doon," were deeply impressive. On reachijig the Auld Brig, over b2 244 BURNS. ■which was thrown a triumphal arch, the band struck up " Welcome, Royal Charlie," while the procession, uncovering and lowering their flags, passed over in front of the platform, on which stood the three sons of Burns, his sister Mrs. Begg, her son, and two daughters. The procession occupied at least an hour in coming from the new bridge to the field, on entering which the band played "Duncan Gray," followed by " The Birks of Aberfeldy." A large circle was then formed round the platform for the musicians in the field ; and the whole company, led by professional vocalists, joined in singing " Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon," and " Auld lang syne." The bands were then stationed in various parts of the field ; the Regimental and Glasgow St. Andrew's bands, in the centre of the field ; the Kilwinning and Cumnock bands at the cottage, and the bagpipers played at a dis- tance from the pavilion. There were two enclosures for dancing ; one near the head of the field, and the other on the brow, overlooking the Doon. Immediately after the procession was over, the crowd were astonished by the sudden appearance of Tarn o' Shanter, " well mounted on his grey mare Meg," and a flight of witches in full pur- suit of her, till he reached and passed the keystone of the arch of the Auld Brig. At two, the Earl of Eglinton took the chair at the banquet in the pavilion, with Professor Wilson as croupier. To the right of the chairman sat Robert Bums, Esq., the eldest son of the poet ; Major Burns, his youngest son ; on the left. Colonel Burns, second son of the poet ; Mrs. Begg, Burns's sister ; and right and left, other members of the family, and many noble and distinguished persons ; as Mrs. Thomson, of Dumfries, the Jessie Lewars of the poet ; Sir John M'Neill, late plenipotentiary to the court of Persia ; the Lord Justice-General, the Countess of Eglinton, Alison, the historian, Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, Robert Chambers, of Edinburgh, Douglas Jerrold, William Thom, the poet of Invermy, etc. etc. The chairs of the chairman and croupier were made of oaken rafters from Kirk Alloway, and many mementos of the poet decorated the table. The scene in the paviUon is described as splendid, and like one of fairyland ; and the most enthusiastic speeches were made in honour of the poet, especially by the noble chairman and the eloquent John Wilson. It will be seen by those acquainted with the groimd, that the procession had thus taken a course contrived to include every object of interest connected with Burns here. It had passed the cottage of his birth ; passed between Kirk Alloway and his monument ; crossed by the new bridge over the Doon, to the side of the river, and returned over the old bridge, so as to see all " the banks and braes o' bonnie Doon," and so entered the field of the festival, having entirely encircled the monument. There, in full view of all these objects, the cottage, the old ruins of the kirk, the mo- nument, and the banks of Doon, they celebrated, — eighty thousand persons, — the festival of his honour, amid the music of his own enchanting songs, amongst which were — "A man's a man for a' that ;" " This is na my ain house ;" " Green grow the rashes ;" " My love she's but a lassie yet ;" " Wat ye wha's in yon toun." BURNS. 245 This stirring and tumultuous expression of a nation's veneration was gone by ; silence had again fallen, as it were, with a musing sense of the poet's glory on the scene ; and with my worthy guide I went over the same ground leisurely, noting all its beauties and characteristics. First, we turned into the gi'ave-yard of Kirk AUoway. Here stood the roofless old kirk, just such a plain, simple luin as you see in a hundred places in Ireland. One of the first objects that arrests your attention is the bell in the httle belfry, with a rope hanging outside, only sufficiently low for the sexton, on any occasion of funeral, to reach it with a hooked pole, and thus to prevent any idle person ringing it at other times. This bell, when the parishes of AUoway and Ayr were joined, was attempted to be carried away by the authorities of Ayr, by no means to their honour, but the crofters of AUoway manfully rose and resisted successfully the removal. There are plenty of open windows, where Tarn o' Shanter could take a fuU view of the unsonsie dancing party ; and " the winnock bunker in the east," a small window, " where sat auld Nick in shape of beast" as fiddler, is conspicuous enough. The interior of the kirk is divided by a wall. The west end division is the burial-place of the Cathcarts, which is kept very neat. The other end, where the witch-dance met Tam's astonished eyes, is now full of briars and nettles, bearing sufficient evidence of no recent displays of the kind. The kirk-yard is crowded with tombs, and the first memorial of the dead which meets your eye, is the headstone of the poet's father, just before you as you enter by the stile, with this inscription : — " Sacred to the memory of William Burns, farmer in Lochlea, who died Feb. 1784, in the 63d year of his age ; and of Agnes Browne, his spouse, who died the 14th of Jan. 1820, in the 88th year of her age. She was interred in Bolton Chui'chyard, East Lothian. O ye whose cheek the tear of pity stains, I)raw near with pious reverence, and attend I Here lie the loving husband's dear remains. The tender father, and the g;enerous friend. The pitying heart that felt for human woe ; The dauntless heart that feared no human pride; The friend of man, to vice alone a foe ; ' For ev'n his failings leaned to virtue's side.'" This epitaph was written expressly for this tomb by Bums ; the last line being quoted from Goldsmith. Advancing now to the new bridge, you stand between two remark- able monuments of the poet. On your right hand, close on the banks of the Doon, and adjoining the bridge, stands a handsome villa, in beautiful grounds which occupy i^art of " the banks and braes." This is the house of Mr. Auld, the enterprising hairdresser of Ayr, who was the first to recognise the genius of Thom the sculptor, then a poor stonemason of Ayr. Thorn, seeing a picture of Tarn o' Shanter in Auld's window, requested the loan of it for a few days. Being asked by Auld what he wanted it for, he said he had a notion that he could make a figure from it. It was lent, and in a few days he returned with a model of Tarn in clay. Mr. Auld 246 BURNS. was so struck with the genius displayed in it, that he suggested to Thorn to complete the group by adding Souter Johnny. That was soon done ; and then, by the assistance of Mr. Auld, the well-known group was cut in stone. The enterprising hairdresser now prepared to set out on a tour of exhibition of this group, the proceeds of which, I understand, were agreed to be equally divided between Auld, Thorn, and a committee for a monument to Burns, near his birth- place. Such was the success of the scheme, that Thorn, I am told, received £4,000 as his share of the proceeds, which, however, he soon contrived to lose by taking stone-quarries, and entering on building schemes. Having lost his money, he retired to America. Auld, more careful, quitted the wig-block and lather-brush, and building himself a house, sat down as a country gentleman opposite to the monument, which seems to be in his keeping. It has been said, that the monument committee never received anything like a third of the proceeds of the exhibition, or the monument might now be opened free of cost to the public. That, however, is a point which the committee and Mr. Auld must be best informed about. One thing is certain, that Mr. Auld's present residence is a grand specimen of the effect of the united genius of Burns, Thom, and Auld ; an exciseman, a stone mason, and a barber. To the left hand of the road, opposite to this monument, stands, in a pleasant garden, the other monument of Biu-ns, as already described, and which also, it seems, partly owed its existence to the same bold enterprise of this barber of Ayr, who seems actually to have had the art of " cut- ting blocks with a razor." In this monument is no statue of Burns, but merely a framed copy of that admirable coloured print of Burns, published by Mr. Maxwell Dick, of Irvine, from Nasmyth's picture ; and on the table in the centre, the Bible and Testament given by Bvu-ns to his Mary at their last parting near Montgoinerie castle. These are two separate volumes, and are displayed at the beginning of each, where Burns has placed a masonic sign, and '^A.^ written his name, now nearly obliterated ; adding the "sS^/ two texts, — Leviticus xix. 12 ; Matthew v. 33 : which are, " Ye shall not swear by my name falsely ; I am the Lord ;" and " Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths." These precious volumes were known to be in the possession of the sister of Burns's " Mary," in America ; and a society of young men, ardent admirers of Biu-ns, resolved to regain them, if possible, for the public. This, after great trouble and expense, they finally effected ; and here they are, objects certainly of the deepest interest. In a separate and small building in the same garden stands the celebrated group by Thom, of Tam and Souter Johnny. This, how- ever, being Sunday, was by an order of the authorities of Ayr not allowed to be seen, though the monument was. I asked the youth who showed the monument, if he could explain to me why it was a sin to show the group, and not a sin to show the monument on a Sunday ; but the lad very properly replied that he did not pretend to a metaphysical sagacity so profound ; his business was to show BURNS. 247 the monument, and not to shoto either the group or the reason why ; for that he referred me to the superior hair-sphtting piety and acumen of the corporate authorities of Ayr. Quitting this garden, you encounter, at the foot of the new bridge, a new inn, called Burns's Inn and Hotel, with a fine painted sign, of a blackbird singing upon a bough, with a crook and a house, and an oak in the centre of a shield laid on branches of olive and oak ; and over it the words — " Better a small bush than nae bield." The Auld Brig is some little distance up the stream ; and the view from it is very beautiful. You are surrounded by " the banks and braes o' bonnie Doon," steep, hung with orchards and fine woodland trees. At some Uttle distance still farther up the stream, you descry the old mill of AUoway, half buried in umbrageous trees, and all round rise sweet woodland fields at the feet of the hills. The bridge is well carved over with names, and overgrown with masses of ivy. Standing on this remarkable old grey bridge, my companion exhi- bited a trait of delicate and genuine feeling, which no man of the most j)olislied education in the school of politeness could have sur- passed. Gathering a sprig of ivy, he said, presenting it, — " May be ye would like to send this to your leddy in England ; it's gathered just frae the keystane." I accejited it with the liveliest pleasure, and it is now carefully preserved where the good man wished it. We then returned to Ayr, talking of Burns, his history, his poetry, and his fine qualities all the way ; and after one of the pleasantest rambles I ever made in any company, I bade my old friend good-bye at his door, leaving in his hand a trifle to mend his Sunday supper. " But," said he, as I was going away, " might I request the favour of your name, that I may know who it was that I had the honour of a walk with to Burns's monument, when I am thinking of it ? " I told him ; his face passed from its usual paleness to a deep flush ; and he exclaimed, — " Eh, Sir ! I ken yer name, and that o' yer leddy too, right weel ! " Depend upon it, the recollection of that walk has been as pleasant to my old friend as to myself The next day, with a driver well acquainted with the country, I issued forth in a gig, to visit all the various residences of Burns between Ayr and Mauchline. Burns in his life seemed like a bird leaving its nest. He took two or three short flights, till he flew quite away to Dumfries. At every move he got farther from Ayr. He was like an emigrant, still going on and on in one direction, and his course was south-east, first, he went, that is, with his father, to Mount OUphant, a farm about four miles from Alloway, where he lived from his sixth to his twelfth year. This farm has nothing par- ticular about it. It lies on a bare ridge of hill, an ordinary httle Scotch farm-steading, with bare and treeless fields Then he went on to another farm — to Lochlea, still farther out on this long, high, and bleak tract of country, near Tarbolton. This farm ruined his father, and there he died. Lochlea is a neat farm-house, lying in a hollow more sheltered than Mount Oliphant, but still possessing no pic- turesque features. In fact, the family was seeking not the picturesque, but a livelihood. At Lochlea, Burns lived till he was twenty-four, 248 BURNS. and here he attended the masonic lodge at the Cross-keys, at Tar- holton, which still remains. There he became acquainted with Mr. David Sillar, the schoolmaster of Tarbolton, and addressed to him his EjDistle to Davie. It was about three miles from Tarbolton, but that was nothing to Burns, full of hfe and poetry. The Bachelor's Society, which, with David Sillar and other young men, he formed there, had infinite charms for him. Humble were these companions ; in David Sillar's words — " Of birth and blood we do not boast, No gentry does our club afford, But ploughmen and mechanics we In nature's simple dress record ; " but they were men after Burns's own heart. He judged of men as his father had taught him : — ■ " My father was a farmer upon the Carrick Border, And carefully he bred me up in decency and order ; He bade me act a manly part, though I had ne'er a farthing. For without an honest manly heart no man was worth regarding." It was during his abode here that he wrote John Barleycorn ; Com- riggs are bonnie ; Winter, a Dirge ; the Death of Poor Mailie ; Maihe's Elegy ; and Now Whistling Winds, etc. But the love affairs he was at this time continually getting into, and the dissipations that he be- came acquainted with at Kirkoswald and Irvine, at which places he spent some months, rendered his poetical growth far less than it otherwise might have been there. One incident in his hfe, and one of his most beautiful poems consequent on it, however, arose out of an attachment, which, though said to be formed at MauchUue, was certainly cultivated here. Just below Tarbolton lies Montgomerie castle, beautifully situated amidst its woods on the banks of the Fade, where he fell in love with Mary Campbell. Here, near the house, it was, according to his own beautiful poem, that he used to meet, and here that he finally took leave of her. She was dairymaid in the house then belonging to Colonel Hugh Montgomerie, afterwards Earl of Eglinton, and grandfather of the present earl. " Ye banks and braes and streams around The castle of Montgomerie, Green be your woods, and fair your flowers. Your waters never drunilie ; There summer first unfauld her robes, And there the longest tarry, For there I took my last farewell Of my sweet Highland Mary." There is a story mentioned in the Lives of Burns, of this parting being on the banks of Ayr, and Cromek repeats it, adding that " the lovers stood on each side of a small purling brook — they laved their hands in the limpid stream, and holding a Bible between them, pro- nounced their vows to be faithful to each other." All this may be true, for they took a day to this final solitary en- joyment of each other's society in the woods before parting. They might wander by the Ayr, and so on up to the Faile, and at some small rivulet on the way j^erform this simple and aftectiug ceremony. Mary was going to the Western Highlands, to see her friends before BURNS. 249 she married Eobert Burns, but she died on her way back, and they never met again. This Bible, as we have seen, has been recovered, and is deposited in the monument at Alloway. Wherever this ceremony took place, the parting assuredly took place here. Burns says, not only that " there I took my last farewell," but also " How sweetly bloomed the gay green birk, How rich the hawthorn's blossom, As, underneath their fragrant shade, I clasped her to my bosom ! " There still stands the thorn, called by all the country, " Highland Mary's Thorn." The house and park are sold or leased by the Earl of Eglinton to a soUcitor in Ayr. My driver appeared afraid of going into the park, saying " the writer," that is, the solicitor, was a queer fellow, and would not let anybody go to the thorn, and aertainly a large board at each park gate, warning all persons to avoid those hallowed precincts, appeared to confirm the man's opinion ; but, having come so far, I did not mean to pass without a glance at the parting scene of Burns and Highland Mary. I bade him drive down to the house, where I was speedily assured by the servants about that I was quite at hberty to go to the tree. " How shall I know it ?" " Oh ! a child may know it — it is all hacked and the twigs broken, by people who carry away some of it to keep." By these signs I readily recognised the tree. It is not far from the house, close to the carriage-drive, and on the top of the slope that descends to the Faile, which murmurs on beneath its sweet woodland shade.* The last abode of Burns in Ayrshire was at Mossgiel. This is some four miles beyond Tarbolton, and close to Mauchline, which is merely a large village. Mossgiel farm lies, as it were, at the end of that long, high, barren ridge of hiUs, which extends almost all the way from Ayr thither, and on which Burns's father had sought a poor living, and found ruin. It stands near the line of the slope which descends into Mauchline, and overlooks a large extent of bleak and bare country, and distant bare hills. In the vales of the country, however, lie many scenes of great beauty and classic fame. Such are the banks of the Ayr, which winds on deep between its braes and woods, Uke the Nith, the Doon, and the higher Clyde. Such are Stair, Logan, Crukerne, Catrine, Dugald Stewart's place, and many others. The farm of Mossgiel, which consists of about 118 acres, lies, as observed, high, and as Gilbert, the brother of Burns, described it, " on a cold, wet bottom." The farms occupied by the Burns family in this part of the country were all of a thankless and ungenial kind; in fact, they lacked the means to command better. The two brothers, * I am still, however, afraid that it is too true tliat the country people are not allowed to visit " Mary's Thorn," though held in such high honour by them. Not only the boards at the park gates, but other information, conlirmed this fact; and my passing the house to the tree brought all the family to the window, servants as well as gentlemen, ladies, and children, and no few iu number, as if some extraordinary circumstance had occurred. 250 BURNS. Robert and Gilbert, had taken this farm some time before their father's death, in the hope of assisting the family in that poverty which came still after them, like an armed man, spite of the most laborious exertion, and which was weighing their father to the grave. At his death they removed altogether from Lochlea, and with their mother and sisters became here one household. Here Burns made the firmest resolves of steadiness, industry, and thriving ; but the seasons wei-e against him, and he soon became mixed up with all the dissipations of Mauchline, where he established a club after the fashion of that at Tarbolton. Very soon, too, he plunged into the midst of church disputes, in which his friend Gavin Hamilton, a lawyer of the place, was personally embroiled. Here he wrote The Holy Tuilzie, Holy Fair, Holy Willie's Prayer, The Ordination, The Bark's Alarm : — those scalping poems, in which he lays bare to the skull bone, bigotry, hypocrisy, and all sanctimonious bitterness in religion. Here ho, fell in love with Jean Armour, the daughter of a stonemason of Mauchline, who, after many troubles, and much opposition on the part of the family, became afterwards his wife. Here he wrote the greater part of his poems, and of his very finest ones ; and here he broke forth upon the world like a new-risen sun, his poems, which were first published at Kilmai'nock, attracting such extraordinaiy attention, that he was called to Edinburgh, and a new and more complete edition there pubhshed, while he himself was introduced as a sort of miracle to the highest circles of aristocracy and literature. The four years which he lived here, though they were sinking him in a pecuniary point of view into such a slough of despair, that he seriously resolved to emigrate to the West Indies, and only published his poems to raise the means, were, as regarded his fame, glorious and most interesting years. It was here that he might be said, more expressly than anywhere else — " To walk in glory and in joy, Following his plough along the mountain side ; " for, spite of the iron destiny which seemed to pursue him, and in an ungenial soil and the most untoward seasons, to endeavour to crush him with " carking care," he was fuU of Ufe and vigour, and often rose in the entrancement of his spirit above all sense of earth and its darkness. By the testimony of his cotemporaries, in all the operations of the farm, — in mowing, reaping, binding after the reapers, thrashing, or loading, — there were few who could compete with him. He stood five feet ten in height, and was of singular strength and activity. He prided himself on the straightuess of the furrow that he drew, and the skiU with which he threw his corn in sowing. On one occasion, a man having succeeded in a hard strife in setting up as many shocks in a given time, said, " There, I am not far behind this time ; " to which Burns replied, " In one thing, John, you are stiU behind ; I made a song while I was stooking." Allan Cunningham says that his father, who was steward to Miller of Dalswinton, Bums's landlord, and Lived just opposite to him at BURNS. 251 Ellisland, declared that " he had the handsomest cast of the hand in sowing corn that he ever saw on a farrowed field." It was here, then, at Mossgiel, that, young, vigorous, and full of desire to advance in worldly matters, he worked assiduously with his brother Gilbert in the fields, undivided in his attentions by the duties of the Excise. But poetry, spite of all resolves to the con- trary, came over him like a flood. As his hand worked, his heart was fuU of inspiration, and as Gilbert held the plough, Eobert would come and walk beside him, and repeat what he had just composed ; or, as they went with the cart to carry out corn or bring home coals, he wovdd astonish him with some such display. " The verses to the Mouse and the Mountain Daisy," says Gilbert, "were composed on these occasions, and whUe the author was holding the plough. I could point out the spot where each was composed. Holding the plough was a favourite situation with Robert for poetic composition, and some of his best verses were produced while he was at that exercise." With what interest, then, do we look over the fields at Mossgiel, scarcely an inch of which has not been strode over by Burns, while engaged at once in tui-ning up the soil, sowing or gathering its crops, and in working out in the depth of his mind those compositions which were to remain for all time, the watch- words of hberty and of noble thought ! Besides the polemic poems already spoken of, here he wrote Hallowe'en ; Address to the Deil ; Death and Dr. Hornbook, a satire on the poor schoolmaster and self- appointed apothecary, Wilson of Tarbolton, which drove him from the place, but only to thrive in Glasgow ; The Jolly Beggars ; Man was made to mourn ; The Vision ; The Cotter's Saturday Night, which he very appropriately repeated to Gilbert during a Sunday afternoon walk. The very interesting scene of the creation of these exquisite poems, lies on the left hand of the road proceeding from Tarbolton to ]\Iauchline. The house stands at a field's distance from the road. It is a thatched house with but and ben, just as it was, and the buildings behind it forming two wings exactly as he built his house at Ellisland. To the north-west the house is well sheltered with fine, full-grown trees. A handsome young mother, the farmer's wife, worthy for her comely and intelligent look to have been celebrated by Burns, told me that great numbers of people came to see the place, and that it was very much as Burns left it. There were the barn, the byre, the garden near, in all which the poet had laboured like any other son of earth for his daily bread, and on the yearly allowance — for every one of the family had a specific allowance for clothes and pocket-money — of seven pounds, which, saj'S his brother, he never exceeded ! Very extravagant he could not have been. You see the ingle where he sate and composed some of his most pathetic and most humorous pieces. It is said to be in the spence, a better room, which has a boarded floor and the recess beds so common in Scotland, that he chiefly wrote. Who can contemplate this humble room, and recal the image of the young poet with a heart of melancholy here inditing, — j\lau was made to mourn, or his 252 BURNS. Vision, -witliout the liveliest emotion ? There is no feeling of utter sadness more strongly expressed than in the opening of the Vision : " The sun had closed the winter day, The curlers quat their roaring play, An' hunger'd mawkin ta'en her way To kail-yard green, While faithless snaws ilk step betray Whare she has been. " The thresher's weary flinging tree The lee-lang day had tired me ; And when the day had closed liis e'e Far i' the west, Ben i' the spence, right pensively, 1 gaed to rest. " There, lanely, by the ingle cheek, I sate and eyed the spewing reek, That filled with hoast-provoking smeek The auld clay biggin ; And heard the restless rattens squeak About the riggin. " All in this mottle, misty clime, I backward mused on wasted time, How I had spent my youthful prime An' done nae thing But stringin blethers up in rhyme, For fools to sing. " Had I to gude advice but harkit, I might, by this, hae led a markit, Or strutted in a bank and clarkit My cash account ; While here, half mad, half fed, half sarket. Is a' th' amount." Gilbert, it seems, continued on this farm, after Robert left for Ellis- laud, till 1800 ; and the next tenant had occupied it till but a year or two before my visit, when the husband of the young woman I saw came in. Mauchline, at the distance of a few minutes' walk, abounds with recollections of Burns. There is the inn whore Burns used to meet his merry club. There is the churchyard where the scene of the Holy Fair is laid, though the old church which stood in Burns's time has disappeared and a new one taken its place. Opposite to the churchyard gates runs the street called " The Cowgate," up which he makes Common-Sense escape; just by is the house of "Posie Nansie," whei-e Burns fell in with the "Jolly Beggars ;" not far off is the public-house of John Dow, that Burns and his companions fre- quented at the opening of the Cowgate. Posie Nansie, or Nance Tinnock's, was the house mentioned in the Holy Fair, where the public crowded in during the intervals of the service, having a back- door most convenient into the area. " Now but an' ben, the change-house fills Wi' yill-caup commentators ; Here's crying out for bakes and gills, An' there the pint-stoup clatters." Everybody can tell of the haunts and places of Burns and his jolly companions in MauchHne. The women came out of their houses as they saw me going about, and were most generously anxious to i^oint out every noted spot. Many of the older people remembered him. BURNS. 253 "A fine handsome young fellow, was he not ?" I asked of an old woman who would show me where Jean Armour lived. " Oh ! just a black-avised chiel," said .she, hurrying up a narrow street parallel to the Cowgate ; " but here lived Jean Armour's father. Come in, come," added she, unceremoniously opening the door, when an old dame appeared who occupied the house. " I am only going to show the gentleman where Robin Burns's Jean lived. Come along, sir, come along," continued she, hastening as unceremoniously upstairs, " ye maun see where the bairns were born. Ha ! ha ! ha ! " " Ha ! ha ! ha ! " screamed the old dame of the house, apparently highly delighted. "Ay, show the gentleman !— show him ! he ! he ! he !" So up went my free-making guide, up went I, and up came the old lady of the house. "There! there!" exclaimed the first old woman, pointing to a recess bed in one of the chambers, — there were three o' Robin Burns's bairns born. It's true, sir, as I Uve ! " " Ay, gude faith is it," re-echoed the old lady of the house, and the two gossips again were very merry. "But ye maun see where Rob an' Jean were married ! " so out of the house the lean and nimble woman again hurried, and again at a rapid pace led me down another narrow street just to the back of what they call the castle, Gavin Hamilton's old house. It was in Burns's time Gavin Hamilton's office, and in that office Burns was married. It is now a public-house. Having taken a survey of all the scenes of Burns's youthful life here, I proceeded to that house where he was always so welcome a guest, the house of Gavin Hamilton itself. Though called the castle, it is, in fact, a mere keep, with an ordinary house attached to it in a retired garden. The garden is surrounded by lofty walls, with a remarkably large tree in the centre. The house, a mere cottage, is hud- dled down in the far right-hand corner, and opposite to it stands the old keep, a conspicuous object as you descend the hill into the town. It is maintained in good order, and used as a laundry. A bare-legged lassie was spreading out her linen on the grass-plot, who informed me that not only was Gavin Hamilton dead, but his son too, and that his son's widow and her children were living there. I was shown the room, an ordinary little parlour, where Burns, one Sunday, on coming in after kirk, wrote the satirical poem of the Calf, on the clergyman. In traversing the streets of Mauchline, it was impossible to avoid not only recalling all the witty jolUty of Burns here, but his troubles that well-nigh drove him from the land. The opposition of Jean Armour's family, though she had three children by him ; the tearing up of her secret marriage hues by herself in her despair ; Burns's distraction, his poverty, his hidings from the myrmidons of the law; and his daily thirteen miles' walk to correct the proofs of his poems at Kilmarnock, to save postage. But now the muse which had made him poor, refused to permit him to quit his native land. Out burst the sun of his glory, and our scene changes with this change to Edinburgh.* • I must mention one fact regarding the neighbourhood of Ayr. Never, surely, Wales not excepted, was there a country so infested with toll-bars. In going to Mauchline, twelve miles, including a slight divergence to take a view of Mount Oliphant, and thus 254 BURNS. To describe all the haunts of Bums in Edinburgh were a long affair. They were the houses of all the great and gay — of the Gordons, the Hamiltons, the Montgomeries, of the learned, and the beautiful. The celebrated Duchess of Gordon, at that time at the zenith of beauty and fashion, was one of his wannest admirers, and invited him to her largest parties. The young ploughman of Ayrshire sat hob-nobbing in the temples of splendour and luxury with the most distinguished in every walk of life ; yet his haunts also lay equally amongst the humble and the undistinguished. Burns was true to his own maxim, " a man's a man for a' that ;" and where there were native sense, wit, and good humour, there he was to be found, were it even in a cellar, with only a wooden stool to sit on. At his first arrival in Edinburgh, he took up his quarters with a young Ayrshire acquaintance, Richmond, a writer's apprentice, in the house of a Mrs. Carfrae, Baxter's-close, Lawn-market, where he had a share of the youth's room and bed. From the most splendid entertain- ments of the aristocracy, he described himself as groping his way at night through the dingy alleys of the " gude town to his obscure lodgings, with his share of a deal table, a sanded floor, and a chaff bed at eighteen-pence a-week." This was during the winter and spring of 1786-7, on his first visit to Edinburgh, where he became the great fashionable hon, and while his new edition by Creech was getting out. In the spring, finding his pojjularity had brought him so much under the public eye, that his obscure lodgings in the Lawn-market were not quite befitting him, he went and lodged with his new acquaintance, William Nicol, one of the masters of the High-school, who lived in the Buccleuch-road. In the winter of 1787, on his second visit to Edinburgh, he had lodgings in a house at the entrance of James's-square, on the left hand. As you go up East Register- street, at the end of the Register-house, you see the end of a house at the left-hand side of the top of the street. There is a perpen- dicular row of four windows ; the top window belongs to the room Burns occupied. Here it was that he was visited by the lady with whom at this time he corresponded under the name of Sylvander, and she with him as Clarinda. His leg had been hurt by an overturn of a carriage by a drunken coachman, and he was laid up some time, and compelled to use crutches. Allan Cunningham tells us that this lady " now and then visited the crippled bard, and diverted him by her wit, and soothed him by her presence." She was the Mrs. Mac. of his toasts — a blithe, handsome, and witty widow ; and a great passion or flirtation grew up between Burns and her. In one of his letters to his friend Richard Brown, December 30, 1787, he says : " Almighty love still reigns and revels in my bosom, and I am at this moment ready to hang myself for a young Edinburgh widow." In a letter of their correspondence, which has recently been published, he going out of Ayr by one road and coming in by the other, I paid at nine bars, five of them sixpence each. At no one did they give you a ticket to another. New bars were, more- over, building ! "How did you like the country?" asked my landlord on my return. "Oh!" said I, "it is a most barbarous country." "Barbarous?" "Yes, — there is nothing but bars. I must send Rebecca to you." "True," said he, "Rebecca never found anything more abominable." BURNS. 255 bids Clarinda look up at his window as she occasionally goes past, and in another complains that she does not look high enough for a bard's lodgings, and so he perceives her only gazing at one of the lower windows. If we are to believe the stanza of hers quoted by Burns, we must suppose Clarinda to have been unhappily married : " Talk not of love, it gives me pain, For love has been my foe ; He bound me with an iron chain, And plunged me deep in woe." If it be true, as Allan Cunningham surmises, that those inimitable verses in the song of "Ae fond kiss, and then we sever," which expresses the pain of a final parting better than any other words ever did, have reference to Clarinda, then Burns must have beea passionately attached to her indeed : " Who shall say that fortune grieves him, While the star of hope she leaves him? Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me ; Dark despair around benights me. Had we never loved sae kindly, Had we never loved sae blindly, Never met — or never parted, We had ne'er been broken hearted." Of the generous and true-hearted disposition of Clarinda we shall possess a juster idea, when we reflect that Burns was not at this time any longer the lion of the day. The first warm flush of aristo- cratic flattery was over. The souls of the great and fashionable had subsided into their native icy contempt of peasant merit. " What he had seen and endured in Edinburgh," says honest Allan Cunning- ham, " during his second visit, admonished him regarding the reed on which he leant, when he hoped for a place of profit and honour from the aristocracy on account of his genius. On his first appear- ance the doors of the uobihty opened spontaneously, ' on golden hinges turning,' and he ate spiced meats, and drank rare wines, interchanging nods and smiles ' with high dukes and mighty earls.' A colder reception awaited his second coming ; the doors of lords and ladies opened with a tardy courtesy ; he was received with a cold and measured stateliness, was seldom requested to stop, seldom to repeat his visit ; and one of his companions used to relate with what indignant feelings the poet recoimted his fi-uitless calls, and his uncordial receptions in the good town of Edinburgh." It is related that, on one occasion being invited to dine at a noble- man's, he went, and, to his astonishment, found that he was not to dine with his guests, but with the butler ! After dinner, he was sent for into the dining-room ; and a chair being set for him near the bottom of the table, he was desired to sing a song. Restraining hia indignation within the bounds of outward appearance, Bums com- pUed, and he sang, — " Is there, for honest poverty, Who hangs his head and a' that ? The coward slave, we pass him by, And dare be poor for a' that. For a' that, and a' that, A man's a man for a' that 1 256 BURNS. " You see yon hirkie, ca'd a lord, {Pointing to the nobleman at the head of the tabU.) Who struts and stares and a' that, Though hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof for a' that. For a' that, and a' that, A man's a man for a' that." As the last word of these stanzas issued from his lips, he rose, and not deigning the company a syllable of adieu, marched out of the room and the house. Burns himself expressed in some lines to Clarinda aU this at this very moment : — " In vain would Prudence, with her decent sneer, Point to the censuring world and bid me fear : Above that world on wings of love I rise, I know its worst, and can that worst despise. Wronged, slandered, shunned, unpitied, unredressed, The mocked quotation of the scorners' jest. Let Prudence' direst bodements on me fall — Clarinda, rich reward ! o'erpays them all." But Clarinda could never be Bums's. To say the least of it, his attachment to her was one of the least defensible things of his life. Jean Armour had now the most inviolable claims upon him, and in fact as soon as his leg was well enough, he tore himself from the fascinations of Clarinda's society, went to Mauchline, and married Jean. But we must not allow ourselves to follow him till we have taken a peep at the house of Clarinda at this time, where Burns used to visit her, and where, no doubt, he took his melancholy farewell. This house is in Potter's-row ; now old and dingy-looking, but evidently having been at one time a superior residence. It is a house memor- able on more accounts than one, having been occupied by General Monk while his army lay in Edinburgh ; and the passage which goes under it to an interior court is still called the General's Entrance. To the street, the house presents four gabled windows in the upper story, on the tops of which stand a rose, thistle, fleur-de-hs, with a second rose or thistle to complete the four. The place was, at the time of my visit, inhabited by the poorest people ; and on a httle shop window in front was written up, " Rags and Metals bought " ! The flat which was occupied by Clarinda is now divided into two very poor tenements. In the room which used to be Clarinda's sitting- room, a poor woman was busy with her work and two or three very little children. My companion told her that her house had been once frequented by a great man ; she said, " Oh yes, General Monk." When he, however, added that he was then thinking of Robert Burns, this was news to her, and seemed to give to the wretched abode quite a charm in her eyes. Clai-inda lived to a great age, as a Mrs. Maclehose, and only died a few years ago. Mrs. Howitt and myself were once introduced to her by our kind fi-iend Mr. Robert Chambers, at her house near the Calton Hill ; and a very characteristic scene took jalace. The old lady, evidently charmed with our admiration of Burns, and warmed up by talking of past days, declared that we should drink out of the BURNS. 257 pair of glasses -wliich. Burns had presented to her in the days of their acquaintance ; and with which he sent the verses given in Mr. Nichol's recent beautiful edition of the " British Poets," Burns's "Works, vol. ii. p. 128. She brought these sacred relics out of the cupboard, and rang for the servant to bring in wine. An aged woman appeared, who, on hearing that we were to drink out of Burns's glasses, which stood ready on the table, gave a look as if sacrilege were going to be committed, took up the glasses without a word, replaced them in the cupboard, locking them up, and brought us tkree ordinary wine- glasses to take our wine out of It was in vain for Mrs. Maclehose to remonstrate ; the old and self-willed sei'vant went away without deigning a reply, with the key in her pocket. Dm-ing the period of his Edinbm-gh hfe. Burns diversified it by two excursions, — one south, in which he visited the soft, green, pastoral hills roimd Hawick, Selkirk, Coldstream, and thence by Kelso to New- castle and Carhsle. Another he made into the Highlands, with his friend William Nicol. During this excursion he seems to have luxuri- ated on all the glorious scenery of those regions, and revelled with high and low ; fell in love with Charlotte Hamilton, the sister of his friend Gavin, and several other ladies ; did and said many wild, and clever, and some foolish things. On his return, disheartened and chagrined, treated with the utmost contempt by those who once flattered and lionized him beyond bounds, Burns now turned his back on Edinburgh, and went to seek that obscm-e country hfe which he saw well enough was his destiny. The man to whom that veiy city was to raise a splendid monument on the Calton Hill ; the man who was to have monuments raised to his honour in various spots of his native land ; the man to whose im- mortal memory jubilees were to be held, to which people of all ranks were to flock by eighty thousands at a time ; the man who was to take the highest rank of all the poets of Scotland, — " Whose lines are mottoes of the heart, Whose truths electril'y the sage," in the eloquent words of Campbell ; and whose genius was to be the dearest memoiy of his countrymen in all regions of the earth whither their adventurous spirit leads them, — now, with a sad and wounded heart, pursued bis way homewards with an exciseman's appointment in his pocket, the highest and only gift of his country. Burns knew and felt that his genius had a just claim to a good and honourable post in his native land ; and his remaining letters sufficiently testify that from this hour the arrow of blighted ambition rankled in his heart, which never ceased its irritation till it had pulled down his gallant strength, and sent him to an early grave. He married his Jean, and chose his farm on the banks of the Nith, as Allan Cim- ningham'a father remarked to him at the time, not with a former's, but a poet's choice. But here, half farmer, half exciseman, povei-ty came rapidly upon him once more ; in three year.s' time only he quitted it, a man ruined in substance and constitution, and went to depend on his excise salary of 70/. a-year in the town of Dumfries. S 258 BURNS. I visited this farm in August, 1845. The coach from Dumfries to Glasgow set me down at Ellisland, lying about seven miles from Dumfries. Here I found a road running at right angles from the highway at a field's distance, and saw the grey roof of the farm homestead and its white chimneys peeping over the surrounding trees. The road, without gate or fence, leads you across a piece of watery ground, one of those hollows left undrained for the growth of what they call bog-hay, that is, rushes and coarse grass, which they give to the cows in winter. This was quite gay with cotton- rush, bog-beans, orchises, and other bog-flowers, and with its fragrant marginal fringe of meadow-«weet. After about a hundred yards, the road becomes a lane, enclosed on one side by a rough stone wall, and on the other by a tall hedge, with a row of flourishing ashes, each fence standing on a bold bank well hung with broom. The barley stood green on the one hand, and the hay in cock in the field on the other, and all had a pleasant summer air and feeling about it. Advancing up this lane, I soon stood on the ascent, and saw the farm-house shining out white from amongst its trees, and half-a- dozen yoimg men and women busily hoeing turnips in the adjoining fields. The farm, in fact, is a very pleasant farm. It lies somewhat high, and its fields swell and fall in a very agreeable manner, though it is still low compared to the hills that rise aroimd it at a distance, gi'een and cultivated, but bare. It is distinguished from all the farms round it, by being so completely planted with hedge-row trees, par- ticularly ashes and larches. The land is light, yet tolerably fertile, dry, and healthy. Close below the house sweeps along that fine vale of the Nith, with all its rich meadows and woods, its stately old houses, and its river dark and swift, overhung with noble and ver- durous trees. This seems the place where Burns might have been happy, had happiness and prosperity been easily secm-ed by a tem- perament and circumstances such as his. He had a home fit for a poet, though humble. It was a home amid the goodliness and the godliness of nature. It was the home of a brave, a free, and an honest man, of a great man and great poet, whose name and fame were allowed and honoured by the sound hearts and sound minds, if not by the baser and vainer ones, of his country. Here he was a man and a farmer ; and both man and farmer are gentlemen if they choose to be so. He had no need to dofi" his bonnet, or to puU it in shame over his brow before any man, so that he cultivated his acres, and the glorious soil of his intellect, with the heart and hand of an enthusiast in his labour. He had built his own bower in the spot chosen by himself, in a spot beautiful, and pure, and calm as a poet could desire ; and had brought to it the woman of his love ; and his children were springing up around him, making the green and wood- land banks of the Nith ring with the rapture of their young sports. He had a stalwart frame, and a giant intellect, and a heart true in its feelings to the divinity of human uatui-e, to the divinity within him, to the divinity of those aims, and objects, and truths, for which man exists, and for whose advance and illustration the poet is beyond aU men, born and endowed. Ah ! if he could but have BURNS. 259 giiided with a safe hand those passions which are given to feed and kindle the glorious impulses of the glorious nature of the poet, the friend and prophet and counsellor of mankind, what a great and what a happy man might he have lived and died here ! K he had really — " Follow'd his plough along the mountain-side," instead of the exciseman's horse over the hills and through the hamlets of the country round, to what a venerable age might he have Uved amongst his children and his admiring countrymen ! But the tact for business and the turn for prudence, how rarely can they exist with the fei-vid temperament which has to evolve the hving meteors of poetry ! The volcano will have its crater and its desola- tions, and not green and peaceful ridges of peace. Particularly in this case, where the poet had been called out of the ranks of the poor, and had had at once to contend against the flatteries of exalta- tion unprepared by the discipline of education. Burns and Hogg may therefore be excused, where Byron could not stand ; Ebenezer Elliott is almost the only instance of contrary success. One cannot, however, see this Arcadian scene, this sort of Sabine farm, so well calculated for the '■' otinm cum dignitate" of the poet, without feeling one's heart wrung at the idea that it was a vain gift ; a haven of peace only offered to a struggling and doomed swimmer ; and that the foul exciseman craft, and the degrading dipstick, and the whisky firkin, were in the rear. Llr. Chambers in his Life of Bums says, he does not see how he could have done anything else at that time but accept the post of an exciseman, and this opinion has been echoed by !Mr. Gilfillan. He could have been a farmer with- out being an exciseman, and a much happier and soberer man. The very next neighbours of Burns were Mr. Miller, of Dalswinton, and Mr. Eiddell, of Friar's-Carse. There he went to meet, and dine, and revel with distinguished guests. Heavens ! why should he not have been able to go there as the honest British farmer, and not as the exciseman ? Could he feel that he was a poet, and fit society for the wealthy, the refined, and the learned, and that he was not degraded ? He was glorious — and an exciseman. Here he wrote Mary in Heaven — and mounted his jaded steed and trotted off to the hell of whisky distilleries and whisky dram-shops. He wrote here, in one day, Tam o' Shanter, in a fever of laughter and excite- ment — and perhaps the next day would repeat the lines to the rude and fuddled rabble of a " pubHc," where he was in the ■nay of his business and his ruin. There is something so anomalous in the genius and the grade, in the magnificent endowments and the bare necessities of Robert Burns, that one cannot now conceive how they could have been permitted to occur by his fellow-men, or be tolerated by himself. To think of him here, in his own white farm-house, like a dove's nest, amid its green and overshadowing leaves, and hung over the pure lapsing waters ; and then of him in that little dii'ty house in Dumfries, in that street of tramps and beggars, living degraded, despised, and persecuted, and dying the poorest exciseman 82 260 BURNS. and greatest poet of his country ! In the hour of his death, the soul of his country awoke with one great throb to the consciousness of who and what he was ; what a pity that the revelation did not come a little sooner ! And this I say not to taunt his country with it. The sense of the national treatment of Robert Bums has been expressed with such manly eloquence by his countrymen, Lockhart, Wilson, and Allan Cunningham, that it needs not us English to cast a single stone, who have the memory of Chatterton amongst us. All great nations have similar sins to answer for. Scotland does not stand alone ; but there is something so pecuharly strange in the fate of Burns, and which comes over us as we tread the ground that he had chosen for his home, and the floor of the house that he built, that it has forced me involuntarily to follow my own feelings, instead of my descriptions. The farm, as I have said, is a very pleasant one. Bums is sup- posed to have chosen the particular situation of his house not only for its fine situation on the banks of the river, and overlooking the vale and country round, but on account of a beautiful spring which gushes from the slope just below the house. The ground plan of his house is very much like that of most Scotch farms. The build- ings form three sides of a quadrangle. The house and buildings are only one story high, white, and altogether a genuine Scotch steading. The house is on the lower side, next to the river. Burns's bed-room has yet two beds in it, of that sort of cupboard fashion, with check curtains, which are so often seen in Scotch farm-houses. The humble rooms are much as they were in his time. Near the house, and running parallel with the river, is a good large garden, which he planted. The side of the farm-yard opposite to the house is pleasantly planted off with trees. The farm is just as it was, about one hundred acres. By places it exhibits that stony soil which made Burns call it " the riddhngs of creation," and say that when a ploughed field was rolled it looked like a paved street ; but still it carries good crops. Burns had it for 50/. a-year, or ten shillings an acre. I sup- pose the present tenant pays three times the sum, and is proud of his bargain. He observed it was an ill wind that blew nobody any profit. "Mr. Burns," said he, "had the farm on lease for ninety years, and had he not thrown it up, I should not have been here now." The farmer seemed a very sensible man, and though he was just mounting his gig to go on business to Dumfries, he stopped, and would go over the farm and house, and point out everything to me. He said what Lockhart and Cunningham say, that Burns had so many servants that they ate and drank all that came off the farm. " The maids baked new bread, and the men ate it hot with ale." But it is said, too, on the spot, that most of these servants were relatives, and that presents of whisky and other good things were sent from far and near to Burns, and that while he was absent on his excise rounds, they sat in the house and drank, and ate to it, instead of being at work. Bums once observed to his neighbour, the next farmer, that he wondered how it was that the farm left no surplus for rent ; and the farmer said, " Why, Mr. Burns, it would BURNS. 261 ha a wonder if it did, for jour servants cannot eat it and leave it for rent too." It is said, also, that being once invited to dinner at DaLswinton House, and not coming, the guests asked how he was getting on. IVIr. Miller said he hoped very well, " for," added he, " I think I have set him up." This being repeated to Bums, is said to have hurt his proud feelings extremely, and to have induced him to remark that he did not like to hve on the estate of a man who thought he had set him up. Long he did not live there, more's the pity. The goodwill of his haughty landlord had gone before. It was here, too, that the story is told of his being found by two Englishmen fishing in the Nith. "On a rock that projected into the stream, they saw a man angling. He had a cap of fosskin on his head, a loose gi-eat-coat fixed round him by a belt, from which hung an enormous Highland broadsword : it was Burns." The story is likely enough. The banks of the Nith here are steep, and full of wild thickets ; and one may very weU imagine Burns not being over-particular in his toilet while pursuing his amusement in this solitude. It was one of his dehghts to range along these steep river banks, and it was along them, between the house and the fence at the bottom of the field down the river, that he paced to and fro as he composed Tarn o' Shanter. Mrs. Bums relates, " that, observing Robert walking with long swinging strides, and apparently mut- tering as he went, she let him alone for some time. At length she took the children with her and went forth to meet him. He seemed not to observe her, but continued his walk. On this," said she, " I stept aside with the bairns among the broom, and past us he came, his brow flushed and his eyes shining ; he was reciting these hues : — ' Now Tam, O Tam ! had thae been queans A' plump an' strapping, i' their teens ; Their sarks, instead o' creeshie flannen, Been snaw-white seventeen hunder linnen ! Tliir breeks o' mine, my only pair, That ance were plush, o' gude blue hair, I wad hae gi'en them aff my hurdles, For ae blink o' the bonnie burdies.' I wish ye had but seen him ! He was in such ecstasy that the tears were happing down his cheeks." He had taken writing materials with him, and leaning on a turf fence which commanded a view down the river, he committed the poem to paper, walked home, and read it in great triumph at the fireside. The remains of this tm"f fence may be seen to this day in the shape of a green bank, close above the river, under the shade of a narrow plantation of larches which bounds the field. The farmer said that Professor Wilson, when he visited the spot, rolled himself on the bank, saj^ing it was worth while trying to catch any remains of genius and himiour that Burns might have left there. The farmer said, what indeed Allan Cunningham states, that when Burns came the fami was all open, " there were no dykes," — waUs and fences. That he introduced the first dairy of Ayrshire cows, all 262 BURNS. splendid cattle, some of them being presents from such fidends as the Dunlops, &c. Pi-esents or no presents, poor Burns laid out on the farm in his first year all the proceeds of the Edinburgh edition of his poems, and never saw them again. The view from the house is very charming. The river runs clear and fleet below, broad as the Thames at Hampton Court, or the Trent at Nottingham, and its dark trees hang far along it over its waters. Beyond the stream lie the broad rich meadows and house of Dalswin- ton, a handsome mansion of red freestone aloft amid its woods, and stiU beyond, and higher up the river, rise still bolder hills. The very next residence upwards on the same side of the river is Friar's-Carse, the seat of Burns's friend Mr. Riddell, into whose grounds he had a private key, so that he could enjoy all the beauty and soUtude of his woods at pleasure, or take the nearest cut to the house. Up the valley, about two miles or so, is the farm-house belonging to his friend Nicol of the High School, where " Willie brewed a peck o' malt, And Rob and Allan cam to see." Friar's-Carse deserves a few more words, before we shift to the last sad scene, Dumfries. It is a beautiful estate which you enter from the Glasgow road by a neat lodge, and advance a quarter of a mile, perhaps, along a carriage drive, one side of which is planted with shrubs and flowers, and the other consists of the steep wild bank of a fine wood. The way winds on, and here and there you have an old stone grey cross, or old picturesque saint, or such thing, which has a good eflect. At last, you emerge in an open meadow surrounded by fine hills and woods, and at the head of which, on a green and graceful esplanade, stands a good, though not a very large house. In the meadows, which are of great extent, roves a numerous herd of as fine cattle as ever roamed the meads of Asphodel, and nauch finer, I suspect, for they are Ayrshire cows of the most splendid description ; and some very fine trees rear their heads to beautify the ground. As you approach the house, it is along the foot of a beautiful slope enriched by noble old trees. Behind the house there is a green and airy sort of table-land, on which flower-stands of rustic work filled with roses and geraniums stand, and down which moneywort with aU its golden blossoms streams, and then the ground sinks rapidly into a deep dell full of tall trees, and containing a garden of the old pleached walk kind, and which through the latticed gate gives you such a peep at 'its beauties as enchants you. In this house used to Uve Mr. Riddell and his wife, the beautiful and accomplished Maria Riddell ; but who was of a capricious temper, and to whom Burns, as they violently quarrelled or were again reconciled, addi'essed some of his most flattering and his most severe verses. Here the Whistle was caroused for, and here the original copy of Burns's poem on the subject is kept still. Pity it was that the lady of the house, a young widow, Mrs. Crichton, was just bowling out at her lodge gates as I walked in, or I would have called and requested the favour of a sight of this paper. But the BURNS. 263 butler assured me that there it was ; and in the pine wood on the side by which you enter, the remains of the hermitage where Burns wrote the well-known lines on the window. The pine wood has grown ; there are silver firs that may claim kindred with those of the Black Forest, but the hermitage is gone. A single gable, a few scattered stones, and a mass of laurels that have grown high and hidden it, are all that remain of the hermitage, which I only found by dint of long traversing the dusky wood. But Burns is gone ; Miller of Dalswinton is gone ; the Eiddells of Friar's-Carse are gone ; their estates are in other families ; and it is to be hoped that the exciseman's guaging-stick is gone too. I do not see it hung aloft in any haU. I dare say the sons of Burns have not preserved it, as the walking-stick of Sir "Walter Scott now hangs aloft in the study at Abbotsford. But the memory of the poet and his friends lives all over these walks, and meadows, and woods, more livingly than ever. It is the quick spirit of the place. Poetry is not dead here. It is the soul and haunting shadow of these fair and^solemn scenes, and a thousand years hence will startle young and beating hearts as the wood-pigeon dashes out through the magic hush of the forest, and the streamlet leaps down the mossy stone, and laughs and glitters in the joyous glance of the sun. The exciseman's stick is turned into the magic wand of nature, and there will be bitter satire, and deep melancholy, and wonder and love, as it waves a thousand times self-multiplied in the bough of the pine-tree, and the bent of the grass, while the heart of man can sufler or enjoy. You see that already in everything. Burns no longer walks on one side of the market-place of Dumfries, solitary and despised, while the great and gay crowd and flutter on the other ; but as the daily coach r.oUs on its way, the coachman pointing with his whip, says softly — " That is the farm of Ellisland ! " And every man and woman, every trade- traveller and servant-maid says — " Where ? '' And all rise up, and look, and there is a deep silence. For that silence, and the thoughts that live in it, who would not have lived, and suffered, and been despised ? It is the triumph of genius and the soul of greatness over the freaks of fortune, and even over its own sins and failings. It is something to have walked over the farm of Ellisland : it is still more to have .stood on the spot in his farm-yard where the heart of Burns rose up in a flame of hal- lowed aftection to j\Iary in heaven — a more glorious shrine than the mausoleum of Dumfries. The neighbourhood of Dumfries, to which the last scene of our subject leads us, is very charming. The town is just a quiet country town ; but the Nith is a fine river, and runs through it, and makes both town and country very agreeable. The scenery is not wild and rocky, but the vale of the Nith is rich, and beautiful in its richnesa The river runs in the finest sweeps imaginable ; it seems to disdain to go straight, but makes a circle for a mile, perhaj^s, at a time, as clean and perfect as if struck with compasses, and then away in another direction ; while on its lofty banks alders and oaks hang richly over the water, and fine herds of cattle are grouped in those 264 BURNS. deep meadows, and salmon fishers spread their nets and are busy mending them on the broad expanse of gravel that covers here and there the bends of the river ; while, high above the lapsing waters, your eye wanders over a broad extent of fresh, rich meadow countiy, with scattered masses of trees and goodly farms ; and far around are high and airy hills, cultivated to the top. A more lovely pastoral country, more retired and poetical, you cannot well find. This is the scenery to which Burns, during his abode in Dumfries, loved to resort. " When he lived in Dumfries," says Allan Cunningham, " he had three favourite walks, — on the dock-green by the river-side, among the ruins of Liucluden College, and towards the Martingam Ford on the north side of the river. The latter place was secluded, commanded a view of the distant hills and the romantic towers of Lincluden, and afforded soft greensward banks to rest upon, and the sight and sound of the stream. As soon as he was heard to hum to himself, his wife saw that he had something in his mind, and waa quite prepared to see him snatch up his hat and set off silently for his musing-ground." About three miles up the river we come upon the beautiful niins of the abbey of Lincluden, standing on an elevated mound, over- looking the junction of the Cluden and the Nith, and overlooked by a sort of large tumulus covered with larches, where the monks are said to have sate to contemplate the country, and where the country people still resort to loiter or read on Sundays. A profound tran- quillity reigns over aU the scene, a charm indescribable, which Burns, of all men, must have felt. For myself, I knew not where to stop. I advanced up the left bank of the river, opposite to the ruins, now treading the soft turf of the Nith's margin, now pent in a narrow track close on the brink of the stream amongst the alders, now emerging into a lofty fir clump, and now into a solemn grove of beech overhanging the stream. Farther on lay the broad old mea- dows again, the fisher watching in his wooden hut the ascent of the salmon, the little herdboy tending his black cattle in the solitary field, old woods casting a deep gloom on the hurrying water, grey old halls standing on fine slopes above the Nith, amid trees of mag- nificent size and altitude. The mood of mind which comes over you here is that of unwritten poetry. When one thinks of Burns wandering amid this congenial nature where the young now wander and sing his songs, one is apt to forget that he bore with him a sad heart and a sinking frame. When we see his house in Dumfi-ies, we are reminded pretty forcibly of these things. We have to dive at once into a back street in the lower part of the town, and turn and wind from one such hidden and poor street to another, till, having passed through a sufiicient stench of tan-yards, which seem to abound in that neighbourhood, we come to a Uttle street with all the character of the abode of the poor, which is honoured with the name of Burns Street. The house is the first you come to on the left hand. There was an old thatched one on the opposite side, and I set it down at once to be the poet's ; but no, at a regularly formal poor man's house, of a dingy whitewash,- with BURNS. 2f).!j its stone door and window frames painted of a dingy blue, a bare- legged girl, very dirty, was washing the floors, and went from the bucket and showed me the house. On the right hand of the door was the kitchen, in which the girl informed me that thei'e was nothing left belonging to the Burnses, except two bells which she pointed out, and a gas pipe which Mr. Burns had put in. On the left hand was the sitting-room, furnished very well for a poor man, with a carpet on the floor. The girl said her father was an under- taker ; but when I asked where was his shop, she said he was an undertaker of jobs on raih'oads and embankments. Up stairs there was a good large chamber unfurnished, which she said was the one occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Burns, and where both of them died. Out of the other chamber a little closet was taken, including one front window, and here, she said, Bm-ns wi'ote, or it was always said so. There were two garrets ; and that was the poet's, or rather the exciseman's house. It was just about suited to the income of an ordinary exciseman, and had no attribute of the poeCs home about it. Mr. Robert Chambers, in his Picture of Scotland, calls it a neat little house. Unfortunately, at my visit it was anything but neat or clean, and its situation in this miserable quarter, and amid the odour of tan-yards, must give to any foreigner who visits it an odd idea of the abodes of British poets. I wonder that in some improvement the Dumfriesians don't contrive to pull it down. From this abode of the living poet, I adjourned to that of the dead one. This is situated in St. Michael's churchyard, not far from the house, but on an eminence, and on the outside of the town. The lane in which the house is, is just one of the ^corst. It looks as though it were only inhabited by keepers of lodging-houses for tramps, and 1 believe mainly is so. It is a sort^of TJnker'slane. The church- yard, though not more than two hundred ya,rds off", is one of the most respectable, and the poet's house there is the very grandest. One naturally thinks how much easier it is to maintain a dead poet than a living one. A churchyard in this part of the country has a singular aspect to an English eye. As you approach the Scottislr border, you see the headstones gettiug taller and taller, and the altar-tombs more and more massive. At CarHsle, the headstones had attained the height of six or seven feet at least, and were deeply carved with coats of ai-ms, &c. near the top, but here the whole churchj^ard is a wilderness of huge and ponderous momuuents. Pediments and ental)ktures, Grecian, Gothic, and nondescript; pillars and olwlisks, some of them at least twenty feet high — I use no exaggei-ilion in this account — stand thick and on all sides. To our eyes, accustomed to siicl) adifierent size and_ character of churchj'-ard tombs, tliey are perfectly astonish- ing. I imagine there is stoue enough in the funeral monuments of this churchyard to build a tolerable street of houses. You would think that all the giants, and indeed all the great people of all sorts that Scotland had ever produced, had here chosen their sepulture. Such ambitious and gigantic structures of freestone, some red, some white, for dyers, ironmongers, gardeners, slaters, glaziers, and the 2G8 BURNS. The plougli rests on a rugged piece of marble laid on a polished basement, in the centre of which, is inscribed in large letters, — BURNS. I had to regret missing at Dumfries the three sons of Burns, and the stauucb friend of the family, and of the genius of the poet, Mr. M'Diarmid. Mr. Robert Burns, the poet's eldest son, resides at Dumfries, but was then absent at Belfast, in Ireland, where I after- wards saw him, and was much struck with his intelligence and great information. Colonel and Major Burns bad just visited Dumfi-ies, but were gone into the Highlands, with their friend Mr. M'Diarmid. The feelings with which I quitted Dumfries were those which so often weigli upon you in contemplating the closing scenes of poets' lives. " The life of the poet at Dumfries," says Robert Chambers, " was an unhappy one ; his situation was degrading, and his income narrow." Reflecting on this as I proceeded by the mail towards Moffat, the melancholy lines of Wordsworth recurred to me with peculiar effect : — " My former thoughts returned ; the fear that kills : And hope that is unwilling to be fed ; Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills ; And mighty poets in their misery dead." BURNS. 267 The likeness of the poet is by no means conformable to the best portraits of him ; and Nature, as if resenting the wretched cari- catm-e of her favourite son, has aheady began to deface and corrode it. The left hand on the plough is much decayed, and the light hand holding the bonnet is somewhat so too. At his feet lies what I suppose was the slab of his former tomb, with this inscrip- tion : "In memory of Robert Burns, who died the 21st of July, 1796, in the 37th year of his age. And Maxwell Burns, who died the 25th of April, 1799, aged 2 years and 9 months. Francis Wallace Burns, who died the 9th of June, 1808, aged 14 years. His sons. The remains of Burns received into the vault below 19th of September, 1815. And his two sons. Also, the remains of Jean Armour, rehct of the Poet, born Feb. 1765, died 26th of March, 1834." The long Latin inscription mentioned by his biographers, a manifest absurdity on the tomb of a man like Burns, and whose epitaph ought to be intelligible to all his countrymen, is, I suppose, removed, for I did not observe it ; and the above English in- scription, of the elegance of which, however, nothing can be said, substituted. The gates of the mausoleum itself are kept locked, and the monu- ment again enclosed within a plain railing. Some countrymen were just standing at the gate with their plaids on their shoulders making their observations as I arrived at it. I stood and listened to them. Isi Mail. — " Ay, there stands Robin, still holding the plough, but the worst of it is, he has got no horses to it." 2(1 Man. — " Ay, that is childish. It is just like a boy on a Sunday who sets himself to the plough, and 'fancies he is a ploughing when it never moves. It would have been a deal better if you could but have seen even the horses' tails." 2d Man. — " Ay, or if he had been sitting on his plough, as I have seen him sometimes in a picture." \st Man. — " But Coila is well drawn, is not she 1 That arm which she holds up the mantle with, is very well executed." 2d Man. — " It's a pity thougli that the sculptor did not look at his own coat before he put the only button on that is to be seen." Zd Man. — " Why, where is the button ? " 2d Man. — " Just under the bonnet ; and it's on the wrong .side." Isi Man. — " Oh ! it does not signify if it be a double-breasted coat, or perhaps Robin buttoned his coat diflferent to other folks, for he was an imco chiel." 2d Man. — "But it's only single-breasted, and it is quite wrong." The men unbuttoned and then buttoned their coats up again to satisfy themselves ; and they decided that it was a great blunder. I thought there was much sound sense in their criticism. The allegorical figure of the muse seems too much, and the absence of the horses too little. Burns would have looked quite as well standing at the plough, and looking up inspired by the muse without her being visible. 266 BURNS. like, are, I imagine, nowhere else to be seen. There are vintners who have tombs and obelisks fit for genuine Egyptian Pharaohs ; and slaters and carpenters, who were accustomed to cUmb high when alive, have left monuments significant of their soaring character. These far outvie and overlook those of generals, writers to the signet, esquires, and baihfFs of the city. Your first view of this churchyard strikes you by the strange aspect of these ponderous monuments. A row of very ancient ones, in fact, stands on the wall next to the street. Two of them, most dilapi- dated, and of deep red stone, have a very singular look. They have Latin inscriptions, which are equally dilapidated. One to Francis Irving fairly exhausts the Latin tongue with his host of virtues, and then takes to EngUsh, thus : — " King James the First me Balive named ; Dumfries oft since me Provost claimed ; God has for me a crown reserved, For king and country have I served." Burns's mausoleum occupies, as nearly as possible, the centre of the farther end of the churchyard opposite to the entrance, and a broad walk leads up to it. It stands, as it should do, overlooking the pleasant fields in the outsku'ts of the town, and seems, like the poet himself, to belong half to man and half to nature. It is a sort of little temple, which at a distance catches the eye as you ajjproach that side of the town, and reminds you of that of Garrick at Hampton. It is open on three sides, except for iron gates, the upper border of which consists of alternating Scottish thistles and spear-heads. A couple of Ionic pillars at each corner support a pro- jecting cornice, and above this rises an octagon superstructure with arches, across the bottom of which again rim thistle-heads, one over each gateway, and is surmounted by a dome. The basement of the mausoleum is of granite. The building is enclosed by an iron railing, and the little gate in front of the area is left unlocked, so that you may approach and view the monument through the iron gates. The area is planted appropriately with various kinds of ever- greens, and on each side of the gate stands conspicuously the Scottish thistle. In the centre of the mausoleum floor, a large flag with four iron rings in it, marks the entrance to the vault below. At the back stands Turnarelli's monument of the poet. It consists of a figure of Burns, of the size of life, in white marble, at the plough, and Coila, his muse, appearing to him. This is a female figure in alto-relievo on the wall, somewhat above and in front of him. She is in the act of throwing her mantle, embroidered with Scotch thistles, over him, according to his own words — "The poetic genius of my country found me, as the prophetic bard Elijah did Elisha, at the plough, and threw her inspiring mantle over me." Burns stands with his left hand on one of the plough stilts, and with the other holds his bonnet to his breast, while, with an air of surprise and devotion, he gazes on the muse or genius of his poetiy. He appears in a shoi't coat, knee breeches, and short gaiters. The execution is so-so. COWPER. 271 Such was the lofty and all-embracing spirit of that man whom hard dogmatists could yet terrify and chill into utterest woe. Shrinking from the world, he yet dared to lash this world from which he shi-unk, with the force of a giant, and the justice of more than an Ai-istides. Of the church, he yet satirized severely its errors, and the follies of its ministers ; iu pohtical opinion he was free and indignant against oppression. The negro warmed his blood into a sympathy that produced the most effective strains on his behalf — the worm beneath his feet shared in his tenderness. Thus he walked through life, shunning its tumults and its highways, one of its mightiest labourers. In his poetry there was fovmd no fear, no complaining ; often thoroughly insane, nothing can surpass the sovmd mind of his compositions ; haunted by delusions even to the attempt at suicide, there is no delusion in his page. All there is bright, clear, and consistent. Like his Divine Master, he may truly be said to have been bruised for our sakes. As a man, nervous teiTors could vanquish him, and unfit him for active life ; but as a poet he rose above all nerves, all terrors, into the noblest heroism, and fitted and will continue to fit others for hfe, so long as just and vigorous thought, the most beautiful piety, and the truest human sympathies command the homage of mankind. There is no writer who surpasses Cowper as a moral and rehgious poet. Full of power and feehng, he often equals in solemn dignity Milton himself. He is as impressive as Young without his epigrammatic smartness ; he is as fei-vently Christian as Montgomery, and in intense love of nature there is not one of our august band of illustrious writers who surpasses him. He shows the secret of his deep and untiring attach- ment to nature, in the love of Him who made it. " He is the Freeman, whom the truth makes free. And all are slaves beside. There's not a chain That hellish foes, confederate for his harm, Can wind around him, but he casts it off With as much ease as Samson his green withes. He looks abroad into the varied field Of Nature, and though poor perhaps, compared With those whose mansions glitter in his sight, Calls the delightful scenery all his own. His are the mountains, and the valleys his. And the resplendent rivers. — His to enjoy With a propriety that none can feel. But who with filial confidence inspired Can lift to heaven an unpresumptuous eye. And smiling say—' My father made them all ! ' Are they not his by a peculiar right. And by an emphasis of interest his, Whose eye they fill with tears of holy joy, Whose heart with praise, and whose exalted mind With worthy thoughts of that unwearied love That planned, and built, and still upholds a world So clothed with beauty, for rebellious man ? Yes— ye may fill your gamers, ye that reap The loaded soil, and ye may waste much good In senseless riot ; but ye will not find In feast, or in the chase, in song or dance, A liberty like his, who unimpeached Of usurpation, and to no man's wrong, Appropriates nature as his Father's work, And has a richer use of yours than ye. 270 COWPER, " Tell me, ye shining host, Ihat navigate a sea that knows no storm, Beneath a vault unsullied with a cloud, If from your elevation, whence ye view Distinctly scenes invisible to man. And systems, of whose birth no tidings yet Have reached this nether world, ye spy a race Favoured as ours, transgressors from the womb, And hastening to a grave, yet doomed to rise, And to possess a brighter heaven than yours? As one, who long detained on foreign shores Pants to return, and when he sees afar His country's weather-bleached and battered rocks From the green wave emerging, darts an eye Radiant with joy towards the happy land; So I with animated hopes behold And many an aching wish, your beamy fires. That show like beacons in the blue abyss. Ordained to guide the embodied spirit home From toilsome life to never-ending rest. Love kindles as I gaze. I feel desires, That give assurance of their own success. And that, infused from heaven, must thither tend." The Task, book v. Sucli is the buoyant and cordial tone of Cowper's poetry ; how unlike that iron deadness that dared not and could not soften into prayer, which so often and so long oppressed him. Nay, it is not for himself that he rejoices only, but he feels in his glowing heart the gladness and the coming glory of the whole universe. " All creatures worship man, and all mankind One Lord, one Father. Lricr has no place ; That creeping pestilence is driven away ; The breath of Heaven has chased it. In the heart No passion touches a discordant string. But all is harmony and love. Disease Is not, the pure and uncontaminate blood Holds its due course, nor fears the frost of age. One song employs all nations, and all cry, ' Worthy the Lamb, for he was slain for us '. ' The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks Shout to each other, and the mountain tops From distant mountains catch the flying joy : Till nation after nation taught the strain. Earth rolls the rapturous Hosanna round. Behold the measure of the promise filled ; See Salem built, the labour of a God ! Bright as a sun the sacred city shines ; All kingdoms, and all princes of the earth Flock to that light ; the glory of all lands Flows into her; unbounded is her joy. And endless her increase. Thy rams are there, Nebaioth, and the flocks of Kedar there; Praise is in all her gates : upon her walls And in her streets, and in her spacious courts, Is heard salvation. Eastern Java there Kneels with the native of the farthest West ; And Ethiopia spreads abroad the hand. And worships. Her report has travelled forth Into all lands. From every clime they come To see thy beauty, and to share thy joy, O Sion I an assembly such as earth Saw never, such as Heaven stoops down to see. Thus heavenward all things tend. For all were once Perfect, and all must be at length restored. So God has greatly purposed."— TAe Task, book vL WILLIAM COWPER. There is scarcely any ground in England so well known in imagina- tion as the haimts of Cowper at Olney and Weston ; there is little that is so interesting to the lover of moral and reUgious poetry. There the beautiful but unhappy poet seemed to have created a new world out of unknown ground, in which himself and his friends, the Unwins, Lady Austen and Lady Hesketh, the Throckmortons, and the rest, played a part of the simplest and most natural character, and which fascinated the whole public mind. The Ufe, the spirit, and the poetry of Cowper present, when taken together, a most singular combination. He was timid in his habit, yet bold in his writing ; melancholy in the tone of his mind, but full of fun and playfulness in his correspondence ; wretched to an extraordinary degree, he yet made the whole nation merry with his John Gilpin and other humorous writings ; despairing even of God's mercy and of salvation, his religious jjoetry is of the most cheerful and even triumphantly glad character ; " His soul exults, hope animates his lays, The sense of mercy kindles into praise." Filled with this joyous assurance, wherever he turns his eye on the magnificent spectacle of creation, he finds themes of noblest gratu- lation. He looks into the heavens, and exclaims : — 272 COWPER. He is indeed a Freeman : free by birth Of no mean eity, planned or ere the hills Were built, the fountains opened, or the sea Witli all his roaring multitude of waves." — The Tash, took v. The writinga of Cowper testify everywhere to that grand sermon which is eternally Tireaching in the open air ; to that Gospel of the field and the forest, which, like the Gospel of Christ, is the voice of that love which overflows the universe ; which puts down all sectarian bitterness in him who listens to it ; which, being perfect, " casts out all fear," against which the gloom of bigots and the terrors of fanatics cannot stand. It was this which healed his wounded spirit beneath the boughs of Yardly Chase, and came fanning his temples with a soothing freshness in the dells of Weston. "When we follow his footsteps there, we somewhat wonder that scenes so unambitious could so enrapture him ; but the glory came from within, and out of the materials of an ordinary walE he could raise a brilliant superstructure for eternity. William Cowper was born in the parsonage of Great Berkhamp- stead. The Birmingham railway whirls you now past the spot, or you may, if you please, alight and survey that house hallowed by the love of a mother such as he has described, and by the record of it in those inimitable verses of the son on receiving her picture. " Wliere once we dwelt our name is heard no more. Children not thine have trod my nursery floor; And where the gardener Robin, day by day. Drew me to school along the public way, Pelighted with my baulile coach, and wrapped In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet capped. 'Tis now become a history little known, That once we called the pastoral house our own." Cowper was at school at Market-street, Hei'tfordshire, then at Westminster ; after which he was articled for three years to Mr. Chapman, a solicitor. After quitting Mr. Chapman, he entered the Imier Temple, as a regular law student ; where his associates were Thurlow, afterwards the well-known Lord Chancellor, Bonnel Thorn- ton, and Colman. Cowper's family was well connected, both on the father's and mother's side, and he had every prospect of advance- ment ; but this the sensitiveness of his nature prevented. Being successively appointed to the oflflces of Eeading Clerk, Clerk of the Private Committees in the House of Lords, and Clerk of the Jour- nals, he was so overwhelmed by being unexpectedly called on to discharge his duty publicly before the House, that it unsettled his mind, his prospects of a worldly nature were for ever over, and in a state of the most settled melancholy he was committed to the care of Dr. Cotton of St. Alban's. In the summer of 1765 he quitted St. Alban's, and retired to private lodgings in the town of Huntingdon. There he was, as by a direct act of Providence, led to the acquaintance of the family of the Eev. Mr. Unwin, one of the clergymen of the place. Cowper had attended his church ; and bis interesting appearance having attracted the attention of his son William Cawthorne Unwin, he followed him in his solitary walk, COWPER. 273 and introduced himself to him. This' simple fact decided, as by the very finger of heaven, the whole destiny of the poet, and probably secured him as a poet to the world. With this family he entered into the most afl'ectionate intimacy. They were people after his own heart, pious, intelligent, and most amiable. The father was, how- ever, soon after killed by a fall from his horse, the son was himself become a minister, and the widow, the ever-to-be-loved Mary Unwin, retired with the suffering poet to Olney, at the invitation of the Rev. John Newton, the clergyman there, where she watched over him with the tender solicitude of a mother. To her, in all pro- bability, we owe aU that we possess in the poetry of Cowper. With his life here we are made famiUar by his poetry and letters, and the biography of Hayley. His long returns of melancholy, the writing of poetry, which Mrs. Unwin suggested to him to divert his thoughts, his gardening, his walks, his tame hares, his successive acquaintances with Lady Austen, Lady Hesketh, and the like, all this we know. What particularly concerns us is, the present state and appearances of his homes and haunts here. To these the access is now easy. From the Wolverton station, on the North-western rail- way, an omnibus sets you down, after a run of nine miles, at the Bull inn, in the spacious, still, and triangular market-place of Olney. Here, again, prints have made us most accurately acquainted with the place. The house occupied by Cowper stands near the eastern corner, loftily overtopping all the rest. There are the other quiet, cottage-hke houses stretching away right and left, the taU elm-tree, the pump, the old octagon stone lock-up house. The house which was CowjDer's makes an imposing appearance in a picture, and in reality is a building of considerable size ; but it must always have been internally an ill-finished house. He himself, and his friends, compared it to a prison. It had no charms whatever of location. Opposite to it came crowding up some common dwellings, behind lay the garden, on a dead flat, and therefore with no attractions but such as art and a poet's imagination gave it. It was, for some years after he quitted it, inhabited by a surgeon. He had, in his turn, long left it ; and it now was divided into three tenements. One was a little grocer's shop, the other part in front was an infant school, and the back part a workshop of some kind. The house was altogether dingy and desolate, and bore no marks of having at any time been finished in a superior style. That which was once the garden was now divided into a back-yard and a small garden surrounded by a high stone wall. They show an apple-tree in it, which they say Cowper planted. The other and main portion of the garden was cut off by the stone wall, and the access to it was from a distant part of the town. This garden was now in the possession of Mr. Morris, a master bootmaker, who, with a genuine feeling of respect for the poet's memory, not only retained it as much as possible in the state i n which it was in Cowper's time, but had the most good-natm-ed pleasure in allowing strangers to see it. The moment I presented myself at his door, he came out, anticipating my object, with tho key, and proffered his own guidance. In the garden, about the T 274 COWPER. centre, still stands Cowper's summer-house. It is a little square tenement, (as Cowper describes it himself, in one of his letters,) not much bigger than a sedan-chair. It is of timber, framed and plas- tered, and the roof of old red tiles. It has a wooden door on the side next to his own house, and a glass one, serving as window, exactly opposite, and looking across the next orchard to the parsonage. There is a bench on each side, and the ceiling is so low that a man of moderate stature cannot stand upright in it. Except in hot weather, it must have been a regular wind-trap. It is, of course, written all over with verses, and inscribed with names. Around it stand evergreens, and in the garden remain various old fruit-trees, which were there in Cowper's time, and some of them, no doubt, planted by him. The back of some low cottages, with their windows level with the very earth, forms part of the boimdary wall ; and the orchard, in front of the summer-house, remains as in Cowper's time. It will be recollected that, in order to save himself the trouble of going roimd through the town, Cowper had a gate put out into this orchard, and another into the orchard of the Rectory, in which hved his friend Mr. Newton. He paid a pound a year for thus crossing his neighbour's orchard, but had, by this means, not only a very near cut to the ParSonage opened to him, but a whole quiet territory of orchards. This stiU I'emains. A considerable extent of orchards, bounded, for the most part, by the backs of the town houses, pre- sents a little quiet region, in which the poet could ramble and muse at his own pleasure. The Parsonage, a plain, modern, and not large building, is not very distant from the front of the summer-house, and over it peeps the church spire. One cannot help reflecting how often the poet and his friends used to go to and fro there. Newton, with his genuine friendship for Cowper, but with his severe and pre- destinarian religion, which to Cowper's grieving spirit was terrifying and prostrating ; then, a happy change, the lively and affectionate and witty Lady Austen, to whom we owe John Gilpin and The Task. Too lively, indeed, was this lady, charming as she was, for the nerves and the occupations of the poet. She went, and then came that delightful and true-souled cousin, Lady Hesketh, a sister as Mary Unwin was a mother to the poet. She had lived much abroad, from the days in which Cowper and herself, merry companions, had laughed and loved each other dearly as cousins. The fame of him whom she had gone away deploring, as blighted and lost for ever, • met her on her return to her native land, a widow ; and, with a heart and a purse equally open, she hastened to renew the intercourse of her youth, and to make the poet's hfe as happy as such hearts only could make him. There is nothing more delightful than to see how the bursting-forth fame of Cowper brought around him at once aU his oldest and best friends — his kith and kin, who had deemed him a wreck, and found him a gallant bark, sailing on the brightest sea of glory to a sacred immortality. Lady Hesketh, active in her kindness as she was beautiful in person and in spirit, a true sisterly soul, lost no time in removing Cowper to a more suitable house and neighboui'hood. Of the house COWPER. 275 we have spoken. The situation of Olney is on the flat, near the river Ouse, and subject to its fogs. The town was dull. It is much now as it was then ; one of those places that are the links between towns and villages. Its present population is only 2,300. In such a place, therefore, every man knew all his neighbours' concerns. It was too exposed a place for a man of Cowper's shy disposition, and yet had none of that bustle which gives a stimulus to get out of it into the country. Eemoving from it to the country was but j)assing from stillness to stillness. The country around Olney, moreover, is by no means striking in its features. It is like a thousand other parts of England, somewhat flat, yet somewhat undulating, and rather naked of trees. Weston, to which he now removed, was about a mile west- ward of Olney. It lies on higher gi-ound, overlooking the valley of the Ouse. It is a small village, consisting of a few detached houses on each side of the road. The Hall stood at this end, and the neat little church at the other. Trees grew along the street, and Cowper pronounced it one of the prettiest villages of England. Luckily he had neither seen all the villages of England, nor the finest scenery of this or other countries. To him, therefore, the country was all that he imagined of lovely, and all that he desired. It never tired, it never lost its hold upon his fancy and his heart. " Scenes must l)e beautiful, which daily viewed Please daily, and where novelty survives Long knowledge, and the scrutiny of years. Praise justly due to those that I describe." This he said of this scenery around "Weston ; and in setting out for that village from Olney, we take the track which, even before he went to live there, was his daily and peculiarly favourite walk. Advancing out of Olney street, we are at once on an open ascent on the highway. At a mile's distance before us lie Weston and its woods ; its little church-tower overlooking the valley of the Ouse. Behind us lies Olney, its tall church spire rising nobly into the sky ; and close beneath it the Ouse emerges into sight, sweeping round the water-mills which figure in the poet's works, and then goes in several difierent streams, as he says, lazily along a fine stretch of green meadows, in which the scenes of The Dog and Water-lily, and The Poplar Field occur. On this eminence stood Cowper often, with Mary Unwin on his arm ; and thus he addresses her, as he describes most vividly the view : — " And witness, dear companion of my walks. Whose arm this twentieth winter I perceive Fast locked in mine, with pleasure sucli as love, Confirmed by long experience of thy worth And well-tried virtues could alone inspire — Witness a joy that thou hast doubled long. Thou knowest my praise of nature most sincere, And that my raptures are not conjured up To serve occasions of poetic pomp. But genuine, and art partner of them all. How oft upon yon eminence our pace Has slackened to a pause, and we have borne The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blow, While admiration, feeding at the eye. And still unsated dwelt upon the scene! Thence with what pleasure we have just discerned t2 276 cowPER. The distant plough slow moving, and beside His labourin;? team, that swerved not from the track, The sturdy swain diminished to a boy; Here Ouse slow winding through a level plain Of spacious mead, with cattle sprinkled o'er, Conducts the eye along his sinuous course Delighted. There, fast rooted in their bank, Stand, never overlooked, our favourite elms, That screen the herdsman's solitary hut ; While far beyond, and overthwart the stream, That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale. The sloping land recedes into the clouds ; Displaying on its varied side the grace Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower, Tall spire, from which tlie sound of cheerful bells Just undulates upon the listening ear, Groves, heaths, and smoking villages remote." We should not omit to notice that behind us, over Olney, shows itself the church tower and haU of Clifton, the attempt to walk to which forms the subject of Cowper's very humorous poem, The Distressed Travellers. Before us, as we advance, — the Ouse meadows below on our left, and plain, naked farm-lands, on our right, — the park of Weston displays its lawns, and slopes, and fine masses of trees. It will be recollected by aU lovers of Cowper that here lived Sir John and Lady Throckmorton, Cowper's kind and cordial friends, who, even before they knew him, threw open their park and aU their domains to him ; and who, when they did know him, did all that generous people of wealth and intelligence could do to contribute to his happiness. The village and estate here wholly belonged to them, and the hall was a second horne to Cowper, always open to him with a warm vfelcome, and an easy, unassuming spirit of genuine friend- ship ; Lady Throckmorton herself voluntarily becoming the tran- scriber of his Homer, when his young friend, Rose, left him. In the whole of our literature there is no more beautiful instance of the intercourse of the literary man and his wealthy neighbours, than that of Cowper and the Throckmortons. Their reward was the pleasure they conferred ; and still more, the fame they have thus won. The Throckmortons having other and extensive estates, the suc- cessors of Cowper's friends have deserted this. The house is pulled down, a wall is built across the bottom of the court-yard, which cuts off from view what was the garden. Grass grows thickly in the court, the entrance to which is still marked by the pillars of a gate- way bearing vases. Across the court are erected a priest's house and Catholic chapel, — the Throckmortons were and are CathoUc, — and beyond these still stand the stables, coach-house, &c., bearing a clock- tower, and showing that this was once a gentleman's residence. At the end of the old thatched outbuilding you see the word school painted ; it is the village school — Cathohc, of course, as are all, or nearly all, the inhabitants. A pair of gateway pillars, like those which led to the house, mark the entrance to the village a little beyond the house. On the opposite side of the road to the house is the park, and, directly opposite to the house, being taken out of the park, is the woodland wilderness in which Cowper so much delighted to ramble. COWPER. 277 The house of Cowper, Weston Lodge, stands on the right hand, about the centre of the village, adjoining a picturesque old orchard. The trees, which in his time stood in the street opposite, however, have been felled. A few doors on this side of the Lodge is a public- house, with the Yardly Oak upon its sign, and bearing the name of Cowper's Oak. The Lodge is a good and pleasant, but not large house. The vignette at the head of this article re2)resents the tree opposite as still standing, which is not the fact. The room on the right hand was Cowper's study. In his bedroom, which is at the back of the house overlooking the garden, still remain two lines, which he wrote when about to leave \Veston for Norfolk, where he died. As his farewell to this place, the happiest of his hfe, when his own health, and that of his dear and venerable friend, ISh'B. Unwin, were both failing, and gloomy feelings haunted him, these lines possess a deeji interest. They are written on the bevel of a panel of one of the window shutters, near the top right-hand corner ; and when the shutter has been repainted, this part has been carefully excepted. " Farewell, dear scenes, for ever closed to me! Oh for what sorrow must I now exchange you ? July 22. — — even here 28 \ 179.'> July 22 J 1795." The words and dates stand just as here given, and mark his recur- rence to these lines, and his restless state of mind, repeating the date of both month and year. From this room Cowiier used to have a view of his favourite shrubbery, and beyond it, up the hill, pleasant crofts. The shrubbery was generally admired, being a dehghtful little labyrinth, composed of flowering shrubs, with gravel walks, and seats placed at appro- priate distances. He gave a humorous account to Hayley of the erection of one of these arbours. " I said to Sam, ' Sam, build me a shed in the garden with anything you can find, and make it rude and rough, like one of those at Eartham.' ' Yes, sir,' says Sam ; and straightway laying his own noddle and the carpenter's together, has built me a thing fit for Stowe gardens. Is not this vexatious ? I threaten to inscribe it thus : — 15i. ware of building! I intended Rough logs and thatch, and thus it ended." All this garden has now been altered. A yard has been made behind, with outbuildings, and the garden cut oft" with a brick wall. Not far from this house a narrow lane turns up, enclosed on one side by the park walk Through this old stone wall, now well crowned with masses of ivy, there used to be a door, of which Cowper had a key, which let him at once into the wilderness. In this wilderness, which is a wood grown full of underwood, through which walks are cut winding iu all directions, you come upon wh'at is called the Temple. This is an open Gothic alcove, having in front an open space, scattered with some trees, amongst them a fine old acacia, and closed in b^^ the thick wood. Here Cowper used to sit 278 cowPER. much, delighted with the perfect and deep seclusion. The temple ia now fast falling to decay. Through a short winding walk to the left you come out to the park, which is separated from the wilder- ness by a sunk fence. A bi'oad grass walk runs along the head of this fosse, between it and the wilderness, and here you find the two urns under the trees, which mark the grave of two favourite dogs of the Throckmortons, for which Cowper condescended to write epitajjhs, which still remain, and may be found in his poems. There is also a figure of a Hon, couchaut, on a pedestal, bearing this inscription : "Mortuo Leone etiam Lepores insultant, 1815." From this point also runs out the fine lime avenue, of at least a quarter of a mile long, terminated by the alcove. Every scene, and every spot of ground which presents itself here, is to be found in Cowper's poetry, particularly in the first book of his Task — The Sofa. The Sofa was but a hook to hang his theme upon ; his real theme is his walk through this park and its neighbourhood, particu- larly this fine avenue, closing its boughs above with all the solemn and inspiring grace of a Gothic cathedral aisle. To the right the park descends in a verdant slope, scattered with noble trees. There, in the valley, near the road to Olney, is the Spinny, with its rustic moss-house, haunted by Cowper ; and where he wrote those verses full of the deepest, saddest melancholy which ever oppressed a guilt- less heart, beginning, — " Oh, happy shades, to me unblest ! Friendly to peace, but not to me I How ill the scene that oilers rest. And heart, that cannot rest, agree ! " There, too, in the valley, but where it has freed itself from the wood, is the rustic bridge, equally celebrated by him ; and beyond it in the fields, the Peasant's Nest, now grown from a labourer's cottage, shrouded in trees, to a considerable farm-house, with its ricks and buildings, conspicuous on an open eminence. Still beyond are the woods of Yardly Chase, including those of Kilwick and Dinglebury, well known to the readers of Cowper ; and this old chase stretches away for four or five miles towards Castle Ashby. In traversing the park to reach the woods and Yardly Oak, we come into a genuinely agricultural region, where a sort of peopled solitude is enjoyed. Swelling, rounded eminences, with little valleys winding between them ; here and there a farm-house of the most rustic description ; the plough and its whistling follower turning up the ruddy soil ; and the park, displaying from its hills and dells its contrast of nobly umbrageous trees, showed where Cowper had often delighted himself, and whence he had drawn much of his imagery. " Now roves the eye ; And posted on this speculative heiglit Exults In its command. The slieepfold here Pours out its fleecy tenants o'er the glebe. At first, progressive as a stream, they seek The middle field ; but scattered by degrees. Each to his choice, soon whitens all the land. There from the sun-burnt hay-field homeward creeps COWPER. 279 The loaded -wain ; while, lightened of its charge, The wain that meets it passes swiftly by ; The boorish driver leaning o'er his team, Vociferous, and impatient of delay. Nor less attractive is the woodland scene, Diversified with trees of every growth, Alike, yet various. How the grey, smooth trunks Of ash, or lime, or beech, distinctly shine Within the twilight of their distant shades : There, lost behind a rising ground, the wood Seems sunk, and shortened to its topmost boughs." The Task, book i. At this point of view you find the poet's praises of the sceneiy more fully justified than anywhere else. The park here has a solemn, solitary, splendidly wooded air, and spreads its green slopes, and gives hints of its secluded dells, that are piquant to the iinagination. And still the walk, of a mile or more, to the ancient chase is equally impressive. The vast extent of the forest which stretches before you gives a deep feeling of silence and ancient repose. You descend into a valley, and Kilwick's echoing wood spreads itself before you on the upland. You pass through it, and come out opposite to a lonely farm-house, where, in the opening of the forest, you see the remains of very ancient oaks standing here and there. You feel that you are on a spot that has maintained its connexion with the world of a thousand years ago ; and amid these venerable trees, you soon see the one which by its bulk, its hollow trunk, and its lopped and dilapidated crown, needs not to be pointed out as the Yardly Oak. Here Cowper was fond of sitting within the hollow boll for hours ; around him stretching the old woods, with their solitude and the cries of woodland birds. The fame which he has conferred on this tree has nearly proved its destruction. Whole arms and great pieces of its trunk have been cut away with knife, and axe, and saw, to prepare difierent articles from. The Marquis of Northampton, to whom the chase belongs, has had multitudes of nails driven in to stop the progress of this destruction, but finding that not sufficient, has affixed a board bearing this inscription : — " Out of respect to the memory of the poet Cowper, the Marquis of Northampton is particularly desirous of preserving this oak. Notice is hereby given, that any person defacing, or otherwise injuring it, will be prosecuted according to law." In stepping round the Yardly oak, it appeared to me to be, at the foot, about thirteen yards in circumference. Every step here shows you some picture sketched by Cowper. " I see a column of slow rising smoke O'ertop the lofty wood that skirts the wild. A vagabond and useless tribe there eat Their miserable meal. A kettle slung Between two poles upon a stick transverse, Receives the morsel — flesh obscene of dog. Or vermin, or at best, of cock purloined From bis accustomed perch. Hard-faring race I They pick their fuel out of every hedge, Which kindled witli dry leaves just saves unquenched The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin, The vellum of the pedigree they claim.'' 280 COWPER. We are now upon " The grassy sward, close cropped by nibbling sheep, And skirted thick with intermixture firm Of thorny boughs." The old wild chase opens its glades, discovers its heaths, startles us with its abrupt cries of birds, or plunges us into the gloom of thick overshadowing oaks. It is a fit haunt of the poet. Such are the haunts of Cowper in this neighbourhood. Amid these, his was a secluded but an active and most important existence. How many of those who bustle along in the front of public life can boast of a ten-thousandth part of the benefit to their fellow-men which was conferred, and for ages will be conferred, by the loiterer of these woods and fields ? In no man was his own doctrine ever made more manifest, that " God gives to every man The virtue, temper, understanding, taste, That lifts him into life, and lets him fall Just in the niche he was ordained to fill." He says of himself — " I was a stricken deer, that left the herd Long since. With many an arrow deep infixed My pantini? side was charged, when I withdrew To seek a tranquil death in distant shades. There was I joined by one, who had himself Been hurt by the archers. In his side he bore. And in his hands and feet, the cruel scars. With gentle force soliciting the darts. He drew them forth, and healed, and bade me live. Since then, with few associates, in remote And silent woods I wander, far from those My former partners of the peopled scene. With few associates, and not wishing more." Thus he began ; but, soothed by the sweet freshness of nature, strengthened by her peace, enlightened to the pitch of true wisdom by her daily converse, spite of all his griefs and fears, he ended by describing himself, in one of the noblest passages of modern poetry, as the happy man. Quitting these scenes in quest of health, both the poet and his dear friend Mary Unwin died at Dereham, in Norfolk ; she in 1796, and he in 1800. " They were lovely in their lives, and in death they are not divided." MRS. TIGHE, THE AUTHOR OF PSYCHE. Perhaps uo writer of merit has been more neglected by her own friends than Mrs. Tighe. With every means of giving to the public a good memoir of her, 1 believe no such is in existence ; at all events, I have not been able to find one. The following brief particulars have been furnished by a private hand : " Mrs. Tighe was bom in Dublin, in 1774. Her father, the Eev. WiUiam Blachford, was librarian of Marsh's hbrary, St. Sepulchre, 'in that city. Her mother, Theo- dosia Tighe, was one of a family whose seat has been, and is, Eosanna, county Wicklow. In 1793, Miss Blachford, then but nineteen, mar- ried her cousin, Henry Tighe, of Woodstock, M.P. for Kilkenny in the Irish Parliament, and author of a County History of Kilkenny. Consumption was hereditary in Mrs. Tighe's family, and its fatal seeds ripened with her womanhood. She was constantly afflicted with its attendants, languor, depression, and want of appetite. With the profits of Psyche, which ran through four editions previous to her death, she built an addition to the Orphan Asylum in Wicklow, thence called the Psyche ward. She died on the 24th of March, 1810, and was buried at Woodstock, in Kilkenny, beneath a monument by riaxman, from the finest marble of Italy. Mrs. Hemans, Banim, and Moore, hbve done homage to her genius, or lamented over its eclipse. North, in the ' Noctes Ambrosianse,' with the assistance of Mr. Timothy Tickler, has paid her a very high compliment. But her abilities, her beauty, and her virtue, have not, as yet, been adequately pictured in any biographical notice of her that I have seen. The 1813 edition of Psyche contains some afiecting allusions to her, in the preface written by her husband, who soon after followed her to the grave." How little is known of Mrs. Tighe, when so short an account is the best that a countryman of hers can furnish ! and even in that there are serious errors. So far from her monument being of the finest marble of Italy, it is of a stone not finer than Portland stone, if so fine. So far from her husband soon following her to the grave, Mrs. Tighe died in 1810, and her husband was living at the time of Mrs. Hemans's visit to Woodstock in 1831. He must have survived 282 ■ MRS. TIGHE. her above twenty years. In Mrs. Hemans's own account of her visit to Woodstock, she speaks of it as the place where " Mrs. Tighe passed the latest years of her life, and near where she is buried ;" yet in the same volume with Psyche, (1811 edition, p. 306,) there is a "Sonnet, written at Woodstock, in the county of Kilkenny, the seat of William Tighe, June 30, 1809," i.e. only nine months before her death. For myself, I confess my ignorance of the facts which might connect these strangely clashing accounts of a popular poetess, of a wealthy famUy, and who died little more than forty years ago. I hoped to gain the necessary information on the spot, which I made a long journey purposely to visit. Why I did not, remains to tell. The poem of Psyche was one which charmed me intensely at an early age. There was a tone of deep and tender feeling pervading it, which touched the youthful heart, and took possession of every sensibility. There was a tone of melancholy music in it, which seemed the regretful expression of the consciousness of a not far-off' death. It was now well known that the young and beautiful poetess was dead. The life which she lived — crowned with every good and grace that God confers on the bright ones of the earth, on those who are to be living revelations of the heaven to which we are called, and to which they are hastening, youth, beauty, fortune, all gloriiied by the emanations of a transcendent mind — was snatched away, and there was a sad fascination thrown over both her fate and her work. The delicacy, the pathos, the subdued and purified, yet intense passion of the poem, were all calculated to seize on the kindred spirit of youth, and to make you in love with the writer. She came before the imagination in the combined witchery of brilliant genius, and the pure loveliness of a seraph, which had but touched upon the earth on some celestial mission, and was gone for ever. Her own Psyche, in the depth of her saddest hour, yearning for the restoration of the lost heaven and the lost heart, was not more tenderly beautiful to the imagination than herself. Such was the effect of the Psyche on the glowing, sensitive, ye"t immature mind. How much of this effect has in many cases been the result of the quick feelings and magnifying fancy of youth itself ! We have returned to our idol in later years, and found it clay. But this is not the case with Psyche. After the lapse of many years, after the disenchanting effects of experience, after the enjoyment of a vast quantity of new poetry of a splendour and power such as no one age of the world ever before witnessed, we return to the poem of Mrs. Tighe, and still find it fuU of beauty. There is a graceful fluency of diction, a rich and deep harmony, that are the fitting vehicle of a story full of interest, and scenery full of enchantment. Spite of the incongruity of engrafting on a Grecian fable the knight- errantry of the Middle Ages, and the allegory of still later days, we follow the deeply-tried Psyche through all her ordeals with uuabat- ing zest. The radiant Island of Pleasure, the more radiant Divinity of Love, the fatal curiosity, the weeping and outcast Psyche wander- ing on through the forests and wildernesses of her earthly penance, MRS. TIGUE. 283 the mysterious knight, the intrepid squire of the starry brow, are all sketched with the genuine pencil of poetry, and we follow the fortunes of the wanderers with ever-deepening entrancement. None but Spenser himself has excelled Mrs. Tighe in the field of allegory. Passion in the form of the hon subdued by the Knight ; Psyche betrayed by Vanity and Flattery to Ambition ; the Bower of Loose Delight ; the attacks of Slander ; the Castle of Suspicion ; the Court of Spleen ; the drear Island of lucUfFerence ; and the final triumph and apotheosis of the gentle soul, — are all vigorously con- ceived, and executed with a living distinctness. The pleasure with which she pursued her task is expressed in the graceful opening stanzas of the fifth canto. " Delightful visions of my lonely hours! Charm of my life and solace of my care ! Oh ! would the muse but lend proportioned powers, And give me language equal to declare The wonders which she bids my fancy share, When wrapt in her to other worlds I fly ; See angel forms unutterably fair, And hear the inexpressive harmony That seems to float in air, and warble through the sky. " Might I the swiftly-glancing scenes recall ! Bright as the roseate clouds of summer eve, The dreams which hold my soul in willing thrall, And half my visionary days deceive. Communicable shape might then receive, And other hearts be ravished with the strain ; But scarce I seek the airy threads to weave, When quick confusion mocks the fruitless pain, And all the airy forms are vanished from my biain. " Fond dreamer ! meditate thine idle song ! But let thine idle song remain unknown ; The verse which cheers thy solitude, prolong ; What though it charm no moments but thy own. Though thy loved Psyche smile for thee alone. Still shall it yield thee pleasure, if not fame ; And when, escaped from tumult, thou hast flown To thy dear silent hearth's enlivening flame, Then shall the tranquil muse her happy votary claim ! " Moore has recorded his admiration of Psyche in a lyric of which these stanzas are not the least expressive. " Tell me the witching tale again. For never has my heart or ear Hung on so sweet, so pure a strain. So pure to feel, so sweet to hear. " Say, Love ! in all thy spring of fame. When the high Heaven itself was thine, When piety confessed the flame. And even thy errors were divine 1 " Did ever muse's hand so fair A glory round thy temple spread? Did ever life's ambrosial air Such perfume o'er thine altars shed? " Mrs. Hemans had always been much struck with the poetry of Mrs. Tighe. She imagined a similarity between the destiny of this pen- sive poetess and her own. She had her in her imagination when she wrote The Grave of a Poetess ; and the conclucUug stanzas are particularly descriptive of Mrs, Tighe's spirit. 284 MRS. TIGHE. " Thou hast left sorrow in thy song, A voice not loud but deep! The glorious bowers of earlh among, How often didst thou weep! " Where couldst thou fix on mortal ground, Thy tender thoughts and high 1 Now peace the woman's heart hath found, And joy the poet's eye ! " It was certainly among earth's glorious bowers that Mrs. Tighe passed her days. Rosanna, in Wicklow, is said to have been her principal residence after her marriage. The whole country round is extremely beautiful, and calculated to call forth the poetic faculty where it exists. All the way from Dublin to Rosanna is through a rich and lovely district. It is a gold district, much gold being found in its streams upwards of thirty years ago, the getting of which was put a stop to by Government. As you approach Rosanna the hills become higher, and your way lies through the most beautifully wooded valleys. At the inn at Ashford-bridge you have the celebrated Devil's-glen on one hand, and Rosanna on the other. This glen lies a mile or more from the inn, and is about a mile and a half through. It is narrow, the hills on either hand are lofty, bold, craggy, and finely wooded ; and along the bottom runs, deep and dark over its rocky bed, the river Vartree. This river runs down and crosses the road near the inn, and then takes its way by Rosanna. Rosanna is perhaps a mile down the valley from the inn. The house is a plain old brick house, fit for a country squire. It lies low in the meadow near the river, and around it, on both sides of the water, the slopes are dotted with the most beautiful and luxuriant trees. The park at Rosanna is indeed eminently beautiful with its wood. The trees are thickly scattered, and a great proportion of them are lime, the soft delicate foliage of which gives a peculiar character to the scenery. The highway, for the whole length of the park as you proceed towards Rathdrum, is completely arched over with magnificent beeches, presenting a fine natural arcade. On the right, the ground ascends for a mile or more, covered with rich masses of wood. In fact, whichever way you turn, towards the distant hiUs, or pursuing your way down the valley, all is one fairy laud of beauty and richness. It is a region worthy of the author of Psyche, worthy to inspire her beau- tiful mind ; and we rejoice that so fair, and gentle, and good a spirit had there her lot cast. In her poems she addresses one to tlae Vartree : — " Sweet are thy banks, O Vartree I when at mom Their velvet verdure glistens with the dew; When fragrant gales, by softest zephyrs borne, Unfold the flowers, and ope their petals new. " And sweet thy shade, at noon's more fervid hours. When faint we quit the upland gayer lawn. To seek the freshness of thy sheltering bowers. Thy chestnut glooms, where day can scarcely dawn. " Beneath the fragrant lime, or spreading beech. The bleating flocks in panting crowds repose; Their voice alone my dark retreat can reach. While peace and silence all my soul compose." MRS. TIGHE. 285 In her sonnets, too, she alludes to her favoui'ite Eosanna, and to her " chestnut bower," which, I beheve, still remains. Indeed Eosanna will always be interesting to the lovers of gentle female virtue and pure genius, because here Psyche was written ; here the author of Psyche lived, loved, and suffered. Woodstock, where she died, lies, I suppose, forty or fifty miles distant, in Kilkenny. It is equally beautiful, though in a different style. It lies on a high, round, swelling hiU, — a good modern man- sion. You see it afar off as you drive over a country less beautiful than that about Eosanna. There is a fine valley, along which the river Nore runs, amid splendid masses of wood, two miles in length, and meadows of the deepest green ; and beyond swells up the steep rovmd hill, covered also with fine timber to the top, eight hundred feet in elevation. The whole is bold, ample, and impressive. To reach the house, you pass through the village of Innerstiogue, at the foot of the hill, and then begin the long and steep ascent. A con- siderable way up you are arrested by smart lodge gates, and there enter a fine and well kept park, in which the neatness of the carriage roads, which are daily swept, and the skilfully dispersed masses of fine trees, speak of wealth, and a pride in it. On the top of the hill stands the house, commanding noble views down into the superb vale below, and over a wide extent of country. In traveUing between these two estates, a mind like that of Mrs. Tighe would find scenery not inferior to that immediately lying around both of them. In one direction she might traverse the cele- brated district of Glendalough, or the vale of the Seven Churches ; in another she might descend the vale of Avoca, and cross some of the finest parts of Carlow to Kilkenny. I took this latter route. No part of England is more beautiful, or more richly cultivated than much of this ; thick Avoods, fertile fields, weU-to-do villages, and gentlemen's houses abounded. From the little town of Eathdrum we began to descend rapidly into the vale of Avoca, and passed the Meeting of the Waters just before dark. The vale, so far, had a very different character to what I expected. I imagined it to be a mile or two long, soft, flowing, and verdant. On the contrary, it is eight miles in length, and has to me a character of greatness and exten- siveness about it. It is what the Germans call " grossariig^'' — we want the word. You descend down and down, and feel that a deeper countiy is still below you. To me it had a feeling as if descending from the Alps into a champaign country. Long ranges of hiUs on either hand ever and anon terminated, as if to admit of a way into the country beyond, and then began again, with the river wandering on still far below us ; and here and there stupendous masses of lofty rock, open meadows, and bold, high woods. These were the features of this striking and great valley. At the bridge, where the first meeting of the waters takes place, that is, the meeting of the two streams, Avoubeg and Avonmore, which thence become the Avoca, the driver of the car said — " Perhaps your honour knows that this is the Meeting of the Waters. It was here that Moore made his speech ! " 286 MRS. TIGHE. But the most striking meeting to us was a meeting with a great number of one-horse carts, those of miners, with whom this vale abounds. They were coming up from a market at Avoca, just below, and they took no more notice of being all exactly in our way than if we were not there. The driver shouted, but in vain ; and it was only by using his whip over them till he broke off the lash that he coidd get a passage. When they did draw out of the way, it was always purposely to the wrong side. The fact is, they were all dinink, and seemed to have a very animal doggedness of disposition about them. The Wooden Bridge inn, at the bottom of the vale, and at the commencement of the vale of Ai'klow, and the place of the second meeting of the waters, is the great resort of travellers. The scene here has much softness. A bend of the valley, an opening of rich meadow, surrounded by hills thickly clothed with foliage, and the rivers running on to their meeting, give a feeling of great and quiet seclusion. Here I posted, as I have said, across Carlow to Kilkenny, and to Woodstock. But at Rosanna and at Woodstock, my hope of obtaining some in- formation regarding Mrs. Tighe, of seeing some painting, or other object connected with her, was, with one exception, thoroughly frustrated. Mrs. Tighe was an angel ; — of her successors I have somewhat more to say. In all my visits to remarkable places in England, I have received the utmost courtesy from the proprietors of those houses and scenes which it was my object to see. In those where I was anxious to obtain sight of relics of celebrated persons of antiquity not ordinarily shown to the public, I have written to the owner to request opportunity of examining them. In such cases, noblemen of the highest rank have not, in a single instance, shown the slightest reluctance to contribute to that information which was for the public. In some cases they have themselves gone down into the country to give me the meeting, and thrown open private cabinets, and the like depositories of rare objects, with the most active liberality. In every other case, so invariably have I found the most obliging facilities given for the prosecution of my inquiries, that I have long ceased to carry a letter of introduction ; my name alone being considered warranty enough. I foimd it equally so in Ireland, except with the Tighes. At Rosanna, Mr. Dan Tighe, as the people familiarly call him, cer- tainly not Dante, was pointed out to me by a workman, walking in the meadow before his house, handling his buUocks which grazed there. On asking the servant who came to the door whether Mr. Tighe was at home, he fu-st, as a perfect tactician, requested my name, and he would see. I gave him my card ; and though he could see his master as well as I could in the meadow, to whom I directed his attention, he very solemnly marched into the house, and returned, saying he was not in. A self-evident truth. I inquired if Mrs. Tighe was at home, explaining that I had come from England, and for what object. He said, " Yes, but she was fyinf/ in, and could see no one." I then inquired when Mr. Tighe might be expected in, as I should much regret losing the opportunity of learning from him any parti- MRS. TIQHE. 287 culars connected with my present inquiry. " He could not say ; — most likely at six o'clock, his dinner hour." I promised to call on my way towards Avoca, about half-an-hour before that time, that I might not interfere with Mr. Tighe's dinner hour. I did so. Mr. Tighe was now standing in his field, not a hvmdred yards from his house. As soon as the servant appeared, he assured me Mr. Tighe was not at home ; he could not tell where he was. I immediately directed his attention to where he stood looking at some men at work. The man did not choose to see him ; and, under the circum- stances, it was not for me to advance and address him. It was evident that the man had his cue ; the master did not choose to be seen. I therefore mounted my car, and ordered the driver to drive off. The spirit of the place was palpable. A willing master makes a willing man. Well, as ]\Ir. Tighe was icalking out, and Mi-s. Tighe was lying in, I bade adieu to Rosanna, not much wiser for my visit ; — but then there was Woodstock. I drove fifty miles across the country, and found myself at the door of Woodstock. Woodstock is a show house ; and here, there- fore, I anticipated no difficulty of at least obtaining a sight of the portrait or statue of the late charming poetess. But unfortunately, — what in England would have been most fortunate, — ]\Ir. Tighe was at home, and the servant on opening the door at once informed me that the house was never shown when the family was there. Having written on my card what was my object, that I had made the journey from England for it, and added the name of a gentleman well known to Mr. Tighe, who had wished me to do so, I requested the servant to present it to j\Ir. Tighe. He did so ; and returned saying, " Mr. Tighe said I was at liberty to see the gi'ounds, but not the house ; and he had nothing further to say ! " My astonishment may be imagined. The servant seemed a very decent, modest sort of fellow, and I said — " Good heavens ! does Mr. Tighe think I am come all the way from England to see his grounds when ten thousand country squires could show much finer ? Was there no picture of Mrs. Tighe, the poetess, that I might be allowed to see % " " He thought not ; he did not know." " Was there no statue ? " " He thought not ! he never heard of any." How long had he been there ? " " Five years." "And never heard of a statue or a monument to Mrs. Tighe, the poetess ? " " No, never ! He had never heard Mrs. Tighe the poetess spoken of in the family ! But if there were any monument, it must be at the church at Innerstiogue ! " I thanked him for his intelligence, the only glimpse of information I had got at Rosanna, or Woodstock, and drove off. The matter was now clear. The very servants who had lived years in the family had never heard the name of Mrs. Tighe, the poetess, mentioned ! These present Tighes had been marrying the daughters of lords — this a daughter of the Duke of Richmond, and Dan Tighe, a daughter of Lord Crofton. They were ashamed, probably, that any of their name should have degraded herself by writing poetry, which a man or woman without an acre may do. When 1 reached the 288 MRS. TIGHE. church at lunerstioguo, the matter received a most striking con- firmation. There, sure enough, was the monument, in a small mausoleum in the churchyard. It is a recumbent figure, laid on a granite altar-shaped basement. The figure is of a freestone resembling Portland stone, and is lying on its side as on a sofa, being said, by the person who showed it, to be the position in which she died, on coming in from a walk. The execution of the whole is very ordinary, and if really by Flaxman, displays none of his genius. I have seen much better things by a common stonemason. There is a little angel sitting at the head, but this has never been fastened down by cement. The monument was, no doubt, erected by the widower of the poetess, who was a man of classical taste, and, I believe, much attached to her. There was no inscription yet j^ut upon the tomb, though one, said to be wiitten by her husband, had long been cut in stone for the purpose. In the wall at the back of the monument, aloft, there was an oblong-square hole left for this inscrip- tion, which I understood was lying about at the house, but no single effort had been made to put it up, though it would not require an hour's work, and though Mrs. Tighe had been then dead six and thirty years ! This was decisive! If these two gentlemen, nephews of the poetess, who are enjoying the two splendid estates of the family, Woodstock and Rosanna, show thus little respect to the only one of their name that ever lifted it above the mob, it is not to be expected that they wiU show much courtesy to strangers. Well is it that Mrs. Tighe raised her own monument, that of immortal verse, and wrote her own epitaph, in the hearts of all the pure and loving, not on a stone which sordid relatives, still fonder of earth than stone, may consign to the obUvion of a lumber-room. That these nephews of the poetess do look after the earth which her husband left behind him, though not after the stone, I learned while waiting in the village for the sexton. I fell into conversation with the woman at the cottage by which I stood. It was as follows : — Self. — " Well, your landlord has a fine estate here. I hope he is good to you." Woman. — " Well, your honour, very good, very good." Self. — " Very good % What do you call very good % I find Enghsh and Ii'ish notions of goodness don't always agree." Woman. — " Well, your honour, we may say he is mixed ; mixed, your honour." Aye^—" How mixed?" Woman. — " Why, your honour, you see I can't say that he was very good to me." Self.—"' How was that ?" Woman. — " Why, your honour, we were backward in our rent, and the squire sent for my husband, and told him that if he did not pay all next quarter, he would sell us up. My husband begged he would MRS. TIG HE, 289 give him a little more time, as a neighbour said he had some money left him, and would take part of our land at a good rent, and then we should be able to pay ; but now we got little, and the children were many, and it was hard to meet and tie. ' Oh ! ' said the squire, ' if you are going to get all that money, j'ou will be able to pay more rent. I must have two pounds a-year more ! ' " Self. — " But, surely, he did no such thing ?" Woman. — " But he did it, your honour. The neighbour had no money — it was a hum ; he never took the field of us at all ; we never were able to get a penny more from any one than we gave ; but when my husband went to pay the rent at the next rent-day, the steward would not take it. He said he had orders to have two pounds a-j'ear more ; and from that day we have had it regularly to pay." What a fall out of the poetry of Psyche to the iron realities of Ireland ! Since the publication of the first edition, I have received a little information respecting Mrs. Tighe. Mrs. Elinor Ward, of Southamp- ton, who states herself to be the daughter of the first cousin to Mrs. Henry Tighe, who was brought up as a sister with her, has kindly forwarded the following jsarticulars. The Rev. William Blachford, the father of Mrs. Tighe, she says, was not only librarian of Marsh's hbrary, but rector of St. Werburgh's church, in Dublin. That he died of a fever, leaving a family of ten young children. Mrs. Ward asserts that consumption was not in the Blachford family ; and that Mrs. Tighe's works were not published till after her death, and that the proceeds 6'f the sale went to the funds for the support of an institution founded and established by her mother, Mrs. Blachford, in Dublin, and called " The House of Refuge," intended for a home for female seiwants out of place, and educating them for service. This is totally at variance with the account already given ; yet it should be coi-rect, for Mrs. Ward adds — " When I said Jili-s. Tighe'a works were not pubhshed tiU after her death, I should have excepted twelve copies of 'P.syche,' which she had printed herself for her nearest and dearest friends, of whom my mother was one. I have the httle volume now in my possession, with my mother's name written by Mrs. Tighe, and a portrait of her, given by Mrs. Blach- ford as the highest token of affection to my mother, her niece ; and Mrs. Blachford considered it the best that had been taken of her daughter." As to the mode of her death, Mrs. Ward says—" For many years previous to her death, Mrs. Tighe had lost all power of movement in her legs and feet, and was carried from room to room. She could not, therefore, have died on her return from a walk ; nor did she die in the attitude represented in the monument erected to her memory at Woodstock. She died in the position in which, for some time before her death, she had been accustomed to sleep, — sitting on a low stool, leaning back in the easy-chair in which she used to sit occasionally." The Rev. C. Bathurst Woodman has also veiy kindly forwarded to me a manuscript letter of the Rev. S. Pierce, who spent some time in u 290 MRS. TIGHE. the family at Rosanna, and was particularly struck with Mrs. Henry Tighe, the author of Psyche. The whole account ia highly interest- ing, and perhaps contains more information respecting the family than the public is likely to obtain. The letter is addressed by the reverend gentleman to his wife. It is dated July, 1796 : — " I had heard much of the county of Wicklow, as containing the most romantic views and enchanting scenes in Ireland, and especially an estate called Rosanna, where a very opulent family reside of the name of Tighe, and where evei-y external pleasure offered itself to the various senses of the happy visitants. " You may suppose that I was not without a wish to see this Eden of delights, and little thought of reahzing my desires ; when, to my ])leasing astonishment, I received a letter of invitation from Dr. IM'Dowall, written at Mrs. Tighe's request, to spend some days at Rosanna. " I went down last Monday, in company with Mr. and INIrs. Kelly ; the former a son of Judge Kelly, the latter a daughter of Mrs. Tighe. I tarried there till yesterday morning ; but oh, the enrapturing place ! It is impossible for me to describe it. Never did my ima- gination paint Paradise itself so full of Nature's sweets. Everything that could gratify the most delicate taste abounds there ; the ear, the eye, the smell, all were charmed at once. Nature in her richest fohage, her most varied beauty, her truest dignity, and amid her sweetest perfumes, literally displayed herself in this charming demesne ; while the combined family produced the same effect upon the heart within doors, that Nature does upon the senses without. " Mrs. Tighe is a widow lady of about forty-five years of age, of strong sense, friendly manners, and, above all, with a heart warmly devoted to religion. She has three sons : one has a seat in the House of Parliament ; the youngest lives with her ; another, Mr. Henry Tighe, having lately married, is building himself a house near his mother's. Of all the men I ever saw, I never was so much interested at the glance of a moment as when my eyes first fell on him. I fancied I perceived all the chgnity and frankness of a Roman in his countenance and bearing ; nor was I disappointed. I found him the idol of all his acquaintance. One thing alone he wants — oh, that Heaven would bless him with it ! — the one thing needful. His lady is young, lovely, and of sweet manners, united with as sweet a form. She entered the room, soon after I came to Rosanna, with a chaplet of roses about her head. ' Where,' I thought, ' were the beauties of the garden and the parlour so united before V Indeed, I felt myself as on enchanted ground, amused with a pleasing dream, too romantic to be true. " Three ladies besides form the female division of the family ; the eldest is Mrs. Kelly. She is not distinguished by the regularity of her features, nor the delicacy of her complexion ; but her mind is enriched with such stores of grammatical, classical, philosophical, and historical knowledge, as I never met with in one of her sex before. She paints admirably. I do not pretend to be a connoisseur in pain^uig ; but, as well as 1 could judge, she unites the boldness of MRS. TIGHE. 291 Reynolds with, the imagination and delicacy of a Cypriani, and the flowing pencil of a JRubens. I noticed a Jewish high-priest, whom I saw in the synagogue last year, and two other gentlemen of Loudon, who had sat at her request. With all these accomplishments, she dis- covers a modesty and humility which, united with a strong under- standing and a devout heart, set her as far above the common level of mortals as the summit of the Alps rises superior to the vales below. " Miss Caroline is remarkable for nothing but an amazing vivacity and continual flow of spirits, unless it be those accomplishments which are common to the family — a fluency in the French language, and an elegant touch of the harpsichord and organ. The third female is a cousin ; but I was not enough in her company to ascer- tain much of her character. The last thing she talked to me about was the wish she had to enter a nunnery, and take the veil. Her disposition seems naturally recluse, though not unamiable." To this pleasing insight into the family of the Tighes, in which the poetess, with the roses in her hair, and her husband, with his noble Roman aspect, constitute the chief figures, Mr. Pierce adds a mention of the private tutor of the youngest son, and the curate of the parish, who had a house in the corner of the orchard. He also informs us of the benevolence of the elder Mrs. Tighe, her schools for poor children, and of her pressing desire that he should come and settle near Rosaima. u2 JOHN KEATS. We come now to one whose home aud haunts on the earth were brief, — " Who sparkled, was exhaled, and went to heaven." John Keats was one of those sweet and glorious spirits who descend hke the angel messengers of old, to discharge some divine command, not to dwell here. Pure, ethereal, glowing with the fervency of inward life, the bodily vehicle appears but assumed for the occasion, and as a mist, as a shadow, is ready to dissolve the instant that occasion is served. They speak and pass away into the higher hght from whence they came ; but their words remain — themselves life, and spirit, and power — like the electric element in the veins of the earth, quickening and vitalizing the souls of men to the end of time. They become part and parcel of our nature ; they are as essential to the aliment and the progress of our intellectual being as the light, the morning dew of summer, the morning aud the evening star, or any of those great components of nature, the sky, the sea, or the mountain, from which we draw the daily spirit of beauty ; and live ! — live, not as mere material machines; not as animal existences, as brutes — " WTiich graze the mountain-top with faces prone. And eyes intent upon the scanty herb It yields them ; or, recumbent on its brow, Ruminate heedless of tlie scene outspread Beneath, beyond, and stretchimj far away From inland regions to the distant main;" — Cowper. KEATS. 293 not mere men of the world, money-getting, house-building, land- purchasing creatures, but souls of God and of eternity. " Man Uves not by bread alone, but by every word which proceeds out of the mouth of God," and which descends to earth by his i:)rophets, whether of prose or of poetry. It is by the mediation of such pure and seraphic intelligences, that our true psychological frame and constitution are built up. For, created to take our places in the great future of the imiverse, amid the spiritual revelation of all things spiritual, we must be raised substantially from the mere germ of immortality within us into "spirits of just men made perfect." We must be composed of the spiritual elements of beauty, thought, sensation and seizure of all intellectual things, growing by the daily absorption of divine essences into spiritual bodies, incorporate of love, of light, of lofty aspirations and tenderest desires ; of thoughts that comprehend the world, and hearts that embrace it with a divine capacity of affection. As we walk on our daily way, and along the muddiest paths of life, amid our own cares and loneliness, we do not and cannot walk unblest. The shower of God's benedictions falls on us ; the sun.shine of his ceaseless gifts siUTOunds us. From his own appointed men, whether living or dead, " the refreshments from his presence" reach us, melt into us, and sustain us. Words spoken thousands of years ago steal, like the whisjaer of a breeze, into our bosoms, and become bright guests there ; music, full of deep movings, heard but yesterday from the lips of the inspired, touches the spring of happiness within us. The thoughts and sentiments of poets and philosophers, " beautiful exceedingly," stand around us like the trees and the flowers of our wayside ; and from every point of heaven and earth are reflected upon us the flowing waters, the cool forest shades, the bright and glittering stars of that mind, which has been poured through a myriad of vehicles and a host of ages down upon us here. The light and colour and warmth which mature our very corn and fruits come from the sun. They are no more inherent in this nether earth than our own life is. All that we have and enjoy must come from other worlds to us. Our material aliments are sustained by the strength and life issuing from the infinite heavens ; and thence too descend, in still more ethereal actuality, all that our souls are made of. Of the class of swift but resplendent messengers by whom these ministrations are performed, neither om-s nor any other history can furnish a specimen more beautiful than John Keats. He was of feeling and " imagination all compact." His nature was one pure mass of the living light of poetry. On this world and its concerns he could take no hold, and they could take none on him. The worldly and the worldly wise could not comprehend him, could not sympa- thise with him. To them his vivid orgasm of the intellect was madness ; his exuberance of celestial gifts was extravagance ; his unworldhness was efi'eminacy ; his love of the universal man, and not of gross distinctions of pride and party, was treason. As of the highest and divinest of God's messengers to earth, they cried "Away with him, he is not fit to live ; " and the body, that mere mist-hke, 294 KEATS. that mere shadow-like body, already failing before the fervency of his spiritual function^; fell, " faded away, dissolved," and disappeared before the bitter frost-wind of base criticism. It was a dark and wretched time when Keats made his appearance amongst us. War, and party, and peculation on the one side, and resentment and discontent on the other ; the necessity for the gainer maintaining his craft at all costs, and the equal necessity for the loser dragging this ruinous craft to the ground, had infused into literature an atrocious spirit. From this foul spn-it, genius, in every fresh incarnation, suffered the most ruthless and inhuman assaults. The stronger possessor of it stood ; the weaker or more sensitive fell. Keats was one of the latter. He had soul enough for anything, but his physiqtte was feeble, and sunk. It will be one of the " damning spots " which will for ever cling, not to the country, but to the age. But it is to the everlasting honour of Leigh Hunt, that, himself a critic as well as a poet, he never dipped his hand in the blood of the innocents. He never slew one of those martyrs whose glorious tombs we now build with adamantine stones of admiration, temper- ing the cement with the tears of our love. Himself assailed, and shot at, and cruelly wounded by the archers, he not only turned and manfully defended himself, but spread the shield of his heai-t to protect those who were rising up to become formidable rivals in the public regard. It is a glory that is peculiar, and peculiarly beautiful, that amid that iron age of a murderous criticism, he was for ever found in close union and communion with the morning stars of poetry. They truly " sang together." They seemed by an instinct of life to flock to him, and by an instinct equally sure and unselfish he felt at once their claims, and with open hand and heart maintained them. It was in the pages of the Examiner that, amid specimens of young poets, I first made acquaintance with the magnificent sonnet of Keats on reading Chapman's Homer, and with Shelley's Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. From that hour there could be no question but that great men were come amongst us ; those men who, in fact, " turn the world upside down," and by which turning upside down, the only process, the asps and scorpions of malice are shook out of it, and all its strong-rooted fabrics of prejudice and pride are toppled into the dust. Till death, the souls of these men never ceased to maintain that brave union thus begun, but amid abuse, misrepresentation, and the vilest onslaughts from the army of the aliens, went on blessing the world with those emanations of splendid and imshackled thought, which are now recognised as amongst the most precious of the national property. Who in future days wiU not pray that he might have been as one of these ? It is to the account by Leigh Hunt, in his " Byron and some of his Contemporaries," that we owe almost aU that we know of the hfe and haunts of Keats. From this we learn that " Mr. Keats's origin was of the humblest description. He was born October 29, 1796, at a Uvery stables in Moorfields, of which his grandfather was pro- prietor. He never spoke of it — perhaps out of a personal soreness which the world had exasperated After receiving the rudiments of KEATS. £P5 a classical education at Mr. Clarke's school at Enfield, he was bound apprentice to Mr. Hammond, a surgeon, in Church-street, Edmonton ; and his enemies having made a jest even of this, he did not like to be reminded of it ; at once disdaining them for their meanness, and himself for being weak enough to be moved by them. Mr. Clarke, jun., his schoolmaster's son, a reader of genuine discernment, had encouraged with great warmth the genius that he saw in the young poet ; and it was to Mr. Clarke I was indebted for my acquaintance with him." Mr. Hunt, in his warm-hearted way, lost no time in introducing his poetry to the best judges of poetry, amongst them to Godwin, Hazlitt, Basil Montagu, Charles Lamb, and others. He read to them, amongst others, that fine sonnet already mentioned, — " ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER, " Much have I travelled in the realms of goUl, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen, Round many western islands have I been, Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold ; Oft of one wide expanse had I been told. That (leep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did 1 never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Cliapman speak out loud and bold. Then felt I like some watclier of the skies, When a new planet swims into his ken. Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific — and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise, Silent, upon a peak in Darien." The two poets became speedily familiar and almost inseparable. They read, walked, and talked together continually ; and Mr. Hunt gives us various particulars of Keats's haunts at this period which are nowhere else to be obtained. " The volume containing the above sonnet," he says, " was published in 1817, when the author was in his twenty-first year. The poem with which it begins was suggested to him by a delightful summer day, as he stood beside the gate that leads from the battery on Hampstead Heath into a field by Caen Wood ; and the last poem, the one on Sleep and Poetry, was occa- sioned by his sleeping in one of the cottages in the Vale of Health, the first one that fronts to the valley, beginning from the same quarter. I mention these things, which now look trivial, because hi.s readers will not think them so twenty years hence. It was in the beautiful lane running from the road between Hampstead and High- gate to the foot of Highgate Hill, that meeting me one day he first gave me the volume. If the admirer of Mr. Keats's poetry does not know the lane in qtiestion, he ought to become acquainted with it, both on his author's account and its own. It has been also paced by ]\[r. Lamb and Mr. Hazlitt, and frequently, like the rest of the beautiful neighbotu-hood, by !Mr. Coleridge ; so that instead of Millficld-lane, which is the name it is known by ' on earth,' it has sometimes been called Poet's-Iane, which is an apjiellation it richly deserves. It divides the grounds of Lords Mansfield and South- ampton, running through trees and sloping meadows, and being rich 296 KEATS. in the botany for ■which this part of the neighbourhood of London has always been celebrated." IMr. Hunt was at this time living at Hampstead, in the Vale of Health, and the house at which it is said Keats wrote the beautiful poem on Sleep and Poetry was his. There is another fact in this account that deserves attention, and that is, the date of the publi- cation of Keats's first small volume. This was 1817; in 1818 he published his Endymion ; on the 26th of June, 1820, his third volume, Lamia and other Poems, was published ; and on the 27th of December of the same year he died at Rome. Thus the whole of his poetical life, from the issue of his first small volume to his death, was but about three years. During the greater part of that period he felt his disease, consumption, was mortal. Yet what progress in the development of his powers, and the maturing of his judgment and feeling of art, was manifested in that short space and under those circumstances ! The first volume was a volume of immature fancies and iinsettled style, but with things which denoted the glorious dawn of a short but illustrious day. The Endymion had much extravagance. It was a poetical effervescence. The mind of the writer was haunted by crowds of imaginations, and scenes of wonder, and dreams of beauty, chiefly from the old mythological world, but mingled with the passion for living nature, and the warmest feelings of youth. It brought for- ward the deities of Greece, and invested them with the passions and tenderness of men, and all the youthful glow which then reigned in the poet's heart. The mind was pouring over from intense fer- mentation, but amid the luscious foam rose streams of the richest wine of poetry which ever came from the vintage of this world. The next volume. Lamia, Isabella, &c. showed how the heady liquor had cleared itself, and become spirit bright and strong. There was an aim, a settled plan and purpose, in each composition, and a steady power of judgment gi-owing up amid all the vivid impulses of the brain that stiU remained vivid as ever. The style was wonderfully condensed, and the descriptive as well as conceptive faculty had assumed a vigour and acumen which was not, and is not, and pro- bably never will be, surpassed by any other poet. For proofs to justify these high terms, it is only necessary to open the little volume, and open it almost anywhere. How powerful and tender is the narrative of Isabella: how rich and gorgeous and chaste and well weighed is the whole of St. Agnes' Eve : how full of the soul of poetry is the Ode to the Nightingale ! Perhaps there is no poet, hviug or dead, except Shakspeare, who can pretend to anything hke the felicity of epithet which characterises Keats. One word or phrase is the essence of a whole description or sentiment. It is like the dull substance of the earth struck through by electric fires and converted into veins of gold and diamonds. For a piece of j^erfect and inventive description, that passage from Lamia, where — Lycius gone to bid the guests to his wedding — Lamia in her uneasy excite- ment employs herself and her demon powers in adorning her palace, is unrivalled. KEATS. 297 " It was the custom then to brinfr away The bride from home at hhishin^ shut of day, Veiled, in a chariot, lieralded along By strewn flowers, torches and a marriage song, AVith other pageants ; but this fair unknown Had not a friend. So being left alone — Lycius was gone to summon all liis kiii^ And knowing surely she could never win His foolish heart from its mad pompousness, She set herself, high-thoughted, how to dress The misery in fit magnificence. She did so; but 'tis doubtful how and whence Came, and who were her subtle servitors. About the halls, and to and from the doors, Tliere was a noise of wings, till in short space The glaring banquet-room shone with widc-arclied grace. A haunting music, sole, perhaps, and iuue Supportress of the fairy roof, made moan Throughout, as fearful the whole charm might fade. Fresh carved cedar mimicking a glade Of palm and plantain, met from either side High in the midst, in honour of the bride. Two palms, and then two plantains, and so on. From either side their stems branclied one to one All down the aisled place; and beneath all There ran a stream of lamps straight on from wall to wall. So canopied lay an untasted feast Teeming with odours. Lamia, regal drest, Silently paced ahout, and as she went. In pale contented sort of discontent. Missioned her viewless servants to enrich The fretted splendour of each nook and niche : Between the tree-stems, marbled plain at first. Came jasper panels ; then, anon tliere burst Forth creeping imagery of slighter trees. And with the larger wove in small intricacies. Approving all, she faded at self-will, And shut the chamber up, close, hushed, and still. Complete and ready for the revels rude, When dreadful guests would come to spoil her solitude." The description of Lamia undergoing the metamorphosis by which she escaped from the form of a serpent to that of a beautiful woman, is marvellous for its power and precision of language. " Left to herself, the serpent now began To change : her elfin blood in madness ran. Her mouth foamed, and the grass, therewith bespent. Withered at dew so sweet and virulent. Her eyes in torture fi.xed, and anguish drear. Hot, glazed, and wide, with lid-lashes all star. Flashed phosjihor and sharp sparks, without one cooling tear. The colours all inflamed throughout her train. She writhed ahout convulsed with scarlet pain: A deep, volcanian yellow took the place Of all her milder mooned body's grace ; And as the lava ravishes the mead. Spoilt all her silver mail, and golden brcde ; Made gloom of all her frecklings, streaks, and bars, Eclipsed her crescents, and licked up her stars : So tliat in moments few she was undrest Of all her sapphires, greens, and ametliyst. And rubious argent ; of all these bereft, Nothing but pain and ugliness was left. Still shone her crown ; that vanished, also she Melted and disappeared as suddenly ; And in the air her new voice luting soft Cried ' Lycius, gentle Lycius ! '— Borire aloft With the bright mists about the mountains hoar These words dissolved ; Crete's foreits heard no more." 298 KKATS. The most magnificent trophy of his genius, however, is the fragment of Hyperion. On this poem, which has something vast, colossal, and dreamy about it, giving you a conception of the unfoldings of an almost infinite scope of " the vision and the faculty divine " in this extraordinary youth, he was employed when the progress of his com- plaint, and the savage treatment of the critics, sunk his heart, and he abandoned the task, and went forth to die. How touching under the circumstances is the short preface affixed to this volume by the publishers ! — " If any apology be thought necessary for the appear- ance of the unfinished poem of Hyperion, the publishers beg to state that they alone are responsible, as it was printed at their pai'ticular request, and contrary to the wish of the author. The poem was intended to have been of equal length with Endtmion, but the reception given to that work discouraged the author from proceeding." Can a critic even read the passage without some com- punction ? and who shall again repeat the stale sophism that unkind criticism never extinguished genuine poetry ? Mr. Hunt says of Keats, that " he enjoyed the usual privileges of greatness with all whom he knew, rendering it delightful to be obliged by him, and an equal, but not a greatei', to oblige. It was a pleasure to his friends to have him in their houses, and he did not grudge it." He was som-etimes a regular inmate with Mr. Hunt at Kentish Town, and used to ramble about the sweet walks of Hampstead and Highgate to his heart's content. "When Endymion was published, he was living at Hampstead with his friend Charles Brown, who at- tended him most aii'ectionately through a long and severe illness, and with whom, to their great mutual enjoyment, he had taken a journey into Scotland. The lakes and mountains of the North delighted him exceedingly. He beheld them with an epic eye. Afterwards he went into the South, and luxuriated in the Isle of Wight." He was, also, in Devonshire. The preface to his Endymion is dated from Teignmouth. On Mr. Brown's leaving England a second time, "Mr. Keats," says Leigh Hunt, " was too ill to accompany him, and came to reside with me, when his last and best volume of poems appeared, containing Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and the noble fragment of Hyperion. I remember Charles Lamb's delight and admiration on reading this work ; how pleased he was with the designation of Mercury as ' the star of Lethe,' rising, as it were, and ghttering when he came upon that pale region ; with the fine daring anticipation in that passage of the second poem, — ' So the two brothers and their murdered : Rode past fair Florence ; ' and with the description, at once delicate and gorgeous, of Agnes praying beneath the painted window." This must have been immediately before the young poet quitted England in the vain quest of health. There is a very affecting passage in Mr. Hunt's brief memoir of him, which shows what was KEATS. 299 the state of mind of this fine young poet at this crisis. The hunter had stricken him, death was busy with him, and the pain of afi-'ec- tions miassured of a return was helping his other enemies to pull him down. " Seeing him once," says Mr. Hunt, " change countenance in a manner more alarming than usual, as he stood silently eyeing the country out of the window, I pressed him to let me know how he felt, in order that he might enable me to do what I could for him ; upon which he said, that his feelings were almost more than he could bear, and that he feared for his senses. 1 proposed that we should take a coach and ride about the country togethei*, to vary, if possible, the immediate impression, which was sometimes all that was formidable, and would come to nothing. He acquiesced, and was restored to himself. It was, nevertheless, on the same day, sitting on the bench in Well-walk, at Hampstead, nearest the heath, that he told me, with unaccustomed tears in his eyes, that ' his heart was breaking.' A doubt, however, was upon him at that time, which lie aftenvards had reason to know was groundless ; and during his residence at the last house that he occupied before he went abroad, he was at times more than tranquil." This house, it appears, was in Wentworth-pkce, Downshire-hill, Hampstead, by Pond-street ; and at the next door lived the young lady to whom he was engaged. Mr. Hunt accompanied Keats and this young lady to the place of embarkation in a coach, and saw them part. It was a most trying moment. Neither of them enter- tained a hope to see each other again in life, yet each endeavoured to subdue the feelings of such a moment to the retention of outward composure. Keats was accompanied on his voyage by that excellent artist, Mr. Severn, and who, to quote again the same competent au- thority, possessed all that could recommend him for a companion ; —old acquaintanceship, great animal spirits, active tenderness, and a mind capable of appreciating that of a poet. They fii'st went to Kaples, and afterwards to Rome, where they occupied the same house, at the corner of the Piazza di Spagna. Mr. Severn made several sketches of Keats, both on the voyage and at Rome, and while there finished a portrait of him for the late Lord Jefi'rey, who had spoken handsomely of him in the Edinburgh Review. At Rome, on the 27th of December, 1S20, as already stated, John Keats died in the arms of his friend, completely worn out, at the age of twenty- four, and longing for release. How the circumstances of this life- weariness reminds us of his longing for death ia his inimitable Ode to the Nightingale ! " Oh for a draught of vintage that hath been Cooled a long age in the deep-delvt-d earth, Ta-iting of Flora and the country green ; Dance and I'rovenfal song, and sunburnt mirth ! Oh for a beaker full of the warm south, Full of the true, tlie blushful Ilippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim. And purple-stained mouth ! That 1 might drink, and leave the world unseen. And with thee fade away into the forest dim ; — 300 KEATS. " Fado faraway, dissolve, and quite forget Wliat thou among the leaves liast never knovcn, The weariness, the lever, and tlie fret. Here, where men sit and liear eacli other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs ; Where youth grows pale, and spectre thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full oi sorrow, And leaden-eyed despairs : Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new love pine at them beyond to-morrow." " A little before he died, lie said that he ' felt the daisies growing over him.' But he made a still more touching remark respecting his epitaph. ' If any,' said he, ' were put over him, he wished it to consist of nothing but these words : — Here lies one whose name was writ in water ;' — so little did he think of the more than promise he had given ; of the fine and lasting things he had added to the stock of poetry. The physicians expressed their astonishment that he had held out so long ; the lungs turning out, on inspection, to have been almost obliterated. They said he must have lived upon the mere strength of the spirit within him. He was interred in the Enghsh burying-ground at Rome, near the monument of Caius Cestius, where his friend and poetical mourner, Mr. Shelley, was shortly to join him." Such is the brief but deeply interesting account of John Keats, drawr mostly from the written narrative, and partly from the con- versation of his true friend and fellow-poet. It is not possible to close it in more just or appropriate words than those of this admiring but discriminating friend : — " So much for the mortal life of as true a man of genius as these latter times have seen ; one of those who are too genuine and too original to be properly appreciated at first, but whose time for applause will infallibly arrive with the many, and has already begun in all poetical quarters." PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. Keats was the martyr of poetry, but Shelley was the martyr of opinion. Keats dared to write in a new vein, to disregard all the old canons of criticism, to pour out his heart, and all his ftmcies, in that way only which seemed naturally to belong to them ; and this Wixs cause enough to bring down upon him the vengeance of all the rule-and-line men of literature. But, besides this, Keats kept sus- picious company. Hunt and Shelley were notorious radicals ; and Hiuit and Shelley were his friends. "Tell me what company you keep, and I will tell you what you are," is an old proverb, and was in John Kcats's case most promptly applied. But Shelley was perhaps the most daring as he was the most splendid offender of modern times. Born of a good family, educated in the highest schools of orthodoxy, it was to the j^ublic, which looked for a new champion of the old state of things, a most exasperating circumstance that, in his very teens, he should set all these expectations, and all tlio pros- pects of his own worldly advantage, at defiance, and boldly avow himself the champion of atheism. The fact is every way to be deplored. It became the source of blight and misery to himself through his whole life. It alienated his friends and f\imily ; it occa- sioned an excitement of fiery bigotry and party wi-ath, which, in their united virulence, were poured upon his head, and destroying 302 SHELLEY. the sale of his works, greatly dispirited him, and so diminished the amount, and perhaps in no slight degree the joyous and buoyant spirit of what he did write. Who shall say, wonderful as are the works of Shelley, all accomplished amid ill-health and the bitterest persecutions, before the age of thirty, and most of them before the age of twenty-six, what he would have produced, had he written with the encouraging feeling of a generous public "with him ? And when we regard the whole affair impartially, it was the pubhc which was really the greatest offender after all. On the part of Shelley, it was a rash and boyish action. It was the act of a really fine and noble spirit led away, and so far led wrong, by its impetuous indig- nation against poi^ular delusions and impositions. He was not the first man, nor will he be the last, whom the spirit of a virtuous zeal precipitates into an offence against virtue itself. In him it was meant to be no such thing. He was honest as he was zealous, and the world ought to have respected his honesty if it could not his opinions. It should have endeavoured to show him by calm and sound reason, that he was wrong as to the existence of a God, and by its charity and forbearance, that Christianity was true. There can be little doubt what effect a wise conduct like this would have had on a nature like his. As it was, spite of all the outrageous cries of infidel, blasphemer, and atheistic wretch, with which he was pursued, time showed a wonderful change in his opinions on these matters. The world should have recollected that it professed to be a Chris- tian world, and it should not have let the spirit and conduct of the infidel put it to shame by its superior liberality and goodness. Our Saviour nowhere preached or commanded persecution, but to bless those who curse us, and do good to those who hate us and despite- fully use us. The world did not do thus ; it left poor Shelley to show this conduct to it. Christ left a glorious example to all time — why is the Christian world blind to it 1 He declared a glorious doctrine on the treatment of unbelievers — why is the world deaf to it 1 He declared that he was come to seek and save that ■vrhich was lost, and to die for the conversion of those who mocked and denied him. He nowhere left us the whip, the gag, or the sword of extermination. He brought no such things with him out of heaven, but the great corrector — patience, the great weapon — charity. When his disciples ran and called upon him to silence those who performed miracles, and yet did not foUow him, he gave a reply which never should be forgotten while the sun rises and sets ; — " Let them alone ; ye know not what manner of spirit ye ai-e of." It was SheUey who showed the spirit of the Chi-istian, and the so-called Christian world the spirit of the infidel. Shelley, indeed, was a good and noble creature. He had, spite of his scepticism, clearly and luminously stamped on his fz-ont the highest marks of a Christian ; for the grand distinction appointed by Christ was — love. Shelley was a Christian spite of himself. We learn from aU who knew him that the Bible was his most favourite SHELLET. 303 book. He venerated the character of Christ, and no man more fully carried out his precepts. His dehght was to do good, to comfort and assist the poor. It was his zeal for truth and for the good of man- kind, which led him, in his indignation against those who oppressed them and imposed upon them, to leap too far in his attack on those enemies, and pass the borders which divide truth from error. For his conscientious opinion he sacrificed ease, honour, the world's esteem, fortune, and friendship. Never was there so generous a friend, so truly and purely poetical a nature. Others are poets in their books and closets ; the poet's soul in him was the spirit of all hours and all occasions. His conduct to his friend Hunt was a mag- nificent example of this. Mr. Hunt himself tells us that he at once presented him with fourteen hundred pounds to free him from em- barrassments, and he meant to do more, an intention which his sou has nobly remembered. Where are the censorious zealots who can show like deeds 1 " He was," says Mr. Hunt, " pious towards nature, towards his friends, towards the whole human race, towards the meanest insect of the forest. He did himself an injustice with the public in using the popular name of the Supreme Being inconsider- ately. He identified it solely with the vulgar and tyrannical notions of a God, made after the worst human fashion, and did not suffi- ciently reflect that it was often used by a juster devotion to express a sense of the gi-eat Mover of the universe." The same generous, enthusiastic spirit was the living and glowing principle of his poetry. With an imagination capable of soaring into the highest and most ethereal regions, and drawing thence most gorgeous colours, and most sublime, spiritual, and beautiful imagery, he preached love and tenderness to the whole family of man, except to tyrants and impostors. For liberty of every kind he was ready to die. For knowledge, and truth, and kindness, he desired only to live. He was a rare instance of the union of the finest moral nature and the finest genius. If he erred, the world took ample vengeance upon him for it ; while he conferred in return his amplest blessing on the world. It was long a species of heresy to mention his name in society — that is passing fast away. It was next said that he never could become popular, and therefore the mischief he could do was limited. Ho is become popular, and the good that he is likely to do will be unlimited. The people read him ; though we may wonder at it, they comprehend him, — at least so far as the principles of freedom and progress are concerned ; and in these he will not lead them astray. He is the herald of advance, and every year must fix him more widely and firmly in men's hearts. How truly does he describo himself and his mission in Laon, the poet of the Revolt of Islam : — *' Yes, from the records of my youthful state, And from the lore of bards and sa(,'es old, From whatsoe'er my wakened thoughts create, Out of the hopes of thine aspiring's bold, JIave I collected language to unfold Truth to my countrymen ; from shore to shore Doctrines of human power my words liave told ; They have been lieard, and men asjiire to more 'Chan they have ever gained, or ever lost of yore. 304 SHELLEY. ■' In secret cl'.ambers parents read, and weep, My writings to tlieir bal)es, no longer blind ; And young men gather when their tyrants sleep, And vows of faith e^ich to the other bind ; And marriageable maidens, who have pined With love, till life seemed melting through their look, A warmer zeal, a nobler hope now find ; And every bosom thus is rapt and shook. Like autumn's myriad leaves in one swoln mountain brook. " Kind thoughts, and mighty hopes, and gentle deeds, Abound, for fearless love, and the pure law Of mild equality and peace succeeds To faiths which long have held the world in awe. Bloody, and false, and cold : — as whirlpools draw All wrecks of ocean to their chasm, the sway Of thy strong genius, Laon, which foresaw This hope, compels all spirits to obey, Which round thy secret strength now throng in wide array." This extraordinary man, and the most purely poetic genius of his age, scarcely excepting Keats ; this great and fearless, and yet benign apostle of freedom, whose influence on succeeding ages it is impos- sible to calculate, mixed, it is true, with a sceptical leaven deej^ly to be deplored, was a descendant of a true poetic hne, that of Sir Philip Sidney. He was born at Field-place, in Sussex, on the 4th of August, 1792. He was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley, Bart., of Castle- Goring in that county ; and his son, Percy Florence Shelley, now bears the family title. His family connexions belonged to the Whig aristocrats of the House of Commons ; and Mr. Hunt has, in the circumstances of such birth and connexion, hit perhaps upon the fact which solve? the mystery of a mind like Shelley's rushing into the extreme course he did. "To a man of genius," he observes, " endowed with a metaphysical acuteness to discern truth and false- hood, and a strong sensibility to give way to his sense of it, such an origin, however respectable in the ordinary point of view, was not the very luckiest that could have happened for the purpose of keejiing him within ordinary bounds. With what feelings is truth to open its eyes upon this world, amongst the most respectable of our mere party gentry 1 Among licensed contradictions of all sorts ? Among the Christian's doctrines and the worldly practices ? Among fox- hunters and their chaplains 1 Among beneficed loungers, noli-epis- copalian bishops, rakish old gentlemen, and more startling young ones, who are old in the folly of knowiugness ? In short, among all those professed demands of what is right and noble, mixed with real inculcations of what is wrong and full of hypocrisy ? * * * Mr. Shelley began to think at a very early age, and to think too of these anomalies. He saw that at every step in life some compromise was expected between the truth which he was told he was not to violate, and a colouring and a double meaning of it, which forced him upon the violation." This is, no doubt, the great secret of both the noble resolve of Shelley to burst at once loose from this conventional labyrinth, and of the length to which the impetus of his effort carried him. He saw that truth and falsehood were so intimately mixed in all the education, life, and purposes of the class by which he was surrounded, SHELLEY. 305 that he suspected the same mixture in everything ; and the vei-y effort necessaiy to clear himself of this state of things, plunged him into the natural result of rejecting indiscriminately, in the case of Christianity, the grain with the chaff. At every school to which he was sent, he found the same system existing. Education was moulded to a gi-eat national plan, to a future support of a church and a party. The noble heart of the boy rebelled against this sacrifice of truth to interest, and I believe at every school to which he went, showed a firm resolve never to bend to it. He was brought up for the first seven or eight years in the retirement of Field-place with his sisters, receiving the same education as they ; and hence, it is stated, he never showed the least taste for the sports or amusements of boys. Captain Medwin, who is a relative, teUs us that it was not Eton, but Sion House, Brentford, to which he alludes in his introductory stanzas to the Revolt of Islam. Medwin was SheUey's school-fellow there, and says, " this place was a perfect hell to SheUey. His pu).'(? and virgin mind was shocked by the language and manners of his new companions ; but though forced to be with them, he was not of them." "Tyranny," continues he, " generally produces tyranny in common minds, — not so with Shelley. Doubtless much of his hatred of oppression may be attributed to what he saw and suffered at this school ; and so odious was the recollection of the place to both ol us, that we never made it a subject of conversation in after life. He was, as a schoolboy, exceedingly shy, bashful, and reserved ; indeed, though peculiarly gentle and elegant and refined in his manners, he never entirely got rid of his diffidence — and who would have wished he should ? With the character of true genius, he was ever modest, humble, and prepared to acknowledge merit wherever he found it, without any desire to shine himself by making a foil of others." Yet it was this gentle and shy boy, who had so early resolved to be "just, and free, and mild," that was roused by his sense of truth, and his abhon'ence of oppression, to make the most bold and deter- mined stand against unjust and degrading customs, however sanc- tioned by time, place, or persons. At Eton, whither he went at the age of thirteen, he rose up stoutly in opposition to the system of fagging. He organized a conspiracy against it, and for a time com- pelled it to pause. While thus resisting school tyr£«iny, he was i-eading deeply German romances and poetry ; and to Burger's Leonora, and the ghost stories and legends of the Black Forest, has been traced his fondness for the romantic, the marvellous, and the mystic. His mind was rapidly unfolding, and to the high pitch of his moral nature and aims, these stanzas from the dedication to the Revolt of Islam bear touching testimony : — " Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear friend, when first The clouds that wrap this world from youth did pass. I do remember well the hour which burst My spirit's sleep : a fresh May-dawn it was AVheu I walked forth upoi\ the glittering grass And wppt, I knew not why; until there rose From the near school-room, voices, that, alasl Were but one echo Irom a world of woes, The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. X 306 SHELLEY. •' And then I clasped my hands, and looked around — But none was near to mark my streaming eyes. Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground. — So without shame I spake, ' I will be wise, And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies Such power; for I grow weary to behold The selfish and the strong still tyrannize Without reproach or check.' I then controlled My tears ; my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold. " And from that hour did I with earnest thought, Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore ; Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught I cared to learn ; but from that secret store Wrought linked armour for my soul, before It might walk forth to war among mankind." This war began in earnest at Oxford. He had left Eton, it is nn- der.stood, before the usual time, and in consequence of his resistance to the practices which he there found inconsistent with his ideas of self-respect : what was to be hoped from Oxford ? The contest into which he soon fell with the Principal of University College, on theo- logical and metaphysical que.stions, quickly led to his expulsion. No circumstance in his history has made so much noise as this ; on it turned the whole character of his destiny. He was expelled on a charge of atheism. In the New Monthly Magazine for 1 833 is given " The History of Shelley's Expulsion from Oxford." From this account, nothing could have been more unfeeling and tyrannical than the conduct of the Principal on this occasion. It appears that SheUey and some of his companions had indulged themselves in puzzling the logicians. They had made a careful analysis of Locke on the Human Understanding, and Hume's Essays, particularly the latter, as was customary with those who read the Ethics, and other treatises of Aiistotle, for their degrees. They printed a syllabus of these, and challenged, not only the heads of houses, but others to answer them. " It was," says the writer, " never offered for sale ; it was not ad- dressed to the general reader, but to the metaphysician alone ; and it was so short, that it only designed to point out the line of argu- ment. It was, in truth, a general issue ; a compendious denial of every allegation, in order to put the whole case in proof. It was a formal mode of saying, — you offer so and so, then prove it ; and thus it was understood by his more candid and intelligent cor- respondents. • As it was shorter, so it was plainer, and perhaps, in order to provoke discussion, a httle bolder than Hume's Essays, a book which occupies a conspicuous place in the library of every student. The doctrine, if it deserve the name, was preciselj' similar ; the necessary and inevitable consequence of Locke's philosophy, and of the theory that all knowledge is from without. I will not admit your conclusions, his opponent might say ; then you must deny those of Hume ; I deny them ; but you must deny those of Locke also ; and we will go back together to Plato. Such was the usual course of argument ; sometimes, however, he rested on mere denial, holding his adversary to strict proof, and deriving strength from his weak- ness. The young Platonist argued thus negatively through the love of argument, and because he found a noble joy in the fierce shock of SHELLEY. 307 contending minds. He loved truth, and sought it everywhere, and at all hazards, frankly and boldly, hke a man who deserved to find it ; but he also dearly loved victory in debate, and warm debate for its own sake. Never was there a more unexceptionable disputant. He was eager beyond the most ardent, but never angi-y and never personal ; he was the only arguer I ever knew who drew every argu- ment from the nature of the thing, and who never could be provoked to descend to personal contentions." — P. 25 of Part II. This is a very different thing to the foul and offensive statement put forth to the world, that Shelley avowedly, with his name, put forth a pamjihlet on atheism, challenging the whole bench of bishops to refute it, for the sake and from the mere love of atheism. Not less disgraceful was the manner of his expulsion. He was suspected of this pamphlet ; it is said that " a pert, meddhng tutor of a college of inferior note, a man of an insalubrious and inauspicious aspect," had secretly denounced him to the master as the author of it ; and that for this piece of treason, he was, as he hoped, speedily enriched with the most splendid benefices, and finaUy made a bishop ! The master himself is described by a third party, as a man possessing neither intellect nor erudition. " I thank God," he adds, " that I have never seen that man since ; he is gone to his bed, and there let him sleep. While he hved he ate freely of the scholai-'s bread, and drank freely of his cup ; and he was sustained throughout the whole term of his existence, whoUy and most nobly, by those sacred funds that were consecrated by our pious forefathers to the advancement of learning. If the vengeance of the all-patient and long-contemned God can ever be roused, it wiU surely be by some such sacrilege ! " But let us see in what manner this swollen Boeotian ox dealt with this ardent yet gentle striphng of seventeen — for let it be remem- bered he was only of that age, — and let us see what was the condition of the university at that time, in which it was made a mortal offence in a young and zealous spuit to dispute metaphysical points. " Whether such disputations," says the writer in the New INIonthly, " were decorous or profitable may be perhaps doubtful ; there can be no doubt, however, since the sweet gentleness of Shelley was easily and instantly swayed by the mild influences of friendly admo- nition, that had even the least dignified of his elders suggested the propriety of pursuing his metaphysical inquiries with less ardour, his obedience would have been prompt and perfect. Not onh' had all salutary studies been long neglected at Oxford at that time, and all wholesome discipline fallen into decay, but the splendid endow- ments of the university were grossly abused. The resident autho- rities of the college were, too often, men of the lowest origin ; or mean and sordid souls ; destitute of every literary attainment, except that brief and narrow course of reading by which the degree was attained ; the vulgar sons of vulgar fathers ; without hberality, and wanting the manners and sympathies of gentlemen. A total neglect of all learning, an unseemly turbulence, the most monstrous irregu- larities, open and habitual drunkenness, vice, and violence, were tolerated or encouraged with the Isasest sycophancy, that the prospect 2 2 308 SHELLEY. of perpetual licentiousness might fiU the colleges with young men of fortune. Whenever the rarely-exercised power of coercion was ex- ercised, it demonstrated the utter incapacity of our un^vorthy rulers, by coarseness, ignorance, and injustice. If a few gentlemen were admitted to fellowships, they were always absent ; they were not persons of literary pretensions, or distinguished by scholarship, and they had no share in the government of the college." — P. 26. It is fitting that the world should know how and by whom Shelley was expelled from Oxford. Let us see the manner in which it was done. " As the term was drawing to a close, and a great part of the books we were reading together still remained unfinished, we had agreed to increase our exertions, and to meet at an early hour. It was a fine spring morning on Lady-day in the year 1811, when I went to Shelley's rooms : he was absent ; but before I had collected our books he rushed in. He was terribly agitated. I anxiously inquired what had happened. ' I am expelled,' he said, as soon as he had recovered himself a little. ' I am expelled ; I was sent for suddenly a few minutes ago ; I went to the common room, where ] found our master, and two or three of the fellows. The master produced a copy of the little syllabus, and asked me if I were the author of it. He spoke in a rude, abrupt, and insolent tone. 1 begged to be informed for what purpose he put the question. No answer was given ; but the master loudly and angrily repeated — " Are you the author of this book 1 " " If I can judge from youi manner," I said, " you are resolved to punish me, if I should acknow- ledge that it is my work. If you can prove that it is, produce your evidence ; it is neither just nor lawful to interrogate me in such a case and for such a purpose. Such proceedings would become a court of inquisitors, but not free men in a free country." " Do you choose to deny that this is your composition ?" the master reiterated, in the same rude and angry voice.' "Shelley complained much of his violent and ungentlemanlike deportment, saying, ' I have experienced tyranny and injustice before, and I well know what vulgar insolence is ; but I never met with such unworthy treatment. 1 told him calmly, but firmly, that I was resolved not to answer any questions respecting the publi- cation on the table.' ' Then,' said he, furiously, ' you are expelled ; and I desire you will quit the college early to-morrow morning at the latest.' " A regular sentence of expulsion, ready drawn up in due form, was handed to him, under the seal of the college. So monstrous and illegal did the outrage seem to one of Shelley's fellow-students, that he immediately wrote a remonstrance to the master and fellows against it, declaring that he himself, or any one else in that college, might just as well be treated in the same manner. The consequence was that he n-as immediately treated in the same manner. He was called before this tribunal. " The angiy and troubled air," he says, in a statement communicated to the writer of the article, "of men assembled to commit injustice, according to established forms, was SHELLEY. 309 new to me ; but a native instinct told me, as soon as I entered the room, that it was an affair of party ; that whatever could conciliate the favour of patrons was to be done without scruple ; and what- ever could tend to prevent preferment was to be brushed away without remorse." The same question was put to him, he refused to answer it. and he was also expelled with the same summary violence. Thus were Shelley and another youth of eighteen expelled and branded for life with the stigma of atheism. They were expelled simply because they refused to criminate themselves, and the boast of a virtuous zeal against atheism was trumpeted abroad, which soon raised one man to a bishopric, and others, no doubt, to what they wanted. So are sacrificed the rare spirits of the earth for the worldly benefit of the hogs of Epicurus. If all youths were treated thus brutally at that age when doubts beset almost every man, and more especially the earnest and inquiring, what would become of our finest and noblest characters ! When men begin to study the grounds of theology, they must study, too, what is advanced by the opposers. The consequence is at once, that all that has been re- ceived as fact by unquestioning boyhood falls to the ground, and they have to begin again, and test through doubts and anxieties, and amid the menaces of despair, all the evidence on which our faith is built. Seize on any one of these inquirers at this peculiar crisis, and expel him for atheism, and, if he be a man of quick feelings, and a high spirit, you will pretty certainly make him that for which you have stigmatized him. His pride will unite with his doubts to fix him, to petrify him, as it were, into incurable imbelief It would be a brutal and murderous procedure. Such procedure had the worst efiect on Shelley. The consequences were a sort of re- jjudiation of him by his father and family, who had built the highest worldly hopes on his talents. There was a fierce hue aad cry set up after him in the world, and the very next year saw him sit down and write Queen Mab. The actions of this portion of his life are the least defensible of any portion of it. He seemed restless, unhapj^y, and put into a more antagonistic temperament by his public expulsion from college, which he felt more deeply than was natural to him, or could have arisen, had he been treated differently. At this period he made his first unfortunate marriage, with a young woman of humble station, and, as it proved, of very imcon- genial mind. They separated, and in her distress sae, some time afterwards, drowned herself. Differing as I do most widely from Shelley, both in his ideas regarding Christianity and marriage, it is but just to say that they who knew him best, and his second wife, the celebrated daughter of celebrated parents, Godwin and Mary Wolstancroft, most emphatically assert their assurances that " in all lie did, at the time of doing it, he believed himself justified to his conscieuce, while the various ills of poverty, and the loss of friends, brought home to him the sad realities of life.'' For his errors at this period, the direct fruits of the desolating outrages on his seu- 310 SHEIiLET. sitive nature, above stated, he suftered deeply and severely. One of his biographers says, " Nobody could lament the catastrophe of his •wife's death more bitterly than he did. For a time it tore his being to pieces." For about two years after his wife's death he seemed to be wan- dering about in quest of rest, and not finding it. He was at one time at the Lakes on a pilgrimage to Southey, of which, when Coleridge heard, he said, " Why did he not come to me ? I should have understood him." Most true. He was in London, and 90, Great Russell-street, oddly enough kept by a person named Godwin, and a corner house in Mabledon-place, next to Hastings-street, are known as lodgings of his. He was also in Dublin, and in North Wales, where, in the absence of his landloi-d, Mr. Maddocks, an extraordinary tide menacing his embankment against the sea, Shelley put his name at the head of a subscription paper for ,£500, and, carrying it round the neighbourhood, raised a sum sufficient to prevent this truly Roman work being destroyed. In 1814 he made a tour on the con- tinent, visiting France, Switzerland, the Reuss, and the Rhine, the magnificent scenery of which produced the most striking effects on his mind. In 1815 he made a tour along the southern coast of De- vonshire, and then renting a house on Bishopsgate heath, on the borders of Windsor forest, he spent the summer months in rumi- nating over the scenes he had visited, and produced there his poem of Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude. The next year he again visited the continent. He was now married to Mary Wolstancroft Godwin, who accompanied him. They fixed their residence for a time on the banks of the Lake of Geneva. Here Shelley and Lord Byron first met ; they had corresponded before, but here began that friendship which contributed so palpably to the purification and elevation of tone in the higher poetry of Byron. They seemed equally pleased with each other. Byron was occupying the Villa Diodati ; a name connected with Milton, and perhaps one of the noble poet's reasons for choosing it as a re- sidence. Shelley engaged one just below it, in a most sequestered spot. There was no access to it in a carriage, it stood only separated from the lake by a small garden, much overgrown by trees, and a pathway through the vineyard of Diodati communicated with it. The two poets entered deeply into poetical disquisition. Nothing could be more opposite than their natures, and their poetic ten- dencies. Shelley was all imagination ; Byron had a strong tendency to the actual, or to that which must tell upon the general mind : Shelley was purely spiritual ; Byron had much of the world in him : Shelley was all generosity ; Byron, with a great show of it, had a tremendous dash of the selfish. Still, they had many things in com- mon. They were fond of boating and pistol shooting ; they were persecuted by public opinion ; they had broken from all bonds of ordinary faith, and were free in discussion and speculation as the birds were in their flight over their heads. They rowed together round the lake, and were very near being lost in a storm upon it. They visited together ]\f eillerie and Clarens ; and the effect of the scenery SHELLEY. 311 on Shelley, with the Nouvelle Heloise in his hand, was entrancing. He visited also Lausanne, and while walking in the acaoia walk belonging to Gibbon's house, he could not help saying, " Gibbon had a cold and unimpassioned spirit. I never felt more inclination to rail at the prejudices which clung to such a thing, than now that Julie and Clarens, Lausanne and the Roman Empire, compel me to a contrast between Rousseau and Gibbon." His lines on the Bridge of Arve and his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty were written at this time. The poets and Mrs. Shelley were constantly together, out in the air, amid that sublime scenery, in tine weather, and in the evenings at each other's houses ; and, during a week of rain, they hoiTified themselves with German ghost stories, and gave a mutual challenge to write each one of their own. To this we owe the Vampire, which was, on its first appearance, attributed to Lord Byron ; but was in reahty written by his vain satelHte of a physician, Polidori. Byron wrote a story called The Marriage of Belphegor, which was to narrate the circumstances of his own, — as he was now smarting under the recent refusal of his wife to live with him ; but, on hearing from England that Lady Byron was ill, with an impulse that did him honour, he thrust it into the fire. What Shelley wrote does not appear, but the production of Mrs. Shelley was Frankenstein. On his retiu-n to England, in the autumn of that year, he had to endure the misery of his two children being taken from him by the Court of Chancei-y, on the gi'ound of his disbelief in revealed religion, and the authorship of Queen Mab, a work published without his consent. It was at this period that he went to live at Great Mar- lowe, in Buckinghamshire. Mrs. SheUey says : — " Shelley's choice of abode was fixed chiefly by this town being at no great distance from London, and its neighbourhood to the Thames. The poem of the Revolt of Islam was written in his boat, as it floated under the beech groves of Bisham, or during wanderings in the neighbouring country, which is distinguished for its pecxiliar beauty. The chalk hills break into cliffs that overhang the Thames, or form valleys clothed with beech. The wilder portion of the country is rendered beautiful by exuberant vegetation ; and the cultivated part is parti- cularly fertile. With all this wealth of nature, which, either in the form of gentlemen's parks, or soil dedicated to agi-iculture, flourishes arovmd, Marlowe was inhabited — I hope it is altered now — by a very poor population. The women are lace-makers, and lose their health by sedentary labour, for which they are very ill paid. The poor-laws ground to the dust not only the paupers, but those who had risen just above that state, and were obliged to pay poor-rates. The change produced by peace following a long war, and a bad harvest, brought with them the most heart-rending evils to the poor. Shelley afforded what alleviation he could. In winter, while bringing out his poem, he had a severe attack of ophthalmia, caught while visiting the cottages. I mention these things, for this minute and active sjrnpathy with his fellow-creatures gives a thousand-fold interest to his speculations, and stamps with reality his pleadings for the human race." 312 SHELLEY. Shelley does not seem to have had any acquaintance at Marlowe, or in the neighbourhood, — it was simply the charm of the country and the river here which attracted him ; but his friend Mr. Peacock, author of Headlong Hall, was residing there at the time, either drawn there by Shelley, or Shelley by him. Marlowe stands in a fine open valley, on the banks of the Thames. The river here is beautiful, running bankful through the most beautiful meadows, level as a bowling-gi'een, of the richest verdure, and of a fine, ample, airy extent. Beyond the river, these meadows are bounded by steep hiUs clothed with noble woods ; and a more charming scene for boating cannot be imagined. The gi'ass and flowers on the river margin overhang and dip lovingly into the waters, which, from running over a chalk bottom, are as transparent nearly as the air itself ; and at the various turns of the river new features of beauty salute you — impending woods, which invite you to land and stroll away into them ; solitary valleys, where house or man is not seen ; and then, again, cultivated farms, and hills covered with flocks. No wonder that Shelley was all summer floating upon this fine river, and luxuriating in the composition of his splendid poem. A httle below the town stands the village of Little Marlowe, with its grey church, and old manor-house, caUed Bisham Abbey, amid its fine trees ; and around, a lovely scene of the softly flowing, beautiful river, the level meads, and the hills and woods. On the other side of the town, the country is of that clear, bright aspect, with its tillage farms and isolated clumps of beech on swelhng hills, which always marks a chalk district. The town itself is small, and intensely quiet. The houses are low and clean looking, as if no smoke ever fell on them from the pure diaj^hanous air. It consists of three principal streets, something in the shape of the letter T, with some smaller ones. In passing along it, you would not suspect it of that intense poverty which Mrs. Shelley speaks of, though, from the wretched depression of the hand-lace-weaving, it may exist. The houses have a neat miniature look, and the people look cheerful, healthy, and the women of a very agreeable expression of countenance. Such was the spot where Shelley resided, eight-and-thirty years ago. His house was in the main street — a long stuccoed dwelling, of that species of nondescript architecture which once was thought Gothic, because it had pointed windows, and battlements. It must have been then a spacious and a very pleasant residence ; it is now, as is the lot of most places in which poets have lived, desolated and desecrated. It is divided into three tenements, a school, a private house, and a pothouse. I entered the latter, and with a strange feeling. In a large room with a -boarded floor, and which had pro- bably been Shelley's dining-room, was a sort of bar partitioned off, and a number of visitors were drinking on benches along the walls, which still bore traces, amid disfigurement and stains, of former taste. The garden behind had evidently been extensive, and very pleasant. There were remains of fine evergreen trees, and of a mound on which grew some deciduous cypresses, where had evidently stood a summer-house. This was gone. The garden was divided into as SHELLEY. 313 many portions as there were now tenants, and all evidences of care had vanished from it. Along the side of it, however, lay a fine open meadow, and the eye ran across this to some sweetly- wooded hills. It was a melancholy thing to go back to the time when Shelley, and his wife and friends, walked in this garden, enjoying it and its sur- rounding quiet scenery, and to reflect what had been the subsequent fate both of it and him. Amongst the poor of the town the remembrance of his bene- volence and unassuming kindness had still chroniclers ; but from the other classes little could be learned, and that not what the memory of such a man deserves. One old shoj^keeper, not far from his house, remembered him, and " hoped his children did not take after him." " Why 1 " " Oh ! he was a very bad man ! " " Indeed ! what bad actions did he do ? " " Oh ! I beg your pardon ! he did no bad actions that I ever heard of, but, on the contrary, he was un- commonly good to the poor ; but then — " " But then, what ? " " Why, he did not believe in the devil ! " Such are the fruits of bigot teaching. In vain has Christ said, " By their fruits shall ye know them." I begged the poor man, of whom I found Shelley bought no groceries, at least to leave him to the judgment of his God, and of Christ, who came to seek and to save all that were lost ; and to believe those great assurances of the gospel, that the prodigal, when he had committed all kind of crimes, foimd not only a pacitied but a fond father ; that he that hath not charity is as a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal ; and that he that loveth intensely, though he may think erroneously, will stand a very fair chance with the Father of love himself. " But pray what has become of this Mr. Shelley, then ? " asked the man's wife, who had come from an inner room. " He was drowned," I replied. " Oh ! that's just what one might have expected. Drowned ! Lud-a-mercy ! ay, just what we might ha' said he'd come to. He was always on the water, — always boating, boating, — never easy but when he was in that boat. Do you know what a trick was played him by some wag 1 " " No." " He called his boat ' Varja^ and one morning he found the name lengthened, by a piece of chalk, with the word '■ boncV — Vagabond. There are clever fellows here, as well as in London, mind you. But Mr. Shelley was not oflfended. He only laughed ; for, you see, he did not believe in a devil, and so he thought there could be nothing wrong. He used to say, when he heard of wickedness, ' Ah, poor people ! it's only ignorance ; if they knew better, they'd do better ! ' Oh ; what darkness and heathenry ! to excuse sin, and feel no godly jealousy against wickedness ! " I found that the crabbed creedsman had been there too long before me. My hint about charity was thrown away, and I moved oflf, lest I myself for faith in Jesus Christ, who would not condemn even the adulteress at the desire of the vengeful and the sensual, should be found wanting in holy indignation too. It was in vain that I inquired amongst the class of little gentry in the place for information about Shelley — they knew nothing of any such person. At length, after much research, and the running 314 SHELLEY. to and fro of waiters from the inn, I was directed to an ancient surgeon who had attended almost everybody for the last half-century. I found him an old man of nearly ninety. He recollected Shelley : had attended him, but knew little about him. He was a very un- social man, he said ; kept no company but Mr. Peacock's, and that of his boat, and was never seen in the town but he had a book in his hand, and was reading as he went along. The old gentleman, however, kindly sent his servant to point out Shelley's house to me, and as I returned up the street, I saw him standing bare-headed on the pavement before his door, in active discourse with various neighbours. My inquiries had evidently aroused the Marlowean curiosity. On coming up, the old gentleman inquired eagerly if I wanted to learn more yet about Mr. Shelley. — I had learned little or nothing. 1 replied that I should be very happy. " Then," said he, " come in. Sir, for I have sent for a gentleman who knows all about him." 1 entered, and found a tall, well-dressed man, with a very solemn aspect. " It is the squire of the place," said I to myself With a very solemn bow he ai'ose, and with very solemn bows we sat down opposite to each other. " I am happy to hear," I said, "that you knew Mr. Shelley, and can give me some particulars regarding his residence here." " I can. Sir," he replied, with another solemn bow. I waited to hear news — but I waited in vain. That Mr. Shelley had lived there, and that he had long left there, and that his house was down the street, and that he was a very extraordinary man — he knew, and I knew ; but that was all : not a word of his doings or his sayings at Marlowe came out of the solemn brain of that large solemn man. But at length a degree of interest appeared to gather in his cheeks and brighten in his eyes. " Thank God ! " I exclaimed, inwardly. " The man is slow, but it is coming now." His mouth opened, and he said, " But pray. Sir, what became of that Mr. Shelley 1 " " What, did you never hear 1" 1 exclaimed. " Did it never reach Marlowe — but thirty miles from London — that sad story of his death, which created a sensation throughout the civilized world 1 " No, the thing had never penetrated into the Boeotian denseness of that place ! I rose up, and now bowed solemnly too. " And pray what family might he leave 1 " asked the solemn personage, as I was hasting away. " You will learn that," I said, still going away, " in the Baronetage, if such a book ever reaches Marlowe." I hastened to the irm where my chaise was standing ready for my departure, and was just in the act of entering it, when I heard a sort of outcry, perceived a sort of bustle behind me, and turning my head, saw the tail and solemn man hasting with huge and anxious strides after me. " You'll excuse me, Sir ; you'll excuse me, I think ; but I cottld relate to you a fact, and I think I will venture to relate to you a fact connected with the late Mr. Shelley." "Do," said I. "I think I will" replied the tall stout man, heaving a deep sigh, and erecting himself to his full height, far above my head, and casting a most awful glance at the sky. " I i/mk 1 will, — I think I may venture." SHKTJ.KY. 315 "It is certainly something very sad and agonizing," I said to myself; " but I wish he would only bring it out." " Well, then," continued he, with another heave of his capacious chest, and another great glance at the distant horizon, " I certainly will mention it. It was this. When Mr. Shelley left Marlowe, he ordered all his bills to be paid, most honourably, certainly, most honourably ; and they were paid — all — except — mine ! There, Sir ! it is out ; excuse it — excuse it ; but I am glad it is out." " What ! a biU ! " I exclaimed, in profoundest astonishment, " a bill !— was that ain " " All, Sir ! all ! everything of the sort ; every shilling, I assure you, has been paid, but my little account ; and it was my fault ; I don't know how in the world I forgot to send it in." " What," said I, " are you not the squire here ? What are you V " Oh, Lord ! no, Sir ! I am no squire here ! I am a tradesman ! I am — in the general way ! " " Drive on ! " I said, springing into the carriage, " drive Hke the Dragon of Wantley out of this place — Shelley is remembered in Marlowe because there was one bill left unpaid ! " There again is fame. It would be a curious thing if the man who deems himself most thoroughly and universally famous, and walks about in the comfortable persuasion of it, could see his fame mapped upon the country. What an odd figure it would make ! A few feeble rays shooting here and there, but all around what vast patches of unvisited country, what unilluminated regions, what deserts of oblivion of his name ! Shelley lived, and suffered, and spent himself for mankind, and in the place where he last Hved in England, within thirty miles of the great metropolis of genius and knowledge, he is only remembered by a bad joke on his boat, by his disbelief of the devil, and by a forgotten bill. Were it not forgotten, he had been so ! U/icu ! jam satis. On the 12th of March, 1818, Shelley quitted England once more. He was never to return. His o^vn fate and that of Byron were wonderfully alike. The two greatest, most original, most powerful, and influential poets of the age, were driven into exile by the public feeling of their country. They could not bring themselves to think on political questions with a large party, nor on religious ones with a still larger ; and every species of vituperation and insult was let loose upon them. As if charity and forbearance had been heathen qualities, and wrath and calumny Christian virtues, the British public most loftily resolved not to do as Christ required them — to love those who hated them and despitefully used them, but to hate those who loved them, and had noble virtues, though they had their errors. Their errors should have been lamented, and their doctrines refuted as much as possible ; but there is no law, human or divine, that can release us from the law of love, and the command of seventy times seven forgiveness of injuries. Both these great men died in their exile of hatred — the world had its will for the time, and the spirits of these dead outcasts must now have their will, in their deathless volumes, to the end of time. 316 SHELLET. If any one would know what sort of a man this moral monster, Shelley, was, let him read the eloquent account of him and his Hfo at Oxford, in the New Monthly Magazine for 1832, written by one who was his friend and companion, and who, Mrs. Shelley says, has described him most faithfully. There we find him full of zeal for learning ; most zealous in accumulating knowledge ; overflowing in kindness ; indignant against all oi^pression to man or to animals. Never failing to rush in on witnessing any cruelty, or hearing of any calamity, to stop the one, and alleviate the other. Full of gaiety and fun as a child, sailing his paper boats on every pool and stream, or rambling far and wide over the country in earnest talk and deep love of all nature. He was ready to caress children, to smile even on gipsies and beggars, to run for refreshment for starving people by the wayside, pledging even his favourite microscope, his daily means of recreation, to assist a poor old man. Such was the dreadful crea- ture that must be expelled from colleges, have his children torn from him to prevent the contamination of his virtues, and to be hooted out of his native land. Yet amid all the anguish that this inflicted on him, he was ever ready still to do a sublime good, or enter with the most boyish relish into the merest joke. Nothing can convey a more vivid idea of the latter disposition — which is not that of a man systematically maUcious, which is the true spirit of wickedness — than to quote a joke related to him by the writer of these articles, and see the manner in which it was enjoyed. " I was walking one afternoon, in the summer, on the western side of that short street leading from Long-acre to Covent-garden, where the passenger is earnestly invited, as a personal favovir to the de- mandant, to proceed straightway to Highgate or Kentish town, and which is called, I think, James-street. I was about to enter Covent- garden, when an Irish labourer, whom I met bearing an empty hod, accosted me somewhat roughly, and asked why I had run against him. I told him briefly that he was mistaken. Whether somebody had actually pushed the man, or he only sought to quarrel, and although he, doubtless, attended a weekly row regularly, and the week was already drawing to a close, he was unable to wait till Sunday for a broken head, I know not, but he discoursed for some time with the vehemence of a man who considers himself injured or insulted, and he concluded, being emboldened by my long silence, with a cordial invitation just to push him again. Several persons, not very unlike in costume, had gathered round him, and appeared to regard him with sympathy. When he paused, I addressed to him, slowly and quietly, and it should seem with great gravity, these words, as nearly as I can recollect them : — ' I have put my hand into the hamper ; I have looked upon the sacred barley ; I have eaten out of the drum ! I have drunk, and was well pleased ; I have said, Koy^ ofina^, and it is finished ! ' ' Have you, Sir 1 ' inquired the astonished Irishman ; and his ragged friends instantly pressed round him with, — ' Where is the hamper, Paddy ? ' — ' What barley 1 ' and the like. And ladies from his own country, that is to say, the basket-women, suddenly began to interrogate him : — ' Now, I say, Pat, where have you been SHELLEY. 317 drinking ? — What have you had ? ' I turned, therefore, to the right, leaving the astounded neophyte, whom I had thus planted, to ex- pound the mystic words of initiation as he could to his inquisitive companions. As I walked slowly under the piazzas, and through the streets and courts towards the West, I marvelled at the ingenuity of Orpheus, — if he were indeed the inventor of the Eleusinian mysteries ; that he was able to devise words that, imperfectly as I had repeated them, and in the tattered fragment that has reached us, were able to soothe people so savage and barbarous as those to whom I had ad- dressed them, and which, as the apologists for those venerable rites affirm, were manifestly well adapted to incite persons who hear them for the first time, however nide they may be, to ask questions. Words that can awaken curiosity even in the sluggish intellect of a wild man, and can open the inlet of knowledge ! " " Ko'/ix ompa.v ; and it is finished ! " exclaimed Shelley, crowing with enthusiastic delight at my whimsical adventure. A thousand times, as he strode about the house, and in his rambles out of doors, would he stop and repeat the mystic words of initiation, but always with an energy of manner, and a vehemence of tone and gesture, that would have prevented the ready acceptance which a calm, passionless dehvery had once procured for them. How often would he throw down his book, clasp his hands, and starting from his seat, cry suddenly, with a thrilUng voice, " I have said, Konx ompax ; and it is finished ! " This child-like, this great, and greatly kind, and if men would have let him, this light-hearted man, thus then quitted England. Like Byron, he sought a home in Italy. He lived in various cities, and wrote there his very finest works, amongst them Prometheus Unbound ; The Cenci ; Hellas ; part of Rosalind and Helen ; his Ode to Liberty, perhaj^s the very finest ode in the language, and certainly in its description of Athens never excelled in any piece of description in any language ; Adonais, an elegy on the death of Keats, and those very melancholy verses wi'itten in the Bay of Naples. He was drowned, as is well known, by the sinking of his boat in a squall, in the Gulf of Spezia, in the summer of 1822, at the age of thirty. Shelley would have enjoyed this portion of his life beyond all others, had he been in health and spirits. He was united to a woman worthy of him, and who could partake of all his intellectual plea- sures. Children were growing around him, and he was living in that beautiful country, surrounded by the remains of former art and history, and under that fine sky, pouring out from heart and brain, glorious, and impassioned, and immortal works. But his health failed him, and the darts of calumny were rankling in his bosom, depressing his spirits, and sapping his constitution. I can only allow myseS a few passing glances at his homes in Italy, of which Mrs. Shelley has given us such dehghtful sketches iu the notes to her edition of her husband's poems. They went direct to Milan, and visited the Lake of Corao ; then proceeding to Piisa, Leghorn, the baths of Lucca, Venice, Este, Rome, 318 SHELLEY. Naples, and back to Eome for the winter. There he chiefly wrote his Prometheus. In 1818, they were at the Baths of Lucca, where Shelley finished Rosalind and Helen. Thence he visited Venice, and occupied a house lent him by Lord Byron, at Este. " I Capucini was a villa built on the site of a Capuchin convent, demolished when the French suppressed rehgious houses. It was situated on the very overhanging brow of a low hill, at the foot of a range of higher ones. The house was cheerful and pleasant ; a vine-trellised walk, or per- gola, as it is called in Italian, led from the hall-door to a summer- house at the end of the garden, which Shelley made his study, and in which he began the Prometheus ; and here also, as he mentioned in a letter, he wrote Julian and Maddalo. A slight ravine, with a wood in its depth, divided the garden from the hill, on which stood the ruins of the ancient castle of Este, whose dark massive wall gave forth an echo, and from whose ivied crevices owls and bats flitted forth at night, as the crescent moon sunk behind the black and heavy battlements. We looked from the garden over the wide plain of Lombardy, bounded to the west by the far Apennines ; while to the east, the horizon was lost in misty distance. After the pic- turesque but limited view of mountain, ravine, and chestnut wood at the Baths of Lucca, there was something infinitely gratifying to the eye in the wide range of prospect commanded by our new abode." Here they lost a little girl, and quitting the neighbourhood of Venice, they proceeded southward. Shelley was delighted beyond expression with the scenery and antiquities of Italy. " The aspect of its nature, its sunny sky, its majestic streams, the luxuriant vegetation of the country, and the noble marble-built cities, en- chanted him. The first entrance to Rome opened to him a scene of remains of ancient grandeur that far surpassed his expectations ; and the unspeakable beauty of Naples and its environs added to the impression he received of the transcendent and glorious beauty of Italy." The winter was spent at Naples, where they lived in utter solitude, yet greatly enjoyed their excursions along its sunny sea, or into its beautiful environs. From Naples they returned to Rome, where they arrived in March, 1819. Here they had the old MS. account of the story of the Cenci put into their hands, and visited the Doria and Colonna palaces, where the portraits of Beatrice were to be found. Her beauty cast the reflection of its grace over her appalling story, and Shelley conceived the subject of his masterly drama. In Rome they lost their eldest child, a very lovely and engaging boy ; and, quitting the eternal city, took the villa, Valsovauo, between Leghorn and Monte Nero, where they resided during the summer. " Our villa," says Mrs. Shelley, " was situated in the midst of a podere ; the peasants sang as they worked beneath our windows, during the heat of a very hot season ; and in the evening the water-wheel creaked as the progress of irrigation went on, and the fire-flies flashed among the myrtle hedges ; nature was bright, sunshiny, and cheerful, or diversified by storms of a majestic terror, such as we had never before witnessed. SHELLEY. 319 " At the top of the house there was a sort of terrace. There is often such in Italy, generally roofed. This one was very small, yet not only roofed, but glazed. This Shelley made his study ; it looked out on a wide prospect of fertile country, and commanded a view of the near sea. The storms that sometimes varied our day, showed themselves most picturesquely as they were driven across the ocean. Sometimes the dark, lurid clouds dipped towards the waves, and became water-spouts, that churned up the waters beneath, as they were chased onwards, and scattered by the tempest. At other times, the dazzling sunlight and heat made it almost intolerable to every other ; but Shelley basked in both, and his health and spirits revived under their influence. In this airy cell he wrote the principal part of the Cenci." They spent part of the year 1819 in Florence, where Shelley passed several hours daily in the Gallery, studying the works of art, and making notes. The summer of 1S20 was spent chiefly at the Baths of Guiliauo, near Pisa, where Shelley made a solitary journey on foot, during some of the hottest weather of the season, to the summit of Monte San Pelegriuo, — a mountain on which stands a pilgrimage chapel, much frequented : and during this expedition he conceived the idea of The Witch of Atlas ; and immediately on his return sate down and wrote it in three days. An overflowing of the Serchio inundated the house, and caused them to quit San Guiliano ' they returned to Pisa. In 1821, the Spanish revolution excited thi-oughout Italy a similar spirit. In Naples, Genoa, Piedmont, almost everywhere, the spirit of revolt showed itself ; and Shelley, still at Pisa, sympathised enthusiastically with these movements. Then came the news of the Greek insurrection, and the battle of Navarino, which put the climax to his joy ; and in this exultation he wrote Hellas. These circumstances seem to have given a new life to him. He had now his new boat, and was sailing it on the Arno. It was a pleasant summer, says Mrs. Shelley, bright in all but Shelley's health ; yet he enjoyed himself greatly. He was in high anticipation of the arrival of Leigh Hunt ; and at this juncture, the now happy poet and hia family made their last remove. Let us give the deeply interesting picture of Shelley's last home, in the words of his gifted wife. " The bay of Spezia is of considerable extent, and is divided by a rocky promontory into a larger and a smaller one. The town of J.3rici is situated on the eastern point, and in the depth of the smaller bay, which bears the name of this town, is tlie village of Sant Areuzo. Our house, Casa Magui, was close to this village ; the sea came up to the door, a steep hill sheltered it behind. The pro- prietor of the estate was insane ; he had begun to erect a large house at the summit of the hiU behind, but his malady prevented its being finished, and it was falling into ruin. He had, and this to the Italians seemed a glaring sj'uiptom of decided madness, rooted up the olives «n the hill-side, and planted forest trees. These were mostly young ; but the plantation was more in English taste than I ever saw else- where in Italy. Some flue walnut and ilex trees intermingled their 320 SHELLET. dark, massy foliage, and formed groups which still haunt my memory, as theu they satiated the eye with a sense of loveliness. The scene was, indeed, of unimaginable beauty ; the blue extent of waters, the almost land-locked bay, the near castle of Lerici, shutting it in to the east, and distant Porto Venere to the west ; the various forms of precipitous rocks, that bound in the beach, near which there was only a winding rugged path towards Lerici, and none on the other side ; the tideless sea, leaving no sands nor shingle, — formed a pic- ture such as one sees in Salvator Rosa's landscapes only. Sometimes the sunshine vanished when the sirocco raged, — the ponente, the wind was called on that shore. The gales and squalls that hailed our first arrival, surrounded the bay with foam ; the howhng wind swept round our exposed house, and the sea roared imremittingly, so that we almost fancied ourselves on board ship. At other times sunshine and calm invested sea and sky, and the rich tints of Italian heaven bathed the scene in bright and ever-varying hues. " The natives were wilder than the place. Our near neighbours, of Sant Arenzo, were more like savages than any people I ever be- fore lived among. Many a night they passed on the beach, singing, or rather howhng ; the women dancing about among the waves that broke at their feet, the men leaning against the rocks, and joining in their loud, wild chorus. We could get no provisions nearer than Sarzana, at a distance of three miles and a half off, with the torrent of the Margra between ; and even there the supply was deficient. Had we been wrecked on an island of the South Seas, we could scarcely have felt ourselves further from civilization and comfort ; but where the sun shines, the latter becomes an unnecessary luxury, and we had enough society among ourselves. Yet, I confess house- keeping became rather a toilsome task, especially as I was suffering in my health, and could not exert myself actively." To this wild region they had come to indulge Shelley's passion for boating. News came of Leigh Hunt having arrived at Pisa. Shelley, and his friend Captain Ellerker WiUiams, set out to welcome him, and were on their return to Lerici, when the fatal squaU came on, and they went down in a moment. The particulars of that event, and the singular scene of the burning of the body by his friends, Byron, Hunt, Trelawney, and Captain Shenley, have been so vividly related by Mr. Hunt, as to be familiar to every one. Shelley had gone down with the last volume of Keats, the Lamia, &c., in his jacket pocket, where it was found open. The bodies came on shore near Via Eeggio ; but had been so long in the sea as to be much decomposed. Wood was, therefore, collected on the strand, and they were burnt in the old classical style. The magnificent bay of Spezia, says Mr. Hunt, is on the right of this spot, Leghorn on the left, at equal distances of about twenty-two miles. The headlands pro- jecting boldly and far into the sea, form a deep and dangerous gulf, with a heavy swell and a strong current generally running right into it. So ended this extraordinary man his short, but eventful and mliuential life ; and his ashes were buried near his friend John SHELLEY. 321 Keats, under a beautiful ruined tower in the English burial-ground at Eome. It was remarkable, that Shelley always said that no pre- sentiment of evil ever came to him, except as an unusual elevation of spirits. When he was last seen, just before embarking for his return, he was said to be in most briUiant spirits. On the con- trary, Mrs. Shelley says, — " If ever shadow of evil darkened the present hour, such was over my mind when they went. During the whole of our stay at Lerici an intense presentiment of coming evil brooded over my mind, and covered this beautiful place and genial summer with the shadow of coming misery, * * A vague expec- tation of evil shook me to agony, and I could scarcely bring myself to let them go." The veiy beauty of the place, she says, seemed unearthly in its excess ; the distance they were from all signs of civilisation, the sea at their feet, its mui-murings or its roarings for ever in their ears, led the mind to brood over strange thoughts, and lifting it from every-day Ufe, caused it to be familiar with the unreal. " Shelley," she adds, " had now, as it seemed, almost anticipated his own destiny ; and when the mind figures his skiff wrapped fi-om sight by the thunder-storm, as it was last seen upon the purple sea, and then as the cloud of the tempest passed away, no sign remained of where it had been, — who but will regard as a prophecy the last stanza of the Adouais 1 — ' The breath, whose might I have invoked in song, Descends on me : my spirit's bark is driven Far from tlie shore, far from tlie trembling throng, Whose sails were never to the tempest given ; The massy earth and sphered skies are riven! 1 am borne darkly, fearfully, afar; Whilst burning through the inmost veil of heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star. Beacons from the abode where the eternal are.' " LORD BYRON. In The Rural Life of Englaud I have already recorded my visits to two of the most interesting haunts of Lord Byron, — Newstead Abbey and Annesley Hall. In this paper we will take a more chronological and consecutive survey of his haunts and abodes. Lord Byron was, it appears, born in London, in lodgings in Holies-street, as his mother was on her way from France to Scot- land. His mother, whose history and ill-starred marriage are well known through Moore's life of the poet, had accompanied her husband to France soon after their marriage, to avoid the swarm of claimants on her property, the creditors of her dissipated husband, which that marriage had brought upon her. The Byrons, who had inherited the estate of Newstead, in Nottinghamshire, since the reign of Henry VIII., when it was granted to Sir John Byron, generally called The Little Sir John Byron, had distinguished themselves greatly in the civil wars, but had of late years been miich more con- spicuous for their poverty and eccentricity. His grandfather was Commodore Byron, whose name will always be remembered from the narrative of the sufferings of himself and crew, in consequence of the wreck of the Wager, and who was still better known by the name of " Foul-weather Jack," from the singular fact that he never BYRON. 323 put to sea, even wlaeD holding the rank of admiral, and in command of the fleet for the protection of the West Indies, without encoun- tering the most tempestuous weather. The father of Lord Byron, Captain Byron, appears to have been one of the most unprincipled and dissipated men of his day. He ran off with the wife of Lord Carmarthen to the continent ; and this, of course, leading to a divorce, he married Lady Carmarthen, and had by her one daughter, the present Hon. Augusta Leigh, the wife of Colonel Leigh. Lady Carmarthen did not live long ; and covei-ed with debt, and pursued by hungry creditors, Captain Byron looked out for some woman of fortune to victimize to his own comfort. This species of legalized robbery, that is, of selecting a simple and unsuspecting woman to plunder under the sanction of the laws, instead of running the hazard of hanging or transportation by the more vulgar method of highway robbery, house-breaking, or forgery, is one so fashionable, that a man like Captain Byron was not likely to boggle at it. Of all species of theft, it is the most dastardly and despicable, because it is performed under the sacred name of affection. The vampire who means to suck the blood of the selected victim, makes his approach with flatteries and vows of the deepest attachment, of the most eternal tenderness, and protection from the ills of life. He wins the heart of the confiding woman by the basest lies, and then delibe- rately proceeds to the altar to pronounce before the all-seeing God the same foul falsehood, " to love and comfort," and " cherish till death," the helpless creature that is binding herself for life to ruin and deception. One would think it were enough for a man to feel, as he stands thus before God and man, that he is a mere seeker of creature comforts and worldly honour while he is wedding a rich wife ; but knowingly to have picked out his prey under the pretence of loving her above all of her sex, in order to hand over her estate to his creditors, to defray the scores of his gambUng and licentious- ness, that characterises a monster of so revolting a kind, that nothing but the gradual corruption of society through the medium of conventionalism, could save him fi-om the expatriating execrations of his fellows. There are cases of peculiar aggravation of this kind, those where the property of the victim is almost wholly demanded for the liquidation of the demon-lover's debts, and the wife is left to instantaneous beggary. The marriage of Captain Byron was one very much of this kind. His wife's most convertible property, as bank shares, salmon fisheries, money securities, were hastily disposed of ; then went the timber from her estates, then the estates them- selves, all amounting to probably £30,000, leaving her a mere annuity of i;i23! The property gone to this mite, the harpy husband still hung upon her, and upbraided her with the want of further means to contribute to his reckless riot. With cash extorted from her now severe poverty, he at length luckily departed again for the continent, and died at Valenciennes in 1791, when Byron was three years old. Such were the circumstances in wliich Lord Byron entered the world. If he were the prey of violent passions ; if he, too, had a y2 324 BYRON. tendency to dissipation ; if he iu future years followed his father's example, though not to so culpable a degree, and married an heiress, " And spoiled her goodly lands to gild his waste ; " there may be some excuse for him, drawn from hereditary taint. His father was not the solitary instance of irregularity, violent passions, and wastefulness. His great uncle, to whose title and diminished property he succeeded, was of the like stamp. His violence had led to his wife's separation from him ; he had killed his next neighbour, Mr. Chaworth, in a duel ; he had shot his coachman ; he had felled extensive plantations on his estate, with the avowed purpose of preventing his son's enjoyment of their profit, because he had offended him. This son, and also his gi^andson, died before him, and the wifeless and childless old lord had led a moody and solitary life in the decaying abbey of Newstead, which threatened to drop about his ears, feeding a heap of crickets on the hearth, and feared by the whole peasant population of the country round. Such was the paternal lineage of Lord Byron ; his maternal one, if more moral, was not the less fiery and volcanic. His mother was a little fat woman, of a most excitable temperament, — an evil which no doubt was much aggravated by the outrage on her warm affections and trust in her husband, which the base object of his marriage with her revealed in all its blackness. She appeared all feehng and passion, with very little judgment to control them. She was fond to distraction of her child, and used to spoil him to the utmost extreme ; at the same time that her passions occasionally broke out so im- petuously against his freaks, that she would fling the tongs or poker at his head, when a mere child. At the age of eleven brought to England, and, with all this an- cestral fire in him, introduced to the ruinous and gloomy abode of his forefathers, with the stories of their recent doings rife aU around him, no wonder that on his pecuharly sensitive mind the impression became deep. He grew up a Byron in the eccentricity and other characteristics of his life ; like his father, his morals were not very nice, his habits were not very temperate ; he, too, married to repair the waste of his lands, and quitted his wife to live abroad, and die there a comparatively early death. Happily there was implanted in him an ethereal principle, which gave a higher object to the exercise of his passions and energies than had of late distinguished his fathers. He was a born poet, and the divine gift of poetry converted, in some degree, his hereditary impetuosity into an ennobling instru- ment. His very dissipations extended his knowledge of life and human nature ; and if they led him too frequently to seek to em- bellish sensuality, they compelled him to depict, in the strongest terms that language can furnish, the disgust and remorse which in- evitably pursue vice. He was a strange mixture of the poet and the man of the world ; of the radical and the aristocrat ; of the scoffer at creeds, and the worshipper of the Di\'ine Being in the sublimity of his works. Well was it for him and the world, that his early years were cast amidst the beauty and the solitude of nature, where BYRON. 325 he could wauder wholly abandoned to the influences of heath and moiuitain, river and forest ; and that the prospect of aristocratic splendour did not come in to disturb those influences till they had acquired a life-long power over him. The grandeur of nature cannot make a poet, thousands and millions hve during their whole exist- ences amidst its most glorious displays, and are little more sentient than the rocks that tower around them ; but where the spark of l^oetry Ues latent, it is sure to call it forth. They who visit, then, the earliest scenes of Lord Byron's life, wiU not be surprised at the influence which they exercised upon him, nor at the fondness with which he cherished the memory of them. This is strongly expressed in one of his juvenile poems. LACHIN-y-GAIR. " Away, ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses 1 In you let the minions of luxury rove ; Restore me the ro&ks, where the snow-flake reposes, Though still they are sacred to freedom and love : Yet, Caledonia, beloved are thy mountains. Round their white summits thougli elements war; Though cataracts foam 'stead of smooth-flowing fountains, 1 sigh for the valley of dark Loch na Garr. " Ah ! there my young footsteps in infancy wandered ; My cap was the bonnet, my cloak was the plaid ; On cbiefcains long perished my memory pondered. As daily I strode through the pine-covered glade: I sought not my home till ihe day's ilying glory Gave place to the rays of the bright polar star; For fancy was cheered by traditional story, Disclosed by the natives of dark Loch na-Garr," Hours of Idleness, p. 111. The feeling thus ardent in youth was equally vivid to the last. Only about two years before his death, he wrote thus in The Island : — " He who first met the Highlands' swelling blue Will love each peak that shows a kindred hue ; Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face, And clasp the mountain in his mind's embrace. Long have I roved through lands which are not mine, Adored the Alp. and loved the Apennine ; Revered Parnassus, and beheld the steep Jove's Ida, and Olympus crown the deep; But 'twas not all long ages' lore, nor all Their nature held me in their thrilling thrall ; The infant rapture still survived the boy. And Loch na Garr with Ida looked o'er Troy ; Mixed Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount. And Highland linns with Castalie's clear fount." The city of Aberdeen was the place where the chief part of the earlier boyhood of Byi-on was spent. He went thither as an uncon- scious infant, and there, and in the neiglibouring Highlands, he con- tinued till in his eleventh year, when the title fell to him, and he was brought by his mother to England. Aberdeen is a city which must have been a very charming abode for a boy of Byron's disposi- tion, ready either to mix in the throng of lads of his own age in all their plays, contentions, and enterprisos, to shoot a marble, or box out a quarrel, or to stroll away into the country and enjoy nature and liberty with an equal zest. There are people who are iucliued 326 BYROX. to think that a great deal of the subhme tone of some of Byron's poetry, as that of the Childe Harold, of the sentiment, almost senti- mentality of his Hours of Idleness, and of many of his smaller poems throughout his works, were assumed by him at will and for effect. They do not see how these things could proceed from the same mind as the rhodomontade of many of his most familiar letters, or the slang and wild humour of many parts of Don Juan. How little do such persons know of the human mind ! Did not Tam o' Shanter, and Mary in Heaven, and the Cotter's Saturday Night all proceed from the same mind, and one of the most earnest minds that ever lived ? Did not the sublime scenes of the Iliad, and the battle of the beggars in the Odyssey, and the trick of Ulysses in the cave of Polypheme, when he called himself Noman — so that when Poly- pheme roared out as they put out his eye, and he told his neighbours who came running to inquire what was the matter, that Noman hurt him, they replied, " If no man hurt thee, why dost thou complain? " and marched away without helping him — did not these proceed from the same mind 1 Did not the puns of Hood, and the sober baUad of Eugene Aram, and the Song of the Shirt, proceed from one and the same mind ? Did not John Gilpin and the loftiest strains of pious poetry proceed fi'om that of Cowper? Did not Chattertou write equally Sly Dick, and the tragedy of Ella ? In fact, we might run through the whole circuit of poetic and prose literature, and show that the moods of our minds are as various and changeable as those of ex- ternal nature. The very gravest, the most steadfast of us have our transitions from sad to gay, from frivolous to the highest tone of the highest purpose, with a rapidity that is supposed to belong only to the most changeful of us. There is, in fact, no such chameleon, no such kaleidoscope as the human mind. Light and shadow pass over us, and communicate their lustres or their glooms. Facts give us a turn up or down, and the images of our brain present new and ever new arrangements. But in all this change there is no mere chance, far less confusion ; every movement depends on a fixed principle. Perhaps there have been few men in whom circumstances, circumstances of physical organization, of hfe, and education, che- rished and made habitual so many varied moods as in Lord Byron. Thrown at a very early age into the bosom of a beautifwl and solitary nature, he imbibed a profound and sincere love of nature and solitude. Sent early to public schools to battle his way amongst boys of his own age, and with a personal defect which often sub- jected him to raillery, his native spirit made him bristle up and show fight, as he did afterwai'ds with his reviewers. Eaised to rank and wealth, and, spite of his crooked foot, endowed with, in all other respects, a very fine person, he was led to plunge into the dissipations of young men of his class, and he thus acquired a tone of libertinism that ever afterwards, under the same circumstances, was sure to show itself. Led by his qmck sense of right and wrong, and by his shrewd insight into character, to despise priestcraft and BYRON. 327 political despotism, and spurred on by the spirit of the tinae. especially abroad where he travelled, he imbibed a spirit of scepti- cism and radicalism as principles. From these causes he soon began to exhibit the most opposite phases of character. In solitude and nature he was religious in his tone — in society a scoffer ; iu solitude he was pensive, and even sentimental — in society he was convivial, fond of practical jokes, satirical He wrote like a radical, and spoke like an aristocrat. In him Childe Harold and Don Juan, the sublime and the ludicrous, the noble and the mean, the sarcastic and the tender, the voluptuous and beautifully spiritual, the pious and the impious, were all embodied. He was all these by turns, and in all, for the moment, most sincere. Like an instrument of many strings, each had its peculiar tone, and answered faithfully to the external impulse. Multifarious as were his moods, you might in any given circumstances have predicated which of these would prevail. There would be no sensuality iu the face of the Alps, there would be no sublimity in the city saloon. If he had to speak iu the House of Lords, his speech by the spirit of antagonism would assuredly be radical ; did he come in contact with the actual mob, he would case himself in the hauteur of the aristocrat. With Nature he was ashamed of men and his doings and sayings amongst them, with men he was ashamed of nature and poetry. He would laugh at his own flights of sentiment. He was a many-sided monster, show- ing now subhme and now grotesque, but with a feeling in the depths of his soul that he ought to be something greater than he was or dared to be. To go back, however, from his character to himself. Aberdeen presented to the boy ample food for two of his propensities, those towards the enjoyment of nature and society. The country round, though not sublime, is beautiful. The sea is at hand, an ever grand and stirring object. The Dee comes winding from the mountains of the west through a vale of great lovehness, the Don from the north through scenes perhaps still more striking. There is an air of anti- quity about the town, with its old churches, colleges, and towers, that is peculiarly pleasing ; and the country has likewise a primitive look that wins at once on the spectator. To a traveller from the south, the approach to it by sea is very striking — I do not mean the immediate approach, for this is flat, but the coast voyage out from Edinburgh. The whole coast is bleak, yet green, and presenting to the sea bold and time-worn rocks. For a considerable part of the way they appear to be of red sandstone, and are therefore scooped out into the boldest caves, hollows, and promontories imaginable. Here and there are deep, dark caverns, into which the sea rushes as into its own jjeculiar dens ; in other places it has cut out arches and doorways through insulated rocks, and you see the light through them displaying other rocks behind. One of these is noted for pre- senting, by effect of light behind it, the appearance of a lady in white, standing at the mouth of a cave, and beckoning with her hand. As you skim along the coasts of Fife, Forfar, Kincardine, and Aberdeen, these rocks and caverns present ever-new forms, while all 328 BYRON. the covintry above them is now green, smiling, and cultured, though formerly it must have been savage indeed, giving rise to strange superstitions and legends. Bleak little towns ever and anon stretch along the shore ; though green, the counti-y is very bare of trees. Dundee, Arbroath, Montrose, are good large towns ; and there are the ruins of Arbroath Abbey and Dunnottar Castle, with others of less note. Dunnottar cannot be passed without thinking of Old Mortality, whom Scott found in the churchyard there, restoring the inscriptions on the gravestones of the Covenanters ; nor can Uri, an old-fashioned house on the bare uplands above Stonehaven, as the abode of Barclay, the writer of the celebrated Apology for Quakerism, and in our day for that of his pedestrian descendant. Captain Bar- clay. How singular are the reflections which arise on human Hfe and its combinations when gazing on such a place as this ! What should induce a man at one time to go forth from a remote scene and solitary old house like this, to mingle with the ferment of the times — to become an active apostle of Quakerism, and the expositor of its faith ; and another, nearly two centuries afterwards, to march out of the same house down into England, not for an exhibition of Quakerism, but of Pedestrianism — not of reasoning but of walking powers ? Why should that house, just that house and its family, be destined to produce great Quakers, ending in great walkers and great brewers ? How often in my boyhood had I read Barclay's preface to his Apology, dated from "Uri in Scotland, the Place of my Pil- grimage," and addressed to King Charles II, by " Eobert Barclay, the servant of Jesus Christ, called by God to a dispensation of the Gospel revealed anew in this our age," &c. And there it stood, high, bare, and solitary, eliciting the oddest compound ideas of " hops and heresy," according to the phrase of a clergyman of the time, or rather of Quakerism, London porter, and walking matches against time ! Beyond this, the coast becomes more and more what is called iron-bound, and the rocks — probably of trap, or whinstone — as you advance northward stand up in the sea, black and curdled as it were, and worn into caverns and perpendicular indentures, exactly as you see them in Bewick's wood-cuts. Stepping then on land at Aber- deen, how agreeable is the change ! The city, built of a grey and lustrous granite, has a look of cleanness and neatness almost incon- ceivable. Since the days of Byron's boyhood, gi'eat must have been the changes. The main streets are aU evidently new ; and on ad- vancing into Union-street, the great street which traverses almost the whole length of the city, a mile in length, and seventy feet wide, you are struck with a pleasant surprise. The width and extent, the handsome yet plain buildings of clean granite, and the fine pubhc buildings visible in different directions, are far more than you ex- pected in a town so far north.* On the river you see an imposing assemblage of ships ; you find the Marischal College now built in a * In the centre of the town Is erected a granite statue of the late Duke of Gordon. Seeing a decent looking man near it, I asked him if he could tell me who executed that figure. " Sir ! " replied the honest Aberdonian, with unfeigned surprise, " he never was executed at all. It is the Duke of Gordon ! " BYRON. 329 very gi-acefiil style ; and a market-house, I suppose, in extent, con- venience of arrangement, and svipply, inferior to none in the kingdom. The olden streets, such as were in existence in Byron's time, are much more like what you would have looked for — of a narrower and more ordinary character. About a mile to the north of the new town lies Old Aberdeen. In advancing towards it you become every moment more aware of its far greater antiquity. It looks as if it had a fixed attachment to the past, and had refused to move. There is a quietness, a stationariness about it. One old house or villa after another stands in its garden or court, as it has done for centuries. The country about has an old Saxon look. It carried me away into Germany, with its unfenced fields of corn and potatoes ; villages seen in the distance, also un- fenced, but with a few trees clustered about them ; and the country naked, except for its coi'n. To the right lay the sea, to the left this open country ; and on before arose, one beyond the other, tower and sjDire of an antique character, as of a very ancient city. Presently I came to the college — King's College, with the royal crown of Scot- land surmounting its tower, in fine and ample dimensions, and its courts and corridors seen through the ancient gateway. Then, on the other hand, the equally antique gateway to the park of Mr Powis Leslie, with its two tall round towers of most ancient fashion, with galleries and spires surmounted with crescents. Then, onwards, the ancient, massy cathedral, with its two stone spires, and tall western window of numerous narrow windowlets, and ponderous walls running along the roadside, with a coping of a yard high, and stuccoed. Everything had a heavy, ancient, and German character. I could have imagined myself in Saxony or Franconia ; and, to augment the illusion, a woman at a cottage door, inquiring the time of day, received the answer, " half twa," as near as possible " half two" in Plat-deutsch. Still further to increase the illusion, the people talked of the bridge as " she." Truly, the repose of centuz'ies, and the fashion of a far-gone time, so far as relates to our country, lay over the whole place. I had now to inquire my way to the brig of Balgounie, a spot which makes a conspicuous figure in Byron's boyish histoiy. "The brig of Don," says he himself in a note in Don Juan, Canto X. p. 309, " near the ' auld town ' of Aberdeen, with its one arch, and its black deep salmon stream, is in my memory as yesterday. I still remember, though perhaps I may misquote, the awful proverb which made me pause to cross it, and yet lean over it with a childish delight, being an only son, at least by the mother's side. The saying as recollected by me was this, but I have never heard or seen it since I was nine years of age : — ' Brig of Balgounie, wight (strong) is thy wa', Wi' a wife's ae son on a mare's ae foal, Down shalt thou fa'.'" How accurate was his recollection of this old bridge ; a proof of the ■delight with which he had enjoyed this scenery. We are told that on holiday afternoons he would get down to the sea-side and find 330 BYRON. great amusement there. Here was the sea just below ; and it will be seen that the whole way that he had to come from New Aberdeen was full of a spirit and an aspect to fall deep into the heart of an embryo poet. There is a new and direct way now from the city nearer to the sea, and from the new bridge of Don the view of the old bridge is very picturesque. It is one tall grey pointed arch, with cottages about it on both sides on the high banks of the Don, and mills, with masses of trees. On the low ground below the bridge at the left-hand end stands a white house, and little fishermen's huts or sheds scattered here and there. On the other bank of the river the ground is high and knolly. Clumps of trees seem to close in upon the bridge, and behind and above them is a little group of fisher- men's houses called the huts of Balgounie. Below the bridge the river widens out into a broad expanse, and between high, broomy banks, comes down to the new bridge and thence to the sea meadows, where the white billows are seen chasing each other at its mouth. Above the bridge the river is dark and deep, and the high banks are overhung with wood. The valley of the Don above is very picturesque with woods and rocks, and is enlivened with mills and factories. The view from the bridge itself down into the river is striking. I suppose it must be forty or fifty feet from its centre to the water, yet a man living close by told me that he once saw a sailor leap from it for a wager. The bridge is remarkably strongly built. It is said to have been built in the time of Bruce, yet it has by no means a very aucieut look, and being of solid granite is not very likely to fulfil the prophecy of its fall. Yet Mr. Chambers, in his "Picture of Scot- land," says this superstition has not always been confined to children, for our late Earl of Aberdeen, who was an only son, and rode a favourite horse, which was " a mare's ae foal," always dismounted on approaching this bridge, and used to have his horse led over at a little distance after him. The people near do not now seem to partake of it. " FaU ! " say they, " ay, when the rocks on which it is based fall ! " It is, in fact, hke a solid piece of rock itself ; and is in possession of funds left in 1605, by Sir Alexander Hay, which though then only producing five and forty shiUings a year, have so accumulated that they are not only amjjly sufficient to maintain it in repair, but have built the new brig. At each end of the bridge you see several large iron rings in the wall. These, I was told, were to secure ropes or chains to, from which to suspend scaftblding for the repair of the bridge on the outside. Every cai'e is thus taken of it. " She is verra rich, is the auld brig," said the man before mentioned. " She has been verra useful in her time, for before the new brig was built, she was the only means of getting to the north country — there was no fording the river. And the new brig has been built wi' her money, ay every sixpence of it, gran brig as the new aue is with her five granite arches ; and the auld brig gives 100/. a-year to take care of her too. But she's verra well off in the world yet, for all that, she has plenty left for herself." Thus do they talk of the auld brig as if she were a wealthy old lady. If, however, any one should pay BTRON. 331 her a visit from New Aberdeen, I would counsel him to go by the old road for its picturesque effect, but to be careful to inquire the road in Old Aberdeen down to the brig, for it is particularly obscure. They must ask too for " The auld brig o' Don," for the name of the brig of Balgounie seems known to few of the younger generation. In New Aberdeen, the admirer of Lord Byron will also naturally seek to take a glance at the different houses in which he hved as a child with his mother. These are in Queen-street, one at nearly each end of the street ; one at the house in Broad-street, then occu- pied by Mr. Leslie, father of the present surgeon of that name ; and one in Virginia-street, not far from the docks. The visitor will not be surprised to find that these are but ordinary houses in ordinary streets in general, when he recollects that Mrs. Byron was then reduced bythe matrimonial robbery of her husband to an income of 123/.a year, and that her effects, that is, the furniture of the lodgings, &c., when sold on her setting out with her boy for England, amounted only to 74/. 175. Id. In these houses she was merely a lodger. The best situation which she occupied was in Mr. Leslie's house in Broad- street, over a shop. All these places are still well known. The schools to which Byron went in Aberdeen are also objects of interest. That in Long-acre, kept by a Mr. Bower, whom he calls Bodsy Bower, a name, he says, given him on account of his dapperness, was a common day-school, where little boys and girls were sent prin- cipally to be out of the way at home. This school has long been closed. The next school to which he went, and where he continued to go till he left Aberdeen, was the grammar school. This, of course, remains, and though it has been considerably enlarged since Byron was there, the room in which he studied continues exactly as it was at that time. It is an ordinary school-room, with benches and desks cut deep with hundreds of names, and hundreds of other names printed and written over them with ink, and the walls adorned in the like style, as well as with grotesque figures drawn with the pens of schoolboys. Amidst this multitude of names, the Rev. Dr. Mel- vin, the master at the time of my visit, assured me that diligent search had been made to discover that of Byron, but in vain. There are many of his old schoolfellows still living in the place, and all seem to recollect him as " a mischievous urchin." It must, however, be recollected that Byron was little more than ten years of age when he left Aberdeen, and that was then forty-seven years ago. The place to which perhaps still more interest will attach, connected with the poet's boyhood in this part of the country, is Ballater, where his mother was advised to take him on recovering from the scarlet fever, in 1796. It would appear as if Mrs. Byron, as well as her child, was so delighted with the residence there, as to return thither the two following summers. These arc all the opportunities there could possibly be, for they left for England in the autumn of 1798, on the death of the old Lord Byron. They were the summer residences here, however, that awoke the poetic feeling in him. He was here in the midst of the most beautiful mountain scenery, and 332 BYKON. SO intensely did it operate upon him, that through his whole life he looked back to his abode here as the most delicious period in his memory. The vale of the Dee, or the Dee-side, as they call it, all the way from Aberdeen, a distance of forty miles, is fine ; beautifully wooded by i)laccs, the hills as you advance, become more and more striking. You pass the castle of Drum, one of the oldest inhabited castles in Scotland ; a seat of the Burnets, ot Bishop Burnet's line, finely situated on the right hand on rising ground, and various other interesting places. But it is as you approach Ballater that the scenery becomes most striking. It becomes truly Highland. The hills get lofty, bare, grey, and freckled. They are, in fact, bare and tempest-tinted granite, having an air of majestic desolation. Some rise peaked and splintered, and their sides covered with debris, yet, as it were, bristled with black and sharp-looking pine forests. Some of the hills run along the side of the Dee, covered with these woods, exactly as the steep Black Forest hills are in the neighbourhood of Wildbad. As you approach Ballater, the valley expands. You see a breadth of green meadow, and a neat white village stretching across it, and its church lifting its spire into the clear air, while the mountains sweep round in a fine chain of peaked hills, and close it in. All up Dee-side there is well-cultivated land, but, with the exception of this meadow, on which Ballater stands, all is now hill, dark forest, and moorland ; while below, on the banks of the winding and rapid Dee, birch woods present themselves in that peculiar beauty so truly belonging to the Highlands. On your right first looks out the dark height of Culbleen, mentioned by Byi'on in his earlier poems : — " When I see some dark hill point its crest to the sky, I think of the rocks that o'ershadow Culbleen ; " then " Morven, streaked with snow ; " and Loch-na-garr lifts himself long and lofty over the lower chains that close the valley beyond Ballater. Ballater, though a neat village now, did not exist when Byron was here. There were a few cottages for the use of visitors, near the other side of the present bridge, but those who came to drink the waters, generally located themselves in farm-houses as near as they could to " the wells," which are two miles down the opposite bank of the Dee. Mrs. Byron chose her summer residence in one of the most thoroughly secluded and out-of-the-world spots which it was possible to find, perhaps, in the whole island. It lies four miles below Ballater, on the same side of the river as the spring, that is, two miles beyond " the wells " as they call them, some chalybeate springs which issue from the hills, and which now bring many people to Ballater in summer. You proceed to them along the feet of the hills, and at the feet also of a dark pine wood. The river is below you ; above you are these mountain forests, and the way hes some- times through the wood. Under beeches, which shade the way, there are benches set at intervals, so that a more charming walk, 'BTEON. 333 ■with the noble mountain views opposite to you, cannot well be con- ceived. At about two miles on the road, after passing under stupendous dark cliffs that show themselves above the craggy and steep forest, you find a couple of rows of houses, and here are the waters issuing out of pipes into stone basins. Going still forwards, you come out upon the wild moorlands. Above you, on the right hand, rise the desolate hills ; below, on the left, wanders on the Dee, amid its birch woods ; and the valley is one of those scenes of chaotic beauty, which perhaps the Highlands only show. It is a sea of heath-clad little hills, sprinkled with the hght green birch-trees, and here and there a dark Scotch fir. It is a fairy land of purjile beauty, such as seems to belong to old romance, and where the people of old romance might be met without wonder. And through all ^oes the sound of the river like a distant ocean. Those who have been in the Highlands know and recollect such scenes, so carpeted with the crimson heather, so beautified with the light-hued fairy birch woods. Still the way leads on till you come down to the Dee, where it makes a wide and splendid sweep deep below the bank on which you are, and then you wonder where can be Bellatrich, the house you seek, for you see no house at all ! In the birch wood, however, you now discern one white cottage, and that must be it. No ! To that cottage I went, and out came a woman with spectacles on and her Bible open in her hand. I asked if she could tell me where Bellatrich was, and I expected her to say — " Here ! " but she replied in a low, quiet voice — " I will show you, for it is not easy to find." And so on we went for another quarter of a mile ; when coming to a little hidden valley running at right angles from the river up into the moorlands, she showed me a smoke rising above the trees, and told me there I should find the house. And here was the place to which Byron's mother used to retire in the summer months from Aberdeen with her boy. The vaUey is divided by a wild brook hidden among green alders, and its slopes are hung with the native birch and a few oaks. At the upper end stands a farm-house, but this is new ; and the farmer, to show me the house in which Byron lived, took me into his farm yard. The house Mrs. Byron inhabited is now a barn, or sort of hayloft rather, in his yard. It was exactly one of the one-storied, long Highland huts, and is now included in the quadrangle of his farm-yard ; but the bed in which Byron used to lie is still there. It is one of the deal cupboard sort of beds that are common in Highland huts. There it stands amongst the straw. The farmer says many people come to see the place, and several have tried to buy the bed from him, but that he should think it quite a shame to sell it. Imagine, then, Mrs. Byron living here hah" a century ago, and Byron a boy of about ten years of age ; soon after which he left for England to be converted out of a poor Highland boy into a lord. There was probably another hut or so near, as there is now, but that was all. The house they lived in was but a hut itself. There was no Ballater then. That has sprung up under the management of lilr. Farquharson, the laird of BaUater. There was only the water 334 BYRON. issuing from the moorland rocks, and no house at it, but those few huts near Ballatcr bridge, where Lords Panmure and Kennedy, and some of their jovial companions, notorious up here, used to come and to drink the waters, in order to remedy their drinking too much whisky. There was no carriage road then. There was no cultivated meadow. All was moorland, and woods, and wild mountains. There was a rude road at the margin of the river, but so stony that no carriage could exist upon it. Nay, the present farmer says, that when he came to live here, there was no road into this little hidden valley. There was no bridge over the brook, but they went through amid the great stones, and that without taking any trouble to put them aside. There was no garden, and there was no field. Around rose, as they do now, dark moorland mountains, and the little black- faced sheep, and the black cattle roamed over the boggy, heathery, and birch scattered .valley, as they do still, except within the little circle of cultivation that the present tenant has made. What a place for a civilized woman and her only son ! How he got so far around as he did is to me a miracle. He advanced up the valley quite to Braemar, and there was no carriage road thither ! There was no turnpike road from Aberdeen further than to Banchory, half way to Ballater, fifty-six years ago, and that then made was the first turnpike road in Aberdeenshire. So a gentleman of Aberdeen assured me. Farther, all was a mere track, in which a horse could go. Yet the boy Byron, with his lame feet, and very lame he was, according to those who knew him, and plenty of such remain, rambled all about this wild region. The passion with which he traversed those scenes is expressed in his poem to Mary Duff, the equally beloved object of his boyish heart. " When I roved a young Highlander on the dark heath, And climbed tliy steep summit, oh Morven ! of snow, To saze on the torrent that thundered beneath. Or the mist of the tempest that gathered below ; Untutored by science, a stranger to fear, And rude as the rocks where my infancy grew, No feeling, save one, to my bosom was dear. Need I say, my sweet Mary, 'twas centred in you? " Yet it could not be love, for I knew not the name, — What passion can dwell in the heart of a child? But still I perceive an emotion the same As I felt, when a boy in the crag-covered wild. One image alone on my bosom impressed, I loved my bleak regions, nor panted for new; And few were my wants, for my wishes were blessed. And pure were my thoughts, for my soul was with you. " I arose with the dawn ; with my dog as my guide, From mountain to mountain I bounded along; I breasted the billows of Dee's rushing tide, And heard at a distance the Highlander's song," &c. That he was intensely happy here the poetry and memories of his whole life testify. That he must have strolled far and wide, and, as he says, with his dog for his guide, is no doubt true ; but, lame as be was, it appears little less than miraculous. " I mind him weel," said a shepherd still hviug in the valley near the farm : " He was just such a boy as yon," pointing to a boy of eleven or twelve ; BYRON. 335 "and used to play about wi' us here. His feet were hoth turned in, and he used to lift one over the other as he walked ; and when he ran he would sometimes catch one against the other, and tumble over neck and heels. We heard that in England he had got his feet straightened." How such a boy could get about there, over the rough heath and up the distant mountains, is strange enough. We do not hear that he had any pony, and there was only his mother or the maid to accompany him. Mrs. Byron, by all accounts, was not well-fitted for much walking, far less climbing up hills ; yet it is quite certain that he rambled far and wide, and, it is most probable, alone. Loch-na-garr, Morven, and Culbleen, are the grand features of the mountain scenery, and it is evident that the wild and beautifid solitudes of the Dee-side, and the mountains around, had made a deep and indelible impression on hia imagination. It is just the scenery to awake the poet, where the soul and the organization of the poet exist. The deep solitude ; the stern mountains, with all their changes of storm and sunshine — now blazing and burning out in all the brightness of a clear sun, now softly beaming beneath the slanting light of evening, and now black as midnight beneath a gloomy sky, looking awfully forth from their sable and yet transparent veil of shadow. These, and the sound of waters, and the mild beauty of the low, heath-clad hills and soft glens, where the birch hangs its weeping and fragrant branches over the lovely harebell and the secret nest of the grouse, were the imagery which surrounded the boy Byron during the summer months ; and the boy " was father to the man," seeking out ever afterwards, from laud to land, all that was lovely and sublime in nature. But he was now called upon to say — ' Adieu, then, ye hills, where my childhood was bred, Thou sweet flowing Dee, to thy waters adieu ! " and the scene changed to England ; solitude to cities ; poverty to fortune ; and the nameless obscurity of the juvenile mountain wanderer to title and unimagined fame. Before, however, quitting this favourite scene of the early life of Byron, which he never again visited, I must notice it under the aspect which it happened to present to me from the particular time of my arrival. It was on the 18th of August, just one week after the commencement of the grouse-shooting season, and every inn on the road was crowded with sportsmen and their servants. Lord Castlereagh, on his way to his shooting ground in Braemar, was my next neighbour on the mail from Aberdeen ; and his wide acquaint- ance with the sports of various countries, the cnperrailzie and bear- shooting of the north of Europe, in particular of Eussia, made his descriptions of thera, as weU as of the deer-shooting of Braemar — his particular sport — very interesting. But the weather of that wet summer was at this time outrageously rainy, and from every way- side inn the lugubrious faces of sportsmen were visible. As we drew up at the village of Banchory, the door was thronged with livery servants, ard a gentleman at an open upper window, eyeing 336 BYRON. anxiously the showery clouds hanging upon the hills, caught sight of Lord Castlereagh, and called out, in a tone of momentary anima- tion quickly relapsing into melancholy, — " Ha ! Cass ! are you there ? Here I have been these four days, and nothing but this confounded rain. Not a foot have I yet been able to set upon the heath. There are six of us." " Who is that who addresses you so famiharly 1 " " Oh ! it is Sir John Guest ! " Poor Sir John ! What a pur- gatory ! On went the coach. At Ballater, again, the door was thronged with livery servants ; the rain was falling in torrents ; there were nine shooting gentlemen in the house, not one of whom could stir out. After taking luncheon. Lord Castlereagh went with the mail to Braemar, and I, with expanded umbrella, issued forth to explore the neighbourhood as well as I might, but was speedily driven back again by the deluging rains, which made every highway an actual river. The next day was Sunday, and the sun rose with a beauty and warmth which seemed to say — "Gentlemen sportsmen, you shall at least have fair weather for church." A more glorious day never was sent down over mountain and moorland ; and few are the scenes on which fine summer weather confers a greater beauty than on those around Ballater. Along these pleasant valleys the country people, all health and animation, in cordial conversation streamed along to and from church. I chmbed the dark moorland hills, where the wild flocks scudded away at the presence of a stranger, and the grouse rose up in whole coveys, with a startling whirr and strange cries, and gazed down into the vales on the most lovely Ijttle homesteads, on their crimson heathery knolls, amid their beautiful little woodlands of birch. Above arose on every side the solemn and dreary bulks of Loch-na-garr, Morven, and Culbleen. It was a day and a scene amongst a thousand. Night fell ; morning again rose — Monday morning ! Hundreds of anxious sportsmen throughout the Highlands, and thousands of their anxious attendants, eager for the hills — " And the rain fell as though the -world would drown!" When I looked out of my bedroom window, there were men and boys standing in front of the inn, casting dreary looks at the ragged and low-sweeping curtains of clouds that shrouded every hiU, and then longing looks at the windows, if the slightest possible breaks in those clouds occurred, hoping to be called and engaged as guides and game-carriers on the hiUs. Keepers were walking about, and bringing bags of shot in. Men and boys, already looking wet and dirty, as if they had tramped with their strong shoes some distance out of the country to come hither, asked them if they thought it would take up ; and they cast knowing looks at the clouds and shook their heads. I3ut anon ! as if in very desperation, there were dogs let loose, which ran helter skelter over the bridge towards the hills, full of eager life for the sport ; and gigs full of gentlemen, three or four together, packed close, in white hats, or glazed and tm'ned-up BYRON. 337 wide-awakes, and thick shooting-jackets, close buttoned up, with their gims erect at their sides, setting off for their shooting grounds. They were determined to be at their stations, perhaps some ten miles oflF, and take the chance of a change in the weather. Good luck to them ! I took my way back again to Aberdeen ; and lo ! at Banchory, the inn-door still crowded with livery servants, and poor Sir John Guest still seated at the selfsame window, with long and melancholy face, watching the clouds ! Truly the sporting, not less than the Christian Ufe, has its crosses and its mortifications. Lord Byron's first journey into England was with his mother, to see his ancestral abode — his abbey and estate of Newstead. It was a considerable step from the rooms over the .shop at Aberdeen, or the little hut at Bellatrich, with 123/. a-year. But yet for a lord it was no very magnificent .subject of contemplation. The estate had been dreadfully denuded of wood, and showed a sandy nakedness of meagre land, the rental of a great part of which would be high at ten shilhngs an acre. The old abbey was dilapidated, and menacing in various places to tumble in. The gardens were a wilderness of neglect. " Throujih thy battlements, Newstead, the hollow winds whistle ; Thou, the hall of my fathers, art gone to decay; In thy once smiling garden, the hemlock and thistle Have choked up the rose which late bloomed in the way." The place was, after a time, leased to Lord Grey de Ruthyn, who let ruin take its course, as the old lord had done. "When the old lord died, the host of crickets which he had fed are said to have taken immediate flight, issuing forth in such a train that the servants could scarcely move without treading on them. When Lord Grey's lease was out, he and his hounds took their flight in like manner ; but this was some years afterwards, and for the present Mr;?. Byron betook herself to Nottingham, and placed her son under the care of Mr. Rogers, the principal schoolmaster there, and under that of a quack, one Lavender, to straighten his feet. Thence they removed to London, where they resided in Sloane-terrace, and Byron was sent to Dr. Glennie's school at Dulwich. Thence he was removed to Harrow ; and during the years he spent there Mrs. Byron went to reside again at Nottingham, and afterwards at Southwell, with occa- sional visits to Bath and Cheltenham. Harrow and Cambridge were, of cour.se, for the chief part of the years of his minoritj', his proper homes, but the vacations were chiefly spent at Southwell, with fre- quent visits to Newstead and Anncsley. Before his minoi-ity, how- ever, expired, Lord Grey de Ruthyn had quitted Newstead, leaving it in a deplorable state of dilapidation, and Lord Byron incurred great expense in repairing the abbey, much indeed beyond the reach of his resources. His income was small, for the best psu't of his ancestral property had been sold by the late lord, especially the Rochdale estate, which was afterwards recovered. The allowance for his education was all that he could claim from his trustees, and his mother's small income was eked out by a pension of 300/. per annum. z 338 BYRON. The debts incurred by him for the repairs of Newstead not being legally recoverable, as they were incurred by a minor, remained for years unpaid ; and the importunity of his creditors was one of the strongest motives for his early travelling abroad. The failure of his hope of marrying Miss Chaworth, and adding her estate, which ad- joined his own, to Newstead, was, both in affection and in point of fortune, a severe blow. His embarrassments finally compelled him to sell Newstead, and to make a manage de convenance, which, to a person of his peculiar temperament, habits, and opinions, was cer- tain to result in trouble and disunion. From these causes his life became unsettled and embittered ; and scarcely had he reached the period at which his fame ought to have made his native land the proudest and happiest of all lands to him, when he abandoned it for ever, and " In the wilds Of fiery climes he made himself a home, And his soul drank their sunbeams : he was girt With strange and dusky aspects : he was not Himself like what he had been : on the sea And on the shore he was a wanderer." — The Dream, vol. x. p. 249. Of Newstead and Annesley I have given a particular account in the Eural Life of England. To those I must refer, and have only to add that, in the hands of Lord Byron's old schoolfellow Colonel Wild- man, Newstead is restored and maintained as aU lovers of English genius would wish it to be, and is ever open to their survey. Since that account, too, the old hall of Annesley has undergone a reno- vation, and the scene of melancholy desertion and decay there described, exists now only in the volume which recorded it. In the present paper Southwell and Harrow will chiefly demand om* attention. Southwell, during the period of his Harrow school life, became a most favourite resort of his. His mother had settled down there. Body and mind were now in progress of expansion towards manhood. His relish for society, his love of fame, and his love of poetry, were every day more and more developing themselves. But his world yet was only the school world. He was shy in general society. Here, however, he formed a group of friends of superior taste and educa- tion, in whose quiet little circle he became speedily at home ; and for a time into this circle he seemed to throw himself, with all his heart and youthful enthusiasm. The Pigotts, the Beechers, the Leacrofts, &c. were his friends. Here he used to spend his summer vacations ; here it seems he spent nearly the whole of one year. His dogs, his horses, firing at marks, swimming, and pi'ivate theatricals, were his amusements, and for a time Southwell was his world. The Pigotts were his great friends, and there he went in and out, spent his even- ings or spent his days, to his great contentment. A wider and a gayer world had not yet opened upon him, and for a season South- well and his friends there were everything to him. Of course, in this little circle he was the great hero ; it is not often that a little cathedral town can catch a live lord : nothing could be done without him ! every fl.attering attention awaited him ; and for a time he was BYRON. 339 not enough conversant with the great world, for the Httle one of Southwell to be spoiled to him. Hence he made occasional visits to Newstead and Annesley, with whose heiress he had fallen deeply in love. Here he began to cultivate more sedulously the composition of poetry, in which he was warmly encouraged by his most intimate friends, the Pigotts and Mr. Beecher, — all persons of very refined taste, — and here, eventually, he put his first volume to press, with Ridge, a printer at Newark. It was from Southwell that he made an excursion to Scarborough with his young friend Mr., since Dr. Pigott, and was much smitten with a fair quakeress, to whom he addressed the verses published in his Hours of Idleness. But he had not been long at Cambridge, and seen something too of London, before the charm of Southwell had vanished, and we find him pro- testing that he hated Southwell. " Oh ! Southwell, Southwell, how 1 rejoice to have left thee ; and how I curse the heavy hours I dragged along, for so many months, among the Mohawks who inhabit your kraals ! " During the time that he spent there, his hours certainly did not drag very heavily. It was only on looking back from a gay scene that they appeared so to him. No one who now visits that quiet Uttle town will be surprised that a scene so still, though so naturally pleasant, could not long hold a spirit of so restless a caste. For, by his own experience, " Quiet to quick spirits is a hell." Most of his old friends had long left the place at the time of my visit ; Dr. Pigott to practise at Nottingham : others were dead. Miss Pigott still lived in the house which her society and music made so agreeable to him. Mr. Beecher, too, was still living, and had not lived without setting the stamp of his mind on the age. To him and another clergyman we are, in fact, indebted for the experiments on which Lord Brougham based the New Poor Law. That, however, is not the reason of his name appearing here ; here he is interesting as the early friend of Lord Byron, whose influence was so great mth him as to induce him to commit his first volume to the flames. It was in the summer of 1845 th^t I paid the visit already men- tioned to Southwell. The day, for a wonder, was fine ; for a more rainy or cold Jime never passed. The Uttle town looked very pleasant in its quietness. Every one knows how a cathedral town does look ; all asleep in the sunshine, if sunshine there be. A few shops, that seem to be expecting customers some time ; a large inn, that must, too, have visitors sometimes, or it could not exist ; a number of pleasant villas in their pleasant gardens, full of roses, and green plots not shaven quite so close as in greater and smarter places, amid a great deal of greenness everywhere in gardens, crofts, and meadows ; the old minster standing aloft, in venerable and profoundly silent maj^esty, in its ample green burial-groimd. The minster at Southwell is fine, and presents specimens of various architecture, from the ancient Saxon to the Perpendicular. All is in perfect taste, according to the time in which the work was done, and is kept in excellent preservation. The inside is particularly neat ; z2 340 BYRON. and the reading-desk is a brass eagle, which, having been found at the bottom of the lake at Newstead, where it is supposed to have been thrown, at the dissolution of the abbey, by the monks, would 1)6 an object on which Lord Byron would look with great interest. It contained writings connected with the estate, which the angry monks might wish to destroy. We looked into the ruins of the old palace, adjoining the minster- yard, where Cardinal Wolsey was entertained on his last journey to York, and found ourselves in a lovely garden, the walls of which were the grey and irregular ruins of this ancient fabric ; and the house, running along one side of it, evidently, though old, built partly out of its material. Every one knows how charming such an old house looks ; — its low range, its irregular windows, its front partly overhung with roses, jasmines, and figs ; the ojDen porch, and the peeps of goodly pictures, or rather the frames of the pictures, rich curtains, and furniture, — the attributes of wealth ; and the green- sward of the court-garden, filling with its velvet the area between the old and rugged walls. Under the obliging guidance of Dr. Calvert, I went round to see the people with whom Byron used to associate. Unfortunately, Miss Pigott was in London ; we had a glimpse of her entrance-hall, and that was all. The house is one of those old-fashioned, rather darkish houses, that one sees in such places ; and in the hall were heaps of busts, apparently phrenological specimens. We went then to the house where Byron's mother lived. It is at the opposite end of the town, or village. It is called Burgage Manor, and stands on the top of a sloping green, called Burgage Green, and at the back looking over a pleasant stretch of country towards Farnsfield. The house is a good, large, and cheerfal abode ; but has, it seems, been considerably enlarged since Mrs. Byron lived in it ; in fact, another half built to it in front. Unluckily, the lady who now inhabits it was absent too ; so that we could learn nothing particular about it. It was undergoing painting, and we entered it, and walked about the lower rooms, which are good modern rooms. The hall has a number of middling portraits, apparently belonging to the lady's family : a Mary Childers ; a lady of the name of Mace ; a Rev. Jackson, without a John or Thomas to his name, just thus — " Rev. Jackson," a sandy-haired schoolmaster-looking man, leaning on his elbow, and apparently trying to look very full of calculation. One picture was very funny ; it was that of a little girl of about five or six years old, in a loose dress, and her hair arranged in a very wiggish fashion, with three ostrich feathers. She occupied the centre of the picture, and stood facing you, and on each hand a white rabbit was partly rearing up and looking at her ; and under the figures stood the names — Mart Booth, Mary Law, and Mary Becher. You would Imagine that two of the names were the names of the rabbits ; but, in fact, they are all her own names, she having, in after years, been twice married. In this mansion Byron probably wrote many of the poems in his Hours of Idleness, but not the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, BYRON. 341 which the good lady of the house claims to have been written there, " every line of them." He never saw the attack of the Edinburgh Review till he had entirely left Southwell. The house where Byi-on used to join in private theatricals, that of Mr. Leacroft, was then occui^ied by a Mrs. Heathcote. In going from one place to another, we went round by the Greet, the stream in which Byron used to bathe, and where he dived foi a lady's thimble, which he took from her work-box and threw in. The Greet is a mere brook, and for the most part so shallow that a man would much sooner crack his skull in it than dive very deep, unless it were above the mill, where the water is dammed up, or just below the mill-wheel by the bridge, but that is too public, being in the high road. Such is Southwell, in Nottinghamshire, which wiU always be hvingly associated with one of the happiest periods of the life of Lord Byron. Harrow being so near the metropolis, will naturally draw many visitors, as another of the happiest scenes of Byron's youthful life. Here he represents himself to have been eminently happy ; and always looked back to this period of his youth with particular affec- tion. The schoolroom where he studied, the tomb where he used to sit in the churchyard, and the spot where his natural daughter, Allegra, is buried, will always excite a lively interest. This tomb is still called by the boys at Harrow, " Byron's tomb ; " and its identity is very accurately fixed by himself in a letter to Mr. Murray, when giving direction for the interment of his daughter. " There is a spot in the churchyard, near the footpath, on the brow of the hiU looking towards Windsor, and a tomb, under .a large tree, bearing the name of Peachie or Peachy, where I used to sit for hours and hours when a boy. This was my favourite spot ; but as I wish to erect a tablet to her memory, the body had better be deposited in the church. Near the door on the left hand as you enter, there is a monument, with a tablet containing these words : — ' When Sorrow weeps o'er Virtue's sacred dust, Our tears become us, and our grief is Just: Such were the tears she shed, who grateful pays Tills last sad tribute of her love and praise.' I recollect them after seventeen years, not from anything remarkable in them, but because, from my seat in the gallery, I had generally my eyes turned towards that monument. As near as convenient I could wish Allegra to be buried, and on the wall a marble tablet placed, with these words : — In Memory of Allegra, Daughter of G. G. Lord Byron, Who died at Bagna Cavallo, In Italy, April 20th, IS22, Aged five years and three months. ' I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me.' 2 Samuel xii. 23." These are interesting landmarks to the visitor, who will find the path to the tomb beneath the large elm well tracked, and the view there over the far stretching country, such as well might di-aw the musing 342 BYRON. eyea of the young poet. Captain Medwin says he saw the name of Byron '•' carved at Harrow, in three places, in very large characters — a presentiment of his future fame, or a pledge of his ambition to acquire it." The play-ground and cricket-ground will also be visited with equal interest. There we see a new and eager generation of fine lads at play, and then have a lively idea of what Byron and his cotemporaries were in their time. No one was a more thorough schoolboy, in all the enjoyment of play and youthful pranks, than Lord Byron, as he himseU' in verses addressed to one of his school- comrades shows us, and as all his schoolfellows testify of him. " Yet when confinement's lingering hour was done, Our sports, our studies, and our souls were one : Together we impelled the flying ball, Together waited in our tutor's hall ; Together joined in cricket's manly toil, Or shared the produce of the river's spoil ; Or plunging from the green declining shore, Our pliant limbs the buoyant billows bore : In every element, unchanged, the same, All, all that brothers should be, but the name." But the whole of this poem, called Childish Recollections, published in the Hours of Idleness, is filled by the charms of recollected school delights at Harrow. Here his schoolfellows, amongst others, were Lord Clare, for whom through life he retained the warmest attach- ment. Lord Delaware, the Duke of Dorset, to whom he addressed one of his early poems. Colonel Wildman, who afterwards purchased Newstead, Lord Jocelyn, the Rev. William Harness, &c. He says, "P. Hunter, Curson, Long, Tattersall, were my principal friends. Clare, Dorset, Colonel Gordon, -De Bath, Claridge, and John Wing- field, were my juniors and favourites." Last, and not least, the late Sir Robert Peel was his cotemporary, and it is now with very odd feelings that we read the anecdote in Byron's life, that when a great fellow of a boy-tyrant, who claimed little Peel as a fag, was giving him a castigation, Byron came and proposed to share it. " While the stripes were succeeding each other, and poor Peel writhing under them, Byron saw and felt for the misery of his friend ; and although he knew that he was not strong enough to fight ****** with any hope of success, and that it was dangerous even to approach him, he advanced to the scene of action, and with a blush of rage, tears in his eyes, and a voice trembling between terror and indignation, asked very humbly if ****** would be pleased to tell him ' how many stripes he meant to inflict 1 ' — ' Why,' returned the executioner, ' you httle rascal, what is that to you ? ' — ' Because, if you please,' said Byron, holding out his arm, ' I would take half.' " With Harrow, we take leave of the years of innocent boyhood. His removal to Cambridge, and his now long residences in London, led him into those dissipations and sensualities which continued to cast a sad foil on the greater part of his after life. To Cambridge he never appeared much attached, and rather resided there occa- sionally as a necessity for taking his degree, than from any pleasure he had in the place. His rooms in Trinity College, Cambridge, are BYRON, 343 nearly the sole locality whicli -will there attract the attention of the admirers of the poet, except the Commoners' hall, in which the long tossed about statue of him by Thorwaldsen has been erected. It was dm-ing his being a student of Cambridge that Newstead abbey feU into his hands, by the expiration of Lord Grey de Ruthyn's lease, and that he went thither, and repaired it to a certain extent, and furnished it at an expense far beyond his resources at the time. Here, with half-a-dozen of his fellow-collegians, amongst whom was the very clever and early lost Charles Skinner Matthews, he spent a rackety time. He had got a set of monks' dresses from a mas- querade warehouse in London, and in these they used to sit up all night, drinking and full of uproarious merriment. " Our hour of rising," says Mr. Matthews himself, " was one. It was frequently past two before the breakfast party broke up. Then for the amuse- ments of the morning, there were reading, fencing, single-stick, or shuttle-cock, in the great room ; practising with the pistols in the hall ; walking, riding, cricket, sailing on the lake, playing with the bear, or teasing the wolf. Between seven and eight we dined ; and our evening lasted from that time till one, two, or three in the morning. The evening's diversions may easily be conceived. I must not omit the custom of handing round, after dinner, on the removal of the cloth, a human skull, filled with burgundy. After revelling on choice viands and the finest wines of France, we ad- journed to tea, where we amused ourselves with reading, or improving conversation, each according to his fancy ; and after sandwiches, &c. retired to rest." It may well be imagined what a scandal this occasioned in the neighbourhood. During this time there were stiU work-people employed in the repairs of the house, and I recollect a master plas- terer, who at the same time was doing work for my father a dozen miles ofi", relating to our astonishment the goings on of these gay roisterers. Byi-on himself says, that " Where Superstition once had made her den, Now Paphian girls were known to sing and smile." And the person here referred to particularly mentioned one young damsel dressed in boy's clothes that Byron had there, no doubt the same who soon after lived with him at Brompton, and used to ride about on horseback with him at Brighton. Here at this time his dog Boatswain died, and had the weU-known tomb raised for him in the garden where the jsoet himself proposed to he. Here he employed himself with writing his scarifying English Bai'ds and Scotch Ee- viewers, which appeared about the time that he came of age, and so amply avenged him of the Edinburgh reviewers. Being, as he informs us, about ten thousand pounds in debt, he left his mother in possession of Newstead and set out on his foreign tour. In two years he retm-ned to England, not only triumphant by the great popularity of his satire over all his enemies, but having in his port- foho the two first cantos of his inimitable Childe Harold. From this moment he was the most celebrated man of his age, and that at the 344 BYROX. age of twenty-four. At one spring he ascended above Walter Scott with all his well-earned honours. From the most solitary and friendless, because unconnected, man of his rank, living about town in clubs and lodgings, for his few college friends were scattered abroad in the woi'ld, he became at once the great hon of all circles. Lord Holland, Rogers, Moore, &c. were his friends. He was besieged on all sides by aristocratic blue-stockings and givers of great parties. His life was for four or five years that of the most perfect Circean intoxication of worship and dissipation ; yet during this period he poured out the Giaom-, the Bride of Abydos, the Corsair, and Lara, poems of great vigour and beauty, and new in scene and spirit, but by no means reaching that height of poetical wealth and glory which he afterwards momited to. Then came his ill-starred marriage, and in one short year his utter and lasting separation from his wife. This marriage proved the blight of his whole life. We have no desire to probe the mysteries with which it is still surrounded, but in justice to aU parties we are bound to notice the extenuating facts which have been advanced on each side. We do not drag them from the sacred privacy of domestic life ; they are such as have been put into print voluntarily by the parties themselves. To the last Lord Byron persisted in protesting that he never knew the cause of his wife's withdrawal from him : but Lady Byron, in a paper addresse'd to his biographer since his decease, has assigned as the reason that she beheved him insane, or not safe to live with. There were causes which might give him an air of great violence and excitement. He has candidly avowed the fact, that he married an heiress in order to rid himself of a heavy weight of debt. He cal- culated on her wealth " to gild his waste." But though his wife eventually brought him a substantial fortune, there is reason to beheve that it was not in immediate money. His creditors, however, rushed upon him from all sides, in the supposition that such was the fact. They surrounded him like a swarm of hornets ; and instead of domestic repose, he tells us himself that in the first year of his marriage, he had nine executions levied on his goods, and was only saved from a prison by his peerage. No wonder, then, that his excitable temperament was lashed to a pitch of fury httle short of madness. In order to extricate him from this terrible condition. Lady Byron set out on a visit to her father, to endeavour to procure the sum necessary to appease the importunate creditors. From all that has appeared, they parted in the utmost harmony. Lady Byron even wrote to him while on the journey, with every mark of affection ; and yet instead of returning, a letter from her father assured him that she would come no more. Why not ? Lady Byron herself assigned to Thomas Moore as the reason, that she thought him insane, or feared to live with him. Did she assume a cheerful and even kindly air in order to escape from him in safety ? Here lies the mystery, which we desire not to penetrate, but it is easy to jDerceive the effect of this surpi'ising, and clearly xmexpected event, on his proud and BYRON. 345 sensitive nature. The hand that he believed stretched out to aid and thus to soothe him, was withdrawn : a furious storm of abuse fell immediately upon him from the public, and the finish was put to mortal endurance. Banished, as it were, by the abhorrence of his country, of that country which from worshipping turned so suddenly to denounce him, for the abandonment by a wife was taken as proof of some hideous guilt, he went forth never to return. The limits of this work will necessarily confine any minute account of the homes and haimts of our poets to those only which he within the British isles ; I shall, therefore, only summarily trace the prO' gress of Byron's wanderings and abodes from this period ; and before doing this, I will point out in a few lines the residences which he occupied during the five years of his London hfe. Before he went abroad, Gordon's hotel, Durant's hotel, both in Albemarle-street, and 8, St. James's-street, were his homes. On his return from his first tour he took, on a lease for seven years from Lord Althorpe, a suite of rooms in the Albany. The year of his married life was chiefly spent at 13,:Piccadilly-terrace. The clubs which he fi-equented were the Alfred, the Cocoa Tree, Watier's, and the Union. In his first tour he traversed Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Turkey, tracking his way in light, by the composition of Childe Harold. Now, leaving behind him a desolated hearth, assailed bitterly by that public which had so recently devoured with avidity his splendid poems, regarded as an infidel and a desperado, he went from the field of Waterloo across Belgium, along the Rhine, through Switzer- land into Italy, which became his second country, retaining him till a few months before his death. Every step of his progress was illustrated by triumphs of genius still more brUhant than before. From the moment that at Waterloo he exclaimed " stop, for thy tread is on an empire's dust," till that in which he concludes with his sublime apostrophe to the Ocean, he advances from Alp to Alp in the regions of genius. Every one that traces the banks of the Rhine is made to feel what additional charms he has scattered along them ; and how infinitely inferior are all, even the most enthusiastic and elaborate, descriptions of its scenery, from other pens. " The castled crag of Drachenfels Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine, Whose breast of waters broadly swells Between the banks which be:ir the vine, And hills all rich with blossomed trees, And fields which promise corn and wine, And scattered cities crowning these, Whose fair white walls along them shine. " And peasant girls, with deep blue eyes. And hands which offer early flowers, Walk smiling o'er this paradise; Above, the frequent feudal towers Through green leaves lift their walls of grey. And many a roek which steeply lowers. And noble arch in proud decay, Look o'er this vale of vintage bowers." 346 BTRON. Volumes of description could not give you so vivid a feeling of the characteristic featiu-es of the valley of the Ehinc as these lines. And thus through the Alps, "The palaces of Nature," Byron advanced into Italy, the land of ancient art, heroic deeds, and elysian nature. At Geneva he fell in with Shelley for the first time, and henceforth these two great poets became friends. At Diodati, on the lake of Geneva, he spent the autumn, then advanced to Italy, and took up his abode in Venice, where, in the palace Mocenigo, on the Canal Grande, he lived till December, 1819, i.e. about three years. His next remove was to Eavenna, where he had splendid apartments in the Guiccioli palace. In the autumn of 1821 he quitted Ravenna, having resided there not two years, and took up his residence at Pisa, in the Lanfranchi palace on the Arno, which he describes as large enough for a garrison. In the autumn of 1822 he quitted Pisa for Genoa, having resided at Pisa a year. At Genoa he inhabited the villa Saluzzo at Albaro, one of the subm'bs of that city, where he continued to live till the July of 1823, not quite a year, when he set sail for Greece, where in a few mouths his existence terminated. Of Lord Byron's abodes and modes of life we have some graphic glimpses in Moore's life, in Shelley's and Captain Medwin's notices. Everywhere he remained true to his schoolboy habits of riding on horseback, swimming, firing with pistols ; to his love of buU and Newfoundland dogs. Moore describes his house in Venice as a damp-looking mansion, on a dismal canal. " As we groped our way after him," he says, " through the dark hall, he cried out, ' Keep clear of the dog ;' and before we had proceeded many paces farther, 'Take care, or that monkey will fly at you,' a curious proof of his fidelity to all the tastes of his youth, and of the sort of menagerie which visitors at Newstead had to encounter in their progress through his hall." Soon after he adds, " The door burst open, and at once we entered an apartment not only spacious and elegant, but wearing an aspect of comfort and habitableness which, to a traveller's eye, is as welcome as rare." Captain Medwin somewhere mentions meeting Lord Byron, travelling from one of his places of abode to another, with a train of carriages, monkeys, and whiskered servants, a strange IDrocession ; and Shelley, visiting him at Ravenna, says, — " Lord. Byron has here splendid apartments in the palace of his mistress's husband, who is one of the richest men in Italy. There are two monkeys, five cats, eight dogs, and ten horses, all of whom, except the horses, walk about the house like the masters of it. Tita, the Venetian, is here, and operates as my valet — a fine fellow, with a prodigious black beard, who has stabbed two or three people, and is the most good-natured fellow I ever saw." Of his house at Pisa, Byron himself says : — " I have got here a famous old feudal palazzo, on the Arno, large enough for a garrison, with dungeons below and cells in the walls ; and so full of ghosts, that the learned Fletcher, my valet, has begged leave to change his room, and then refused to occupy his neio room, because there were more ghosts there than in the other. It is quite true that there are most extraordinary noises, as in aU old buildings, BYRON. 347 ■which have terrified the servants so as to incommode me extremely. There is one pJace where people were evidently walled up; for there is but one possible passage, broken through the wall, and then meant to be closed again upon the inmate. The house once belonged to the Lanfranchi family, the same mentioned by UgoMna in his dream, as his persecutor with Sismondi, and has had a fierce owner or two in its time." The mode of spending his time appears by aU accounts to have been pretty much the same everywhere. Rising about one o'clock at noon, taking a hasty breakfast, often standing. "At three or four," says the Guiccioli, " at Eavenna and Pisa, those who used to ride out with him agreed to call, and after a game at bilHards they mounted and rode out." At the two latter places his resort was generally the forests adjoining the towns. At Ravenna, that forest rendered so famous by Dante and Boccaccio, especially for the story of the spectre huntsman in the Decamerone ; and at Pisa the old pine forest stretching down to the sea. Latterly he used to proceed to the outside of the city, to avoid the staring of the people, espe- cially English people ; then mounted his horse, and rode on at a great rate. In the forest they used to fire with pistols at a mark. The forest rides of Byron near Pisa and Ravenna will always be scenes visited with deep interest by Englishmen, and Shelley's description of themselves, the two gi-eat poets, in Julian and Maddalo, as they rode " upon the bank of land ■which breaks the flow Of Adria towards Venice, a bare strand Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand. Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds," is one of everlasting value. Returning to dinner at six or seven, he conversed with his friends till midnight, and then sat down to write. Thus we have traced this great and singular man from the moun- tains of the Scottish Highlands, where he roamed as a boy, from land to laud, till he stood as a liberator on the shores of Greece, and was seen for a few months riding forth with his long train of Suliote guards, and then was at once lost to Greece and the world. In no short life was there ever more to applaud and to condemn, to wonder at and to deplore. From those hereditary and other causes which we have already noticed, the temperament of Byron was passionate to excess ; but this extreme sensibility, which was the food and foundation of his splendid genius, was at the same time the torture of his existence. Misunderstood where he ought to have been soothed with the deepest tenderness, attacked by the public where he should have been most closely sympathised with, he went forth, as it were, reckless of peace or of character. A series of adulterous connexions darkened his glorious reputation, and served to justify in the eyes of the pubUc the accusations brought against him. But spite of the censures of the world, and reproaches of his own con- science, the powers of his genius continually grew, till they even forced into the silence of astonishment the most heartless of his 348 BYRON. detractors. To say nothing of those grand and sombre metaphysical dramas, Manfred, Cain, and the rest, which he wrote in Italy, the poem alone of Childe Harold, ever ascending in magnificent strength, richness, and beauty, as it advanced, was sufficient to give him an immortahty second to no other. The wide and superb field of its action, that of all the finest countries of Europe ; the great events, those of the most stirring and momentous age of the whole world ; and the illustrious names which it wove into its living mass ; the glorious remains of art, and the still more glorious features of nature in Italy and Greece ; — all combined to render Childe Harold the great poem of his own and the favourite of every after age. Totally diffei-ent as he was under different impressions, Childe Harold had the transcendent advantage of being the product of that mood which was inspired only by the conteraplation of every object calcidated to draw him away from the seductions of society, and the lower tones of his mind ; — the mood inspired by the most august objects of heaven and of earth, — the midnight skies, the Alpine mountains, the subUmities of mighty rivers and oceans, the basking beauties of southern nature, and the crumbling but unrivalled works of man. Filled with all these images of nobility and greatness, he gave them back to his page with a tone so philosophically profound, with a music- so thrilling, with a dignity so gracefid and yet so tender, thjit nothing in poetry can be conceived more fascinating and perfect. Every thought is so clearly and fully developed, every image is so substantial and so strongly defined, and the very scepticism which here and there betrays itself comes forth so accompanied by a pensive, earnest, and intense longing after life, that it resembles the melancholy tone which pervades the book of Job, and some of the prophets, more than that of any other human, much less modern, composition. We may safely assert that there are a hundred com- bining causes, in the subjects and the spirit of Childe Harold, to render it to every future age the most lovely and endearing gift from this. Don Juan, the reflex of Byron's ordinary, as this was of his solitary and higher life, — his life alone with Nature and with God, — has its wonderful and inimitable passages ; but Childe Harold is one woven mass of beauty and intellectual gold from end to end. In judging the errors of Lord Byron, there is one consideration calculated to disarm severity perhaps more than all others. The excesses in which he had indulged were made by Providence the means of the severest punishment that could befal him. The cause of Greece aroused his spirit, at that period of hfe when life should have been in its prime, and a new scene of most glorious ambition was opened to him, — that of adding to the unrivalled renown of the poet the still more grateful renown of becoming the saviour of a country and a people, whom the triumphs of ancient art, science, liberty, and literature, had made as it were kindred to the whole world. This august prospect was unveiled to him, and he rushed forward to secure it ; but his constitution, sapped by vicious indul- gence, gave way ; — the brilliant promise of new and loftiest glories was snatched from him ; — ^he sunk and perished. Eeflecting on this BYRON. 349 — the hardest moralist could not desire a sadder retribution ; and they who love rather to seek in the coiTupt mass of humanity for the original germs of the divine nature, will turn with Thomas Moore to the fair side, and acquiesce most cordially in the concluding words of his biography. " It woidd not be in the power, indeed, of the most poetical friend to allege anything more convincingly favourable of his character than is contained in the few simple facts, that, through life, with all his faults, he never lost a friend ; that those about him in his youth, whether as companions, teachers, or servants, remained attached to him to the last ; that the woman to whom he gave the love of his matm-er years idolizes his name ; and that, with a single unhappy exception, scarce an instance is to be found of any one once brought, however briefly, into relations of amity with him that did not feel towards him a kind regard in life and retain a fondness for his memory." In his last moments his heart fondly turned to his wife and child ; and he commissioned his old servant, Fletcher, to deliver to them messages of an affection which then rose sublimely above all the resentments of earth. GEORGE CRABBE. When a youth, with a voracious appetite for books, an old lady, who kindly supplied me with many, put one day into my hands Crabbe's Borough. It was my first acquaintance with him, and it occasioned me the most singular sensations imaginable. Intensely fond of poetry, I had read the great bulk of om" older writers, and was enthusiastic in my admiration of the new ones who had appeared. The Pleasures of Hope, of Campbell ; the West Indies and World before the Flood, of Montgomery; the first Metrical Romances of Scott ; all had their due appreciation. The calm dignity of Words- worth, and the blaze of Byron, had not yet fully appeared. Every- thing, however, old or new, in poetry had a certain elevation of subject and style, which seemed absolutely necessary to give it the title of poetry. But here was a poem by a country clergyman, — the description of a seaport town, so full of real life, yet so homely and often prosaic, that its efiect on me was confounding. Why, I said to myself, it is not poeti-y, and yet how clever ! There is certainly a resemblance to the style of Pope ; yet what subjects, what charac- ters, what ordinary phraseology ! The country parson, certainly, is a great reader of Pope ; but how unlike Pope's is the music of the rhythm — if music there be ! What an opening for a poem in four- and-twenty books ! " Describe the Borough — though our idle tribe May love description, can we so describe. That j'ou shall fairly streets and buildings trace, And all that gives distinction to the place i CKABBE. 351 This cannot be ; yet moved by your rsquest, A part I paint — let fancy form the rest. Cittes and towns, the various haunts of men, Require the pencil ; they defy the pen. Could he, who sang so well the Grecian Fleet, So well have sung of Alley, Lane, or Street ? Can measured lines these various buildings show, The Town Hall Turning, or the Prospect Row ? Can I the seats of wealth and want explore, And lengthen out my lays from door to door ? " No, good parson ! how should you ? I exclaimed to myself. You see the absurdity of your subject, and yet you rush into it. He who sang of the Greek Fleet certainly would never have thought of singing of Alley, Lane, or Street ! What a difference from — " Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess, sing I " Or— "'The man for wisdom's various arts renowned, Long exercised in woes, O Muse, resound I " What a difference from — " Arms and the man I sing, "who forced by fate. And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate ! " Or from the grandeur of that exordium : — " Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, tUl one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, heavenly Muse! that on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed In the beginning, how the Heavens and Earth Rose out of chaos ; or, if Sion-hill Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook, that flowed Fast by the Oracle of God, I thence Invoke thine aid to my adventurous song. That with no middle flight intends to soar Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. And chiefly Thou, O Spirit ! that dost prefer Before all temples the upright heart and pure. Instruct me, for Thou knowest : Thou from the first Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread. Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast abyss, And mad'st it pregnant ; what in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support ; That to tlie height of this great argument I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men." With this glorious sound in my ears, like the opening hymn of an archangel — language in which more music and more dignity were united than in any composition of mere mortal man, and which heralded in the universe, God and man, perdition and salvation, crea- tion and the great sum total of the human destinies, — what a fall was there to those astounding words — " Describe the Borough ! " It was a shock to everything of the ideal great and poetical in the young and sensitive mind, attuned to the harmonies of a thousand great lays of the bygone times, that was never to be forgotten. 352 CRABBE. Are we then come to this ? I asked. Is this the scale of topic, and is this the tone to which we are reduced in this generation 1 Turning over the heads of the different books did not much tend to remove this feehng. The Church, Sects, the Election, Law, Physic, Trades, Clubs and Social Meetings, Players, Almshouse and Trustees, Peter Grimes and Prisons ! What, in heaven's name, were the whole nine Muses to do with such a set of themes ! And then the actors ! See a set of drunken sailors in their ale-house : — " The Anchor, too, affords the seaman joys, In small smoked room, all clamour, crowds, and noise; Where a curved settle half surrounds the fire, Where fifty voices purl and punch require ; They come for pleasure in their leisure hour, And they enjoy it to their utmost power ; Standing they drink, they swearing smoke, while all Call, or make ready for a second call." But, spite of all, a book was a book, and therefore it was read. At every page the same struggle went on in the miod between all the old notions of poetry, and the vivid pictures of actual life which it unfolded. When I had read it once, I told the lender that it was the strangest, cleverest, and most absorbing book I had ever read, but that it was no poem. It was only by a second and a third perusal that the first sui'prise subsided ; the first shock gone by, the poem began to rise out of the novel composition. The deep and expe- rienced knowledge of human life, the sound sense, the quiet satire, there was no overlooking from the first ; and soon the warm sympathy with poverty and suffering, the boldness to display them as they existed, and to suffer no longer poetry to wrap her golden haze round human life, and to conceal aU that ought to be known, because it must be known before it could be removed ; the tender pathos, and the true feeling for nature, gi'ew every hour on the mind. It was not long before George Crabbe became as firmly fixed in my bosom as a great and genuine poet, as Rembrandt, or Collins, or Edwin Landseer are as genuine painters. Crabbe saw plainly what was become the great disease of our literature. It was a departure from actual life and nature. " I've often marvelled, when by night, by day, I've marked the manners moving in my way, And heard the language and beheld the lives Of lass and lover, goddesses and wives, That books which promise much of life to give Should show so little how we truly live." To this home-truth, succeeds that admirable satirical description of our novel literature, which introduces the sad story of Ellen Orford. My space is little, but I must give a specimen of the man- ner in which the Cervantes of England strips away the sublime fooleries of our hterary knight-errantry. " Time have I lent — I would their debt were less — To flowing pages of sublime distress ; And to the heroine's soul-distracting fears I early gave my sixpences and tears ; Oft have I travelled in these tender tales, To Darnley Cottages, and Maple Vales. CRABBE. 353 I've watched a Tvintry night on castie walls, I've stalked by moonlight through deserted halls ; And when the weary world was sunk to rest, I've had such sights — as may not be expressed. " Lo ! that chateau, the western tower decayed, The peasants shun it, they are all afraid; For there was done a deed ! could walls reveal Or timbers tell it, how the heart would feeU Most horrid was it : — for, behold the floor Has stains of blood, and will be clean no more. Hark to the winds ! which, through the wide saloon, And the long passage, send a dismal tune, — Music that ghosts delight in; and now heed Yon beauteous nymph who must unmask the deed : See! with majestic sweep she swims alone Tlirough rooms all dreary, guided by a groan. Though windows rattle, and though tapestries shake, And the feet falter every step they take. Mid moans and gibing sprites she silent goes, ' To find a something which shall soon expose The villaiiies and wiles of her determined foes: And having thus adventured, thus endured. Fame, wealth, and lover, are for life secured. " Much have I feared, but am no more afraid. When some chaste beauty, by some wretch betrayed, Is drawn away with such distracted speed That she anticipates a dreadful deed. Not so do I. Let solid walls impound The captive fair, and dig a moat around : Let there be brazen locks and bars of steel, And keepers cruel, such as never feel. With not a single note the purse supply. And when she begs let men and maids deny. Be windows those from which she dare not fall, And help so distant 'tis in vain to call ; Still means of freedom will some power devise, And from the baffled ruffian snatch the prize." From all this false sublime, Crabbe was the first to free us, and to lead us into the true sublime of genuine human life. How novel at that time, and yet how thrilling, was the incident of the sea-side visitors surprised out on the sands by the rise of the tide ! Here was real sublimity of distress, real display of human passion. The lady, with her children in her hand, wandering from the tea-table which had been spread on the sands, sees the boatmen asleep, the boat adrift, and the tide advancing : — " She gazed, she trembled, and though faint her call, It seemed like thunder to confound them all. Their sailor-guests, the boatman and his mate. Had drunk and slept, regardless of their state; ' Awake ! ' they cried aloud ! ' Alarm the shore! Shout all, or never shall we reach it more ! ' Alas ! no shout the distant land can reach, No eye behold them from the foggy beach : Again they join in one loud, fearful cry. Then cease, and eager listen for reply; None came— the rising wind blew sadly by. They shout once more, and then they turn aside To see how quickly flowed the coming tide ; Between eacli cry they find the waters steal On their strange pri>OM, and new horrors feel. Foot after foot on the contracted ground ,The billows fall, and dn-adful is the sound ; Less and yet less the sinking isle became. And there was weeping, wailing, wrath, and blame." A A 854 CRABBE. It has been said that Crabbe's poetry is mere description, however accurate, and that he has not a spark of imagination. The charge arises from a false view of the poet and his objects. He saw that the world was well suppUed with what are poems of the creative faculty, that it was just as destitute of the poetry of truth and reality. He saw human life lie like waste land, as worthless of notice, while our poets and romancers " In trim gardens took their pleasure." He saw the vice, the ignorance, the misery, and he lifted the veil and cried, — " Behold your feUow-men ! Such are the multitude of your fellow-creatures, amongst whom you live and move. Do you want to weep over distress 1 Behold it there, huge, dismal, and excruciating ! Do you wish for a sensation ? Find it there ! Follow the ruined gentleman from his gaming and his dissipation, to his squalid den and his death. Follow the grim savage, who murders his shrieking boy at sea. Follow the poor maiden to her ruin, and the parent weeping and withering under the curse of a depraved child. Go down into the abodes of ignorance, of swarming vice, of foUy, and madness — and if you want a lesson, or a moral, there they are by thousands." Crabbe knew that the true imaginative faculty had a great and comprehensive task, to dive into the depths of the human heart, to fathom the recesses and the springs of the mind, and to display aU their movements under the various excitements of various passions, with the hand of a master. He has done this, and done it with unrivalled tact and vigour. Out of the scum and chaos of lowest life, he has evoked the true sublime. He has taught us that men are our proper objects of display, and that the multitude has claims on our sympathies that duty as well as taste demand obedience to. He was the first to dare these desperate and deserted walks of hu- manity, and to prove to us that still it was humanity. At every step he revealed scenes of the truest pathos, of the profoundest interest, and gave instances of the most generous sacrifices, the most patient love, the most heroic duty, in the very abodes of unvisited wretched- ness. He made us feel that these beings were men ! There are few pictures so touching in all the volumes of romance, as that of the dying sailor and his sweetheart. What hero breathed a more beautiful devotion, or clothed it in more exquisite language, than this poor sailor youth, when beheving himself dying at sea : — " He called his friend, and prefaced with a sigh A lover's message — ' Thomas, I must die. Would I could see my Sally, and could rest My throbbing temples on her faithful breast, And gazing go ! — if not, this trifle take, And say till death I wove it for her sake : Yes, I must die — blow on, sweet breeze, blow on ! Give me one look before my life be gone. Oh ! give me that and let me not despair, One last fond look — and now repeat the prayer.' * • * * " She placed a decent stone his grave above. Neatly engraved — an offering of her love; For that slie wrought, for that forsook her bed, Awake alike to duty and the dead." CRABBE. 365 It was by these genuine vindications of our entire humanity, that Crabbe, by casting the full blaze of the sunshine of truth and genius on the real condition of the labouring population of these kingdoms, laid the foundations of that great popular feeling which prevails at the present day. He was not merely a poet, but a poet who had the sagacity to see into the real state of things, and the heart to do his duty — the great marks of the true poet, who is necessarily a true and feeling man. To him popular education, popular freedom, popular advance into knowledge and power, owe a debt which futurity will gratefully acknowledge, but no time can cancel. George Crabbe was born on the borders of that element which he so greatly loved, and which he has so powerfully described in the first chapter of the Borough. He has had the good fortune to have in his son George a biographer such as every good man would desire. The life written by him is full of the veneration of the son, yet of the candour of the historian ; and is at once one of the most graphic and charming of books. Fi-om this volume we learn that the poet was born at Aldborough, in Suffolk, on the Christmas eve of 1 754. His birthplace was an old house in that range of buildings which the sea has now almost demolished. The chamber projected far over the gi-ound floor : and the windows were small, with diamond panes almost impeiwious to the light. A view of it by Stanfield forms the vignette to the biography. Both the father and grandfather of Crabbe bore the name of George, as well as himself. The grandfather, a burgess of AJd- borough, and collector of customs there, yet died poor. The father, originally educated for trade, had been in early life the keeper of a parochial school in the porch of the church at Orford. He after- wards became schoolmaster and pai-ish clerk at Norton, near Loddon, in Norfolk ; and finally, returning to his native Aldborough, rose to the collection of the salt duties, as Salt-master. He was a stern but able man, and with all his sternness not destitute of good quahties. The mother of Crabbe was an excellent and pious woman. Besides himself there were five other children, all of whom, except one girl, hved to mature years. His next brother, Robert, was a glazier, who retired from business at Southwold. John Crabbe, the third son, was the captain of a Liverpool slave .ship, who perished by an insurrection of the slaves. The fourth brother, William, also a seafaring man, was carried prisoner by the Simniards into Mexico, and was once seen by an Aldborough sailor on the coast of Hon- duras, but never heard of again. This sailor brother, in his inquiries after all at home, had expressed much astonishment to find that George was become a clergyman, when he left him a doctor ; and on this incident Crabbe afterwards founded the sailor's story in The Parting Hour. His only surviving sister married a Mr. Sparkes, a builder of Aldborough, and died in 1827. Such were Crabbe's family. The scenery amongst which he spent his boyhood has been frequently described in his poetry, especially in the opening A a2 356 CRABBE. letter of his Borough. It is here given with equal life in his son's prose. " Aldborough, or, as it is more correctly written, Alderburgh, was in those days a poor and wretched place, with nothing of the elegance and gaiety which have since sprung up about it, in consequence of the resort of watering-parties. The town lies between a low hill or chfF, on which only the old church and a few better houses were then situated, and the beach of the German Ocean. It consisted of two parallel and unpaved streets, running between mean and scrambhng houses, the abodes of seafaring men, pilots, and fishers. The range of houses nearest to the sea had suiFered so much from repeated invasions of the waves, that only a few scattered tenements appeared erect among the desolation. I have often heard my father describe a tremendous sprmg-tide of, I think, the 17th of January, 1779, when eleven houses here were at once demolished ; and he saw the breakers dash over the roofs, and round the walls, and crush all to ruin. The beach consists of successive ridges — large rolled stones, then loose shingles, and, at the fall of the tide, a stripe of fine hard sand. Vessels of all sorts, from the large heavy troll boat, to the yawl and prame, drawn up along the shore — fishermen preparing their tackle, or sorting their sj^oil, — and, nearer, the gloomy old town-hall, the only indication of municipal dignity, a few groups of mariners, chiefly pilots, taking their quick short walks back- wards and forwards, every eye watchful of the signal from the offing, — such was the squalid scene which first opened on the author of The Village ! " Nor was the landscape in the vicinity of a more engaging aspect ; open commons and sterile farms, the soil poor and sandy, the herbage bare and rushy, the trees ' few and far between,' and withered and stunted by the bleak breezes of the sea. The opening picture of The Village was copied, in every touch, from the scene of the poet's nativity and boyish days : — ' liO ! -where the heath, with Tvithering brake grown o'er, Lends the light turf tliat warms the neighbouring poor; From thence a length of burning sand appears, Where the thin harvest waves its withered ears ; Rank weeds, that eveiy art and care defy. Reign o'er the land, and rob the blighted rye ; There thistles spread their prickly arms afar, And to the ragged infant threaten war.' "The broad river, called the Aid, approaches the sea close to Aldborough, within a few hundred yards, and then turning abruptly, continues to rmi for about ten miles parallel to the beach, from which a dreary stripe of marsh and waste alone divides it, until it at length finds its embouchure at Orford. The scenery of this river has been celebrated as lovely and delightful, in a poem called Slaughden Vale, written by Mr. James Bird, a friend of my father's ; and old Camden talks of ' the beautiful vale of Slaughden.' I confess, however, that though I have ever found an indescribable charm in the very weeds of the place, I never could perceive its claims to beauty. Such as it is, it has furnished Mx. Ciabbe with many of his happiest CRABBE. 367 and most graphic descriptions ; and the same may be said of the whole line of coast from Orford to Dunwich, every feature of which has, somewhere or other, been repi'oduced in his writings. The quay of Slaughden, in particular, has been painted with all the minuteness of a Dutch landscape : — ' Here samphire banks and saltwort bound the flood, There stakes and sea-weeds withering on the mud; And higher up a ridge of all things base, Which some strong tide has rolled upon the place. . . Yon is our quay ! those smaller hoys from town, Its various wares for country use bring down,' etc. * • » * "For one destined to distinction as a portrayer of character," continues his son, " few scenes could have been more favourable than that of his infancy and boyhood. He was cradled among the rough sons of the ocean, — a daily witness of unbridled passions, and of manners remote from the sameness and artificial smoothness of polished society. At home, as has already been hinted, he was sub- ject to the caprices of a stern and imperious, though not unkindly nature ; and probably few whom he could familiarly approach but had passed through some of those dark tragedies in which his future strength was to be exhibited. The common people of Aldborough in those days are described as — ' A wild, ampliibious race, With sullen woe displayed in every face ; Who far frem civil arts and social fly. And scowl 3t strangers with suspicious eye.'" Crabbe, though imbibing everything relating to the sea, and sailors, and fishermen, was by no means disposed to be one of this class himself. He early exhibited a bookish turn, and was reckoned effeminate ; but his father saw his talent, and gave him a good education. He was then put apprentice to a surgeon, who was also a farmer ; and George alternately pounded the pestle and worked in the fields, till he was removed to another surgeon at Woodbridge. Here he became a member of a small literary club, which gave a new stimulus to his love of poetry, already sufficiently strong ; and in his eighteenth year he fell in love with the young lady who was destined to be his vnie. Before the expii-ation of his apprenticeship, he had pubhshed a volume of poems. His apprenticeship terminated, he set out for London ; but, unfurnished with money to attend the hospitals, he remained awhile in mean lodgings in Whitechapel, and then returned to Aldborough ; and, after engaging himself as an assistant for a short time, commenced practice for himself. It would not do, however ; and as he filled up his leisure time by botanizing in the country, the people got a notion that he gathered his medicine out of the ditches. At length, starved out, he resolved to return to London, as a literary adventurer. With 51. in his pocket, a present for the purpose, from Dudley North, brother to the candidate for Aldborough, he took his passage in a sloop for town. In thinking of Crabbe, we generally picture him to our.selves as the well-to-do clergyman, comfortably inditing hia verse in a goodly 358 CRABBE. parsonage ; but Crabbe commenced as a regular hack-author about town, aud went through all the racking distress of that terrible life, utterly without funds, without patrons, or connexions. Chatterton had perished in the desperate undertaking just before, and it^ap- peared likely enough, for a long time, that Crabbe might perish too. In vain he wrote — nobody would publish ; in vain he addressed ministers of state in verse and prose — nobody would hear him. He maintained this fearful struggle for twelve months. He had lodgings at a Ml-. Vickery's, a hairdresser, near the Exchange, who afterwards removed to Bishopsgate-street, whither he accompanied the family. They appeared to behave well to him, and gave him more trust than is usual with such people, though at length even their patience seems to have been exhausted, and he was threatened with a prison. While he resided there, he often spent his evenings at a small coffee-house near the Exchange, where he became acquainted with several clever young men, then beginning the world, like himself. One of these was Bonnycastle, afterwards master of the military academy at Woolwich ; another was Isaac Dalby, afterwards professor of mathematics in the military college of Marlowe ; and a third, Eeubeu Burrow, who rose to high distinction in the sei'vice of the East India Company, and died in Bengal. To obtain healthy exer- cise, he used to walk much in the day time, and would accompany Mr. Bonnycastle on his visits to different schools in the suburbs ; but more frequently stole off alone into the countiy, with a small edition of Ovid, Horace, or Catullus, in his pocket. Two or three of these little volumes remained in his possession in later days, and he set a high value on them, saying they were his companions in his adversity. His favourite haunt was Horusey wood, where he sought for plants and insects. On one occasion he had strolled too far from town to return, and, having no money, he was compelled to lodge on a mow of hay, beguiling the time, while it was light, with reading TibuUus, and in the morning returned to town. Of the depth of distress to which Crabbe was reduced, his journal kept through that dark time testifies, but nothing more so than this prayer : — " My God, my God, I put my trust in thee ; my troubles increase, my soul is dismayed ; I am heavy and in distress ; all day long I call upon thee ; O be thou my helper in the needful time of trouble. " Why art thou so far from me, my Lord ? why hidest thou thy face ? I am cast down ; I am in poverty and affliction : be thou with me, O my God ; let me not be wholly forsaken, O my Redeemer ! " Behold, I trust in thee, blessed Lord. Guide me and govern me unto the end. O Lord, my salvation, be thou ever with me. Amen." Unlike poor Chatterton, Crabbe had a firm trust in Providence, and was neither so passionate nor so reservedly haughty. He deter- mined to leave no stone unturned ; and at length he wrote to the only man of the age who was likely to lend him a kindly ear — that CRABBK 359 was Edmund Burke. From that moment his troubles were at an end, and his fortune made. Burke sent for him, looked at his manu- scripts, perceived his claims to genius well founded, and received him to his own table. He then introduced him to Dr. Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the surly old Lord Chancellor Thurlow ; the last of whom, though he had paid no attention to a letter Crabbe had before written to him, nor to a stinger which he had sent him in consequence, now sent for him, and told him that he ourilit to have noticed the first letter, and that he forgave the second, and that there was his reply. He put a sealed paper into Crabbe's hand, which, on being opened, contained a bank-note, value one hundred pounds ! Bm-ke advised Crabbe to take orders, as they were walking together one day at Beaconsfield, whither Burke had invited him. This was soon managed ; he was examined and admitted to priest's orders by the Bishop of Norwich, and was sent, to the astonishment of the natives, to officiate as curate in his native town. But Burke soon procured him the chaplaincy to the Duke of Rutland, and he went down to reside at Belvoir Castle. At this splendid establish- ment, and in a fine country, Crabbe did not enjoy himself. His son says : " The numberless allusions to the nature of a literary de- pendant's existence in a great lord's house, which occm' in my father's writings, and especially in the tale of The Patron, are quite enough to lead any one that knew his character and feelings to the conclusion that, notwithstanding the kindness and condescension of the Duke and Duchess themselves, — which were, I believe, uniform, and of which he always spoke with gratitude, — the situation he fiUed at Belvoir was attended with many painful circumstances, and pro- ductive in his mind of some of the acutest sensations of wounded pride that have ever been traced by any pen." He was always delighted to get away from the cold stateliness of Belvoir, with its troops of insolent menials, to the small seat of Chevely, about the period of the Newmarket races ; or to Croxton, another small seat near Belvoir, where the family went sometimes to fish in the exten- sive ponds. Here the servants were few, ceremony was relaxed, and he could wander in the woods after his insects and his plants. Thurlow gave him two small livings in Dorsetshire, Frome St. Quin- tin and Evershot ; saying at the time, " By G — d, you are as much like Parson Adams as twelve to a dozen." He now published The ViUage, which was at once popular, and he married. Miss Sarah Elmy, to whom he became engaged at eighteen, had, through all his strugles in the metropohs, with unswerving afiection maintained the superiority of his talents, and encouraged him to persevere. The Duke of Rutland being appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the ducal family quitted Belvoir for Dublin, and Crabbe being left behind, was, on his proposed marriage, invited to bring his wife to the castle, and occupy certain apartments there. This was done ; but the annoyance of another man's, and a great man's, menials to attend on him, was too much for Crabbe, and he fled the castle, and took up his abode as curate of Stathern, in the humble parsonage there. 360 CRABBE. In this obscure parsonage Crabbe lived for years. He had three children born there — his two sons, George and John, and a daughter, who died in infancy. There he published, too, his poem The News- paper, which also was well received ; and then he laid by his poetic pursuits for two and ticenly years! Nay, his son says, that after this period of two and twenty years he published The Parish Register, and again lay by from his thirty-first year till his fifty-second ; and so completely did he bury himself in the obscurity of domestic and village life, that he was gi-adually forgotten as a living author, and the name of Crabbe only remembered through some passages of his poems in the Elegant Extracts. Of the four years spent at Stathern he used to speak as the very happiest of his life. He had won a pleasant retreat after his despe- rate clutch at fortune. His perseverance was rewarded by the society of her who had been the one faithful and congenial friend of his youth, and they could now ramble together at their ease amid the rich woods of Belvoir, without any of the painful feelings which had before chequered his enjoyment of the place. At home, a garden afforded him healthful exercise and unfailing amusement ; and, as a mere curate, he was freed from any disputes with the villagers around him. Here he botanized, entomologized, and geologized to his heart's content. At one time he was tempted to turn sportsman, but neither his feelings nor his taste would allow him to continue one ; and he employed his leisure hours much more to his satis- faction in exercising his medical skill to relieve the pains of his parishioners. At the instance of the Duchess of Rutland, Thurlow having ex- changed the poet's Dorsetshire livings for those of Muston, in Leicestershire, and AUington, in Lincolnshire, but near each other, Mr. Crabbe, in 17S9, left Stathern, and entered on liis rectory at Muston. Here his life continued much the same, but the countrj' around was open and uninteresting. " Here," says his son, " were no groves, nor dry green lawns, nor gravel roads, to tempt the pedestrian in all weathers ; but still, the parsonage and its premises formed a pretty little oasis in the clayey desert. Our front windows looked full on the churchyard, by no means like the common for- bidding receptacles of the dead, but truly ornamental ground ; for some fine elms partially concealed the small beautiful church and its spire, while the eye travelled through their stems, and rested on the banks of a stream, and a picturesque old bridge. The garden enclosed the other two sides of the churchyard ; but the crown of the whole was a gothic archway, cut through a thick hedge and many boughs, for through this opening, as in the deep frame of a picture, appeared, in the centre of the aerial canvas, the unrivalled Belvoir." The home picture of Crabbe at this period is given by his son with a glow of grateful remembrance of the hapiDiness of the time to himself, then a child, that is beautiful. " Always visibly happy in the happiness of others, especially of children, our father entered into all our pleasures, and soothed and cheered us in all our httle CRABBE. 361 griefs, with sucli overflowing tenderness, that it was no wonder we almost worshipped him. My first recollection of him is of his carry- ing me up to his private room to prayers, in the summer evenings, about sunset, and rewarding my silence and attention afterwards with a view of the flower garden through his prism. Then I recal the delight it was to me to be permitted to sleep with him during a confinement of my mother's — how I longed for the morning, because then he would be sure to tell me some fairy tale of his own invention, ah sparkling with gold and diamonds, magic fountains and enchanted princesses. In the eye of memory I can still see him as he was at this period of his life ; his fatherly countenance, unmixed with any of the less loveable expressions that, in too many faces, obscure that character — but ■preemmently fat //er I?/, ■ conveying the ideas of kindness, intellect, and purity ; his manners grave, manly, and cheerful, in unison with his high and open forehead ; his very attitudes, whether he sat absorbed in the arrangement of his minerals, shells, and insects, or as he laboured in his garden until his naturally pale complexion acquired a tinge of fresh healthy red, or as coming hghtly towards us with some unexpected present, his smile of indescribable benevolence spoke exultation i-i the foretaste of our raptures. " But I think even earlier than these are my first recollections of my mother. I think the very earliest is of her combing my hair one evening, by the light of the fire, which hardly broke the long shadows of the room, and singing the plaintive air of ' Kitty Fell,' till, though I could not be more than two or three years old, my tears dropped profusely." Equally charming is the writer's recollection of a journey while a boy into Sufiblk with his father. This was to Parham, the house of Mrs. Crabbe's uncle Tovell, with whom she had been brought up. The picture presented of the life and establishment of a wealthy yeoman is so vivid, that I must take leave to add it to the passage already quoted. " My great-uncle's estabhshment was that of the first-rate yeoman of that period — the yeoman that already began to be styled by courtesy an esquire. Mr. ToveU might possess an estate of some eight hundred pounds per annum, a portion of which he himself cultivated. Educated at a mercantile school, he often said of himself, 'Jack will never make a gentleman ;' yet he had a native dignity of mind and manners which might have enabled him to i^ass muster in that character with any but very fastidious critics. His house was large, and the surrounding moat, the rookery, the ancient dovecote, and the well-stored fishponds, were such as might have suited a gentleman's seat of some consequence ; but one side of the house immediately overlooked a farm-yard, full of aU sorts of domestic animals, and the scene of constant bustle and noise. On entering the house there was nothing, at first sight, to remind one of the farm : a spacious hall paved with black and white marble ; at one extremity a very handsome drawing-room, and at the other a fine old stau'case of black oak, poUshcd till it was as slijipery as ice, and 362 CRABBE, having a chime clock and a barrel organ on its landing-places. But this cbawing-room, a corresponding dining parlour, and a handsome sleeping apartment upstairs, were all tabooed ground, and made use of on great and solemn occasions only, such as rent days, and an occasional visit with which Mr. Tovell was honoured by a neighbour- ing peer. At all other times the family and their visitors lived entirely in the old-fashioned kitchen, along with the servants. My great-uncle occupied an arm-chair, or, in attacks of gout, a couch on one side of a large open chimney. Mrs. Tovell sat at a small table, on which, in the evening, stood one small candle, in an iron candle- stick, plying her needle by the feeble glimmer, surrounded by her maids, all busy at the same employment ; but in winter a noble block of wood, sometimes the whole circumference of a pollard, threw its comfortable warmth and cheerful blaze over the apartment. " At a very early hour in the morning the alarum called the maids and their mistress also ; and if the former were tardy, a louder alarum, and more formidable, was heard chiding the delay— not that scolding was peculiar to any occasion ; it regularly went on through all the day, hke bells on harness, inspiriting the work whether it was done ill or well. After the important business of the dairy and a hasty breakfast, their resjsective employments were again resumed ; that which the mistress took for her especial privilege being the scrubbing the floors of the state apartments. A new servant, ignorant of her presumption, was found one morning on her knees, hard at work on the floor of one of these preserves, and was thus addressed by her mistress : — ' You wash such floors as these ? Give me the brush this instant, and troop to the scullery, and wash that, madam ! .... As true as G — d's in heaven, here comes Lord Rochford to call on Mr. TovelL Here, take my mantle,' — a blue woollen apron, — ' and I'll go to the door.' " If the sacred apartments had not been opened, the family dined in this wise : the heads seated in the kitchen at an old table ; the farm-men standing in the adjoining scullery, with the door open ; the female servants at a side table, called a boicfer; with the principal at the table, perchance some travelling rat-catcher, or tinker, or farrier, or an occasional gardener in his shirt-sleeves, his face pro- bably streaming with perspiration. My father well describes, in The Widow's Tale, my mother's situation, when hving in her younger at Parham : — " But when the men beside their station took, The maidens witii them, and with these tlie cook ; When one huge wooden howl before them stood, Filled with large balls of farinaceous food ; With bacon, mass saline! where never lean Beneath the brown and bristly rind was seen : When, from a single horn, the party drew Their copious draughts of heavy ale and new; When the coarse cloth she saw with many a stain, Soiled by rude hands who cut and came again ; She could not breathe, but with a heavy sigh, Reined the fair neck, and shut the offended ej'e; She minced the sanguine flesh in frustums fine. And wondered much to see the creatures dine." CRABBE. 363 " On ordinary clays, wten the kitchen dinner was over, the fire replenished, the kitchen sanded and lightly swept over in waves, mistress and maids, taking off their shoes, retired to their chambers for a nap of one hour to a minute. The dogs and cats commenced their siesta by the fire. Mr.Tovell dozed in his chair ; and no noise was heard, except the melancholy and monotonous cooiug of a turtle-dove, varied with the shrill treble of a canary. After the hour had expired, the active part of the family were on the alert ; the bottles — Mr. ToveU's tea equipage — placed on the table ; and, as if by instinct, some old acquaintance would glide in for the evening's carousal, and then another and another. If four or five arrived, the punch-bowl was taken down, and emptied and filled again. But whoever came, it was comparatively a dull evening, vmless two especial knights-companions were of the party. One was a jolly old farmer, with much of the person and humour of Falstaflf, a face as rosy as brandy could make it, and an eye teeming with subdued merriment, for he had that prime quality of a joker, superficial gravity. The other was a relative of the family, a wealthy yeoman, middle-aged, thin, and muscular. He was a bachelor, and famed for his indiscriminate attachment to all who bore the name of woman — young or aged, clean or dirty, a lady or a gipsy, it mattered not to him ; all were equally admired. Such was the strength of his constitution, that, though he seldom went to bed sober, he retained a clear eye and stentorian voice to his eightieth year, and coursed when he was ninety. He sometimes rendered the colloquies over the bowl peculiarly piquant ; and as soon as his voice began to be elevated, one or two of the inmates — my father and mother, for example — withdrew with ]\Ii"s. Tovell into her own sanctum sanctorum ; but I, not being supposed capable of understanding much that might be said, was allowed to linger on the skirts of the festive circle ; and the seiwants, being considered much in the same point of view as the animals dozing on the hearth, remained to have the full benefit of their wit, neither producing the slightest restraint, nor feeling it themselves." This jolly old Mr. Tovell being carred ofi" suddenly, Mr. Crabbe, induced by the desire to be in his own county, and amongst his own relatives, placed a curate at Muston, and went to reside at Parham in Mr. Tovell's house. It was not a happy removal. It was a deser- tion of his proper flock and duty in obedience to his own private incUnations, and it was not blessed : his son says, that as they were slowly quitting IMuston, preceded by their furniture, a pei-son who knew them called out in an impressive tone — " You are wrong, you are wrong ! " The sound, Crabbe said, found an echo in his own conscience, and rang like a supernatural voice in his ears through the whole journey. His son believes that he sincerely repented of this step. At Parham he did not find that happiness that perhaps the dreams of his youth — for there Uved Miss Elmy during their long attachment — had led him first to expect. Mrs. Elmy, his wife's mother, and Miss Tovell, the sister of the old gentleman, were the coheiresses of their brother, and resided with him. The latter seems to have been a regular old-fa.shioned fidget. She used to stalk 364 CRABBE. about with her tall ivory-tipped walking cane, and on any the slightest alteration made, were it but the removal of a shrub, or a jiicture on the ■ walls, would say — " It was enough to make Jacky (her late brother) shake in his grave if he could see it," and would threaten to make a cadicy to her will." Mr. Crabbe stood it for four years — memorable instance of patience ! — and then found a residence to his heart's content. This was Great Glemham hall, belonging to Mr. North, and then vacant. He took it, and continued there five years. We may imagine these five of as happy years as most of Crabbe's hfe. The house was large and hand- some. It stood in a small but well-wooded park, occupying the mouth of a glen ; and in this glen lay the mansion. The hiUs that were on either hand were finely hung with wood ; a brook ran at the foot of one of these, and all round were woodlands, " and those green dry lanes which tempt the walker in all weathers, especially in the evenings, when in the short grass of the dry sandy banks lies, every few yards, a glow-worm, and the nightingales are pouring forth their melody in every direction." Just at hand was the village ; and the church at which he preached at Sweflfling was convenient. At Parham, he was not more popular out of doors than he was in, be- cause he was no jovial fellow like Mr. Tovelk and did not like much visiting. Here he was popular as a preacher, drew large congrega- tions, and in Mr. Turner, his rector, had an enlightened and admiring friend. In such a place, too, a paradise to his boys, he was as busy in botany as ever ; wrote a treatise on the subject,,^ which, how- ever, he was advised, to the public loss, not to publish, because such books had usually been published in Latin! He therefore burnt it, as he used to do novels, which it was his great delight to write, and then make bonfires of ; his boys carrying them out to him by armfuls in the garden, and glorying in the blaze as he presided over it. He returned in 1805 to Muston, to which he was called by the bishop. At the end of five years he had been obliged to quit his beautiful retreat at Glemham. It was sold, the house pulled down, and another built in its place. For the four further years that he continued in Suffolk he lived at the village of Eendham. At Muston, the shepherd being absent, all had gone wrong ; the warning voice had been fulfilled. The Methodist and the Huntingtonian had, in the absence of the pastor, set up their tabernacles, and had become successful rivals. Crabbe was not destitute of professional feelings or zeal. He preached against these interlopers, and only increased the evil. The farmers here were shy of him, for they had heard that he was a Jacobin, of all things ! that is, he was no advocate for the terrible war which was raging with France, and which kept up the price of their corn. In this cold, clayey, and farming county, he con- tinued nine years. Here he issued to the world his Parish Register, and his Borough ; perhaps, after all, his very best work, for it is full of such a variety of life, all drawn with the force and clearness of his prime ; here also he published his Tales in verse ; but here, too, he lost his wife, who had been an invalid for many yeai-s. It was there- CRABBE. 36& fore become to liim a sad place. His health and spirits failed him ; and it was a foi-tunate circumstance that at this juncture the living of Tro-wbridge was conferred on him by the Duke of Rutland. He removed thither in June, 1814. From long before the time of Mr. Crabbe's removal to Trowbridge, he had been in the habit of making, during the season, occasionally a visit to London. His fame, especially after the publication of The Borough, was established. His power of painting human life and character, the bold and faithful pencil with which he did this, the true sympathies with the poor and afflicted and neglected which animated him, were all fully perceived and acknowledged ; and hQ found himself a welcome guest in the highest circles of both aris- tocracy and literature He who had been the humble curate at Belvoir, subject to slights and insults from pompous domestics, which are difficult to complain of but are deeply felt, had, long before quitting the neighboiu'hood of the castle, been the honoured guest in the midst of the proudest nobles. In London, all the hte- rary coteries were eager to have him. Holland-house, Lansdowne- house, the Duke of Rutland's, and other great houses, found him a frequent guest amid lords and ladies, dukes and duchesses ; and at Holland-house, and Mr. Rogers's, he was surrounded by all that was at the time brilliant and famous in the political and literary world. These visits, after the death of his wife, became annual, and the old man wonderfully enjoyed them. The extracts which his son has given from his journal teem with men and women of title and name. He is dining or breakfasting with Lady Errol, Lady Holland, the Duchess of Rutland. He meets Mr. Fox, Mr. Canning, Foscolo ; Lords Haddington, Dundas, Strangford, &c. ; Moore, Campbell, Sir Walter Scott, Sir James Mackintosh ; Ladies Spencer and Bes- borough ; the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland ; in fact, everybody He became much attached to the Hoares, of Hampstead, aud used to take up his quarters there, and with them make summer excur- sions to Hastings, the Lsle of Wight, and the hke places. "With them he saw Miss Edgeworth, Joanna Baillie, &c. So popular was he become, that John Murray gave him 3,000/. for his Tales of the HaU ; and he carried the bills for that sum home in his waistcoat pocket. His meeting with Sir Walter Scott caused him to accept a pressing invitation from him to Scotland, whither he happened to go at the time of George IV.'s visit to Edinburgh ; by which means, though he saw all the gala of the time, and all Highland costumes, he missed seeing Scott at Abbotsford. At Scott's house, in Castle-strfeet, occurred his adventure with the three Highland chiefs, which has caused much merriment. He came down one morning and foimd these three portly chiefs in full Highland costume, talking at a great rate, in a language which he did not understand ; and not thinking of GaeUc, concluded that they were foreigners. They, on their jjart, seeing an elderly gentleman, dressed in a somewhat antiquated style, with buckles in his shoes, and perfectly clerical, imagined him some learned Abbe, who had come on a visit to Sir Walter. The conse- quence was, that Sir Walter, entering the breakfast-room with his 3G6 • CRABBE. family, stood a moment in amazement to hear them all conversing together in execrable French ; and then hurst into a hearty laugh, saying, — " Why, you are all fools together ! This is an Englishman, and these Highlanders, Mr. Crabbe, can speak as good Enghsh as you can." The amazement it occasioned may be imagined. Trowbridge is not the sort of place that you would imagine a poet voluntarily choosing as a place of residence. It is a manufacturing town of about 12,000 inhabitants, chiefly of the working class, with a sprinkling of shopkeepers, and wealthy manufacturers. It has no striking features, but to a person proceeding thither from London, has a mean, huddled, and unattractive aspect. The country round is a good dairy country, but is not by any means striking. Crabbe, however, found there families of intelligence and great kindness. His sons married well amongst them, and John acted as his curate ; George, the writer of his biography, had the living, and occupied the parsonage of Pucklechurch, only about twenty miles distant. These were all circumstances, with a good parsonage, and a wide field of usefulness in comforting and relieving his poor parishioners, as well as in instructing them, which were calculated to make a man like Crabbe happy. By all classes he soon became much beloved ; and was, in every sense, a most excellent pastor. In his own children he seems to have been peculiarly blest ; his two sons, clergymen, being all that he could desire, and they and his grandchildren held him in the warmest and most reverential affection. One of his great haunts were the quarries near Trowbridge, where he used to geologize assiduously ; for, after his wife's death, he ceased to retain his taste for botany ; her youthful botanical rambles with him no doubt now coming back too painfully upon him. His parsonage was a good, capacious old house, of grey stone, and pointed gables, standing in a large garden surrounded by a high wall. It lies almost in the heai't of the town, and within a hundred yards of the churchyard. In his time, I understand, the garden was almost a wood of lofty trees. Many of these have since been cut down. Still it is a pleasant and spacious retirement, with some fine trees about it. The church is a very old building, and threatening ifi tumble. At the time of my visit workmen were busy lowering the tower, and the northern aisle showed no equivocal marks of giving way. The churchyard was also undergoing the process of levelling ; the turf was removed, and it altogether looked dismal A very civil and intelligent sexton, living by the churchyard gate, in a cottage overhung with ivy, showed me the church, and appeared much interested in the departed pastor and poet. I ascended into the pulpit, and imagined how often the author of The Borough had stood there and addressed his congregation. There is a monument to his memory in the chancel, by Baily. The old man is represented as lying on his death-bed, by which are two celestial beings, awaiting his departure. The likeness to Crabbe is said to be excellent. The inscription is as follows : — " Sacred to the memory of the Rev. Oeorge Crabbe, LL.B., who died February the third, 1832, in the CRABBE. 367 seventy-eighth year of his age, and the nineteenth of his services as I'ector of this parish. Born in humble life, he made himself what he was. By the force of his genius he broke through the obscurity of his birth ; yet never ceased to feel for the less fortunate. Entering, as his works can testify, into the sorrows and privations of the poorest of his parishioners ; and so discharging the duties of his station, as a minister and a magistrate, as to acquire the respect and esteem of all his neighbours. As a writer he is well described by a great cotemporary, as ' Nature's sternest painter, yet her best.' " In the north aisle is also a tablet to the memory of the wife of his son George, who, it appears, died two years after Crabbe himself, and in the very year, 1834, in which her husband published his excellent and most interesting hfe of his father. Trowbridge impressed me, as numbers of other places have done where men of genius have lived, with the fleeting nature of human connexions. Crabbe, so long associated with Trowbridge, was gone ; his sons were gone, neither of them succeeding him in the living, and all trace of him, except his monument, seemed already wiped out from the place. Another pastor occupied his dwelling and his pulpit, and the population seemed to bear no marks of a great poet having been among them, but were rich subjects for such a pen as that of Crabbe. The character of the place may be judged of by its head inn. It was a fair, and I found the court-yard of this old-fashioned inn set out with rows of benches, all filled with common people drinking. On one side of the yard was a large room, in which the fiddle went merrily, and a crowd of dancers hopped as merrily to it. At a window near that room, on the same side, a woman was de- livering out pots of ale, as fast as somebody within could supply them, to the people in the yard. On the other side of the court lay, however, the main part of the inn. Here a gallery ran along which conducted to the different bedrooms, through the open air; and from this sundry spectators were surveying the scene below. All was noise, loud and eager talking, and odours not the most delectable, of beei', fish, and heaven knows what. The house was dirty, dark, and full of the same fumes. People of all sorts were passing up and down stairs, and in and out of the house in crowds. The travellers' room was the only place, I was informed, where there was space or comfort. Thither I betook myseh, and while my dinner was preparing, I heard the fine strong, clear voice of a woman in an ad- joining room, which I instantly recognised by the style of singing to be German. I walked into the said room to see who was the singer, and what was her audience. She was a strong-built, healthy-looking German girl, who was accompanying her singing on a guitar, in a little room closely packed with the ordinary run of people. To these she was singing some of the finest airs of Germany, with no mean skill or voice, but in a language of which they did not understand a syllable. My appearance amongst them occasioned some temporary bustle ; but this soon passed, and they pohtelj 368 CRABBE. offered me a chair. I stayed to hear several songs, and proposed some of the most rare and excellent that I knew, amongst them some Austrian airs, which, in every instance, the poor girl knew and sung with great effect. As I went out, two French women were entering with a tambourine, and I soon heard them, accompanied by a fiddle, also performing their parts. Thus through the whole day, the strolling musicians of the fair entered this little concert- room of the head inn of Trowbridge, and entertained the fair- going bacchanals. It was a scene which Crabbe would have made much of. JAMES HOGG, THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD. Amongst the many remarkable men which the humble walks of life in Scotland have furnished to the list of poets, Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, is one of the most extraordinary. There have been Allan Ramsay, the barber, Burns, the ploughman, Allan Cunningham, the stonecutter, Tannahill and Thorn, the weavers. Had there been no Bums, Hogg would have been regarded as a miracle for a rural poet ; yet how infinite is the distance between the two ! Burns's poetry is full of that true philosophy of life, of those noble and manly tiiiths which are expressions for eternity of what lives in every bosom, but cannot form itself on every tongue. " His lines are mottoes of the heart, His truths electrify the sage." Such a poet becomes at once and for ever enshrined in the heart of his whole country ; its oracle and its prophet. To no such rank can James Hogg aspire. His chief characteristics are foncy, humour, a love of the strange and wonderful, of fairies and brownies, and country tradition, mixed up with a most amusing egotism, and an ambition of rivalhng in their own way the greatest poets of his time. He wrote The Queen's Wake, in imitation of Scott's metrical romances, and bragged that he had beaten him in his own hue. Byron, Wordsworth, Southey, Rogers, Campbell, all the great poets of the day he imitated, and that in a wonderful manner for any man, not simply for a poor shepherd of Ettrick. Scott had a poem on Waterloo, Hogg had a Waterloo too, and in the same metre ; Byron wrote Hebrew Melodies, and Hogg wrote Sacred Melodies ; and On Carmel's Brow, The Guardian Angels, The Rose of Sharon, Jacob and Laban, The Jewish Captive's Parting, &c., left no question as to the direct rivalry. His third volume was one iiubhshcd as avowed poems by Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and Wilson. He had conceived the scheme of getting a poem from each of these popular authors, and publishing them in a volume, by which to raise money for the stocking of a farm. Byron consented, and destined Lara for Hogg's benefit ; but Scott at once refused, not approving BB 370 Hooa. the plan, for which Hogg most unceremoniously assailed him ; and Byron being afterwards induced not to send Lara, Hogg set about at once, and wrote poems for them and the others named, and published them under the title of the Poetic Mirror. Of these poems, which were clever burlesques rather than serious forgeries, I need not speak ; here I wish only to point out one of the most striking characteristics of Hogg, that of imitation of style. This was also shown in the famous Chaldee Manuscript, which appeared in Black- wood's Magazine, and created so much noise. But this great versa- tility of manner ; this ambition of rivalling great authors in their own peculiar fields, marked the want of a prominent caste of genius of his own. There was an absence of individuality in him. There was nothing, except that singular egotism and somewhat extravagant fancy, which could lead you on reading a poem of his to say, that is Hogg, and can be no one else. His poems are generally extremely diffuse ; they surprise and charm you on opening them, at the vigour, liveliness, and strength of the style, but they are of that kind that the farther you go the more this charm wears off ; you grow weary, you hardly know why ; you cannot help protesting to yourself that they are very clever, nay, wonderful ; yet there wants a certain soul, a condensation, a something to set upon them the stamp of that genius which seizes on your love and admiration beyond question or control. Accordingly, while you find every man and woman in Scotland, the peasantry as much as the more cultivated classes, having hnes and verses of Burns's treasured in their memories, as the precious wealth of the national mind, you rarely or never hear a similar quotation from Hogg. "A clever, ranting chiel was the shepherd," is the remark ; his countrymen read and admire, and do Justice to his genius, but with all his ambition, he never seated him- self in their heart of hearts like Robert Burns. There is nothing so amusing as Hogg's autobiography. His good- natured egotism overflows it. The capital terms on which he was with himself made him relate flatteries and rebufts with equal naivete ; and the familiarity with which be treated the greatest names of modern literature, presenting the most grave and dignified personages as his cronies, chums, and convivial companions, is ludicrous beyond everything. He opens liis narrative in this style : — " I like to write about myself ; in fact, there are few things which I like better ; it is so delightful to call up old reminiscences. Often have I been laughed at for what an Edinbui>gh editor styles my good- natured egotism, which is sometimes anything but that ; and I am aware that I shall be laughed at again. But I care not ; for this important memoir, now to be brought forward for the fourth time, at different peiuods of my life, I shall naiTate with the same frankness as formerly ; and in all relating either to othei's or myself, sjjeak fearlessly and unreservedly out. Many of those formerly mentioned are no more ; others have been unfortunate ; but of all I shall speak the plain truth, and nothing but the truth." Immediately afterwards he adds — "I must apprise you, that, whenever I have occaaiou to speak of myself and my performances, HOGO. 371 I find it impossible to divest myself of an inherent vanity." Of this no one can doubt either the truth or the candour of' the confession. He tells us that he was the second of four sons of Robert Hogg and Margaret Laidlaw, the wife in Scotland often retaining her maiden name. That his father was a shepherd, but, saving money, had taken the farms of Ettrick -house and Ettrick-hall. At the latter place Hogg was born, he says, on the 25th of January, 1772 ; but he assigns this date to his birth out of his desire to resemble Robert Burns, so much as even to have been born on the same day and month. He used to boast of this, and even of some similar occur- rence, as of having been in some sort of danger at his birth through a storm, and the necessary help for his mother being difficult to procure in night and tempest. He has related, in his life, that he was born on the same day of the month as Bums, but on referring to the parish registry it did not bear him out, but showed him to have been born on the 9th of December, 1770. He tells us that his father was ruined, and that they were turned out of doors without a farthing when he was six years old, but that a worthy neighbouring farmer, Mr. Brydon of Crosslie, took compassion on them, leased the farm of Ettrick-house, one of those Hogg's father had occupied, and put him as shepherd upon it. Here the embryo poet went to the parish school just by for a few months, and then at ^\^lits^mtide was sent out to service to a farmer in the neighbourhood, as a herd-boy. The account that he gives of himself, as a lad of seven years old, in this solitary employment on the hills, is curious enough. " My wages for the half-year were a ewe lamb and a pair of new shoes. Even at that early age my fancy seems to have been a hard neighbour for both Judgment and memory. I was wont to strip off my clothes, and run races against time, or rather against myself ; and in the course of these exploits, which I accomplished much to my own admiration, I first lost my plaid, then my bonnet, then my coat, and finally my hosen, for as for shoes, I had none." The next winter, he tells us, he went to school again for a quarter, got into a class who read in the Bible, and " horribly defiled several sheets of paper with copy lines, every letter of which was nearly an inch long." This, he says, finished his education, and that he never was another day at school. The whole of his career of schooling he computes at about half-a-year, but says that his old schoolmaster even denied this, declaring that he never was at his school at all ! What a stock of education on which to set up shepherd, farmer, and poet ! Like Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott, and other illustrious men, Hogg,' of course, fell in love in his very childhood, and, to say truth, his relation of this juvenile passion is as interesting as that of any of theirs. " It will scarcely be believed that at so early an age 1 should have been an admirer of the other sex. It is, nevertheless, strictly true. Indeed, I have liked the women a great deal better than the men ever since I remember. But that summer, when only eight years old, I was sent out to a height called Broadhcads, with a rosy-cheeked maiden, to herd a flock of new-weaned lambs, and I B B 2 372 Hooa. had my mischievous cows to herd besides. But as she had no dog, and I had au excellent one, I was ordered to keep close by her. Never was a master's order better obeyed. Day after day I herded the cows and lambs both, and Betty had nothing to do but to sit and sew. Then we dined together every day, at a well near to the Shiel-sike head, and after dinner I laid my head down on her lap, covered her bare feet with my plaid, and pretended to fall sound asleep. One day I heard her say to herself, ' Poor httle laddie ! he's joost tired to death :' and then I wept till I was afraid she would feel the warm tears trickling on her knee. I wished my master, who was a handsome young man, would fall in love with her, and marry her, wondering how he could be so blind and stupid as not to do it. But I thought if I were he, I would know well what to do." By the time he was fifteen years of age, he says he had served a dozen masters, being only engaged for short terms and odd jobs. When about twelve years old, such was the flourishing state of his circumstances that he had two shirts, so bad that he could not wear them, and therefore went without, by this means falhng into another difficulty, that of keeping up his trousers on his bare skin, there being no braces in those days. Yet he had a fiddle, which cost five shillings, with which he charmed the cow houses and stable lofts at night, after his work was done. In his eighteenth year he entered the service of Mr. Laidlaw, of Black-house, near St. Mary's Loch, on Yarrow. He had been in the service of two others of the same family, probably relatives by his mother's side, who was a Laidlaw, at Willensee, and at Elibank, on the Tweed ; and he now continued with Mr. Laidlaw, of Black-house, ten years, as shepherd. William Laidlaw, the son of his master, and afterwards the bailift' of Sir Walter Scott, and also the author of the sweet song of " Lucy's Flitting," was here his great companion, and they read much together, and stimulated in each other the flame of poetry. These must have been happy years for Hogg. The year after Burns's death he first heard Tarn o' Shanter repeated, and heard of Burns, as a ploughman, who had written beautiful songs and poems. " Every day," says he, " I pondered on the genius and fate of Burns. I wept, and always thought with myself, what is to hinder me from succeeding Burns ? I, too, was born on the 25th of January, and I have much more time to read and compose than any ploughman could have, and can sing more old songs than ever ploughman could in the world. But then I wept again, because I could not wi-ite. However, I resolved to be a poet, and follow in the steps of Bums ! " A brave resolve, to be a poet, in a man that could not write. Nevertheless, he composed songs, and one of these, called M'Donald, had the luck to get sung at a great masonic meeting at Edinburgh, and was taken up by a General M'Donald, who fancied it was written upon him, and had it sung every week at his mess. Hogg, now thirty-one years of age, resolved to astonish the world with his genius, and the account of the way he took is not a little amusing. " In 1801, believing that I was then become a grand poet, I most HOGG. 373 sapiently determined on publishing a pamphlet, and appealing to the world at once. Having attended the Edinburgh market one Monday, with a number of sheep for sale, and being unable to dis- pose of them all, I put the remainder into a park until the market on Wednesday. Not knowing how to pass the interim, it came into my head that I would write a poem or two from my memory, and get them printed. The thought had no sooner struck me than it was put in practice ; and I was obhged to select, not the best poems, but those that I remembered best. I wrote several of these during my short stay, and gave them all to a person to print at my expense ; and having sold off my sheep on Wednesday morning, I returned to the forest. I saw no more of my poems until I received word that there were one thousand copies of them thrown off. I knew no more of publishing than the man in the moon ; and the only motive that influenced me was, the gratification of my vanity by seeing myself in print. All of them were sad stuff, although I judged them to be exceedingly good. Notwithstanding my pride of authorship, in a few days I had discernment enough left to wish my pubUcation heartily at the devil, and I had hopes that long ago it had been consigned to eternal oblivion, when, behold ! a London critic had, in malice of heart, preserved a copy, and quoted liberally out of it last year, to my intense chagrin and mortification;" ?.(?. while Hogg was, but four years before his death, lionizing in London. His adventures afterwards in Edinburgh, publishing his subse- quent poems, are equally curious. How he published by subscrip- tion, and one-third of his subscribers took his books but never paid for them. How he set up a weekly literary paper, " The Spy," which he continued a year. How he became a great spouter at a debating club called " The Forum." How he wrote a musical farce, and a musical drama ; all ending in ruin and insolvency, till he brought out the Queen's Wake, and won a good reputation. Here he with great simplicity tells us, that Mr. Jeffrey never noticed the poem till it had got into a third edition, and having given offence to Mr, Anster by comparing the two poets, he never afterwards took any notice of any of his writings. Whereupon, Hogg says, proudly, he thinks that conduct can do him no honour m the long run ; and that he would match the worst poem he ever published with some that Mr. Jeffrey has strained himself to bring forward. But Hogg was now a popular man. His Queen's Wake went on into edition after edition. He was introduced to Blackwood, who became his publisher ; and Hogg looked upon himself as on a par in fame with the first men of his time. The familiar style in which he relates his first acquaintance with Professor Wilson will excite a smile. " On the appearance of Mr. Wilson's Isle of Palms, 1 was so greatly taken with many of his fanciful and visionary scenes, descriptive of bliss and woe, that it had a tendency to divest me occasionally of all worldly feelings. I reviewed this poem, as well as many others, in a Scottish review then going in Edinburgh, and was exceedingly anxious to meet with the author ; but this I tried in vain for the space of six months. All J could learn of him was, that he was 374 HOGG. ' a man from the mountains of Wales, or the west of England, with hairs Mke eagles' feathers, and nails hke birds* claws, a red beard, and an uncommon degree of wildness in his looks. Wilson weus then utterly unknown in Edinburgh, except slightly to Mr. Walter Scott, who never introduces any one person to another, nor judges it of any avail. However, having no other shift left, I sat down and wrote him a note, telling him that I wished much to see him, and if he wanted to see me, he might come and dine with me at my lodgings in the road of Gabriel, at four. He accepted the invitation, and dined with Grieve and me ; and I found him so much a man ac- cording to my own heart, that for many years we were seldom twenty-four hours asunder when in town. I afterwards went and visited him, staying with him a month at his seat in Westmoreland, where we had some curious doings among the gentlemen and poets of the lakes." According to Hogg, he had the honour of being the projector and commencer of no less a periodical than Blackwood's Magazine — whether this was true or not, certain it is that he became and con- tinued for many years one of its chief contributors, and figured most conspicuously in those admirable papers, the Noctes Ambro- siause. In these, language the most beautiful and poetical was often put into the Shepherd's mouth ; but, it must also be confessed, much oftener language of a very different kind. He was made to figure as a coarse toper and buffoon. That he was at once proud of figuring so largely in the Noctes, and yet felt acutely the degrading character fixed on him there, is evident from his own statement in his auto- biography. In speaking of Professor Wilson, to whom he deservedly awards a noble nature, he says: " J\Iy friends in general have been of opinion that he has amused himself and the public too often at my expense : but, except in one instance, which terminated very iU for me, and in which I had no more concern than the man in the moon, I never discerned any evil design on his j^art, and thought it all excellent sport. At the same time, I must acknowledge that it was using too much freedom with any author, to print his name in full to poems, letters, and essays, which he himself never saw. I do not say that he has done this ; but either he or some one else has done it many a time." — Memoir, p. 87. But speaking of Blackwood, the publisher, he assumes a different tone. " For my part, after twenty years of feelings hardly sup- pressed, he has driven me beyond the bounds of human patience. That magazine of his, which owes its rise principally to myself, has often put words and sentiments into my mouth of which I have been greatly ashamed, and which have given much pain to my family and relations ; and many of these, after a solemn written promise that such freedoms should never be repeated. I have been often urged to restrain and humble him by legal measures, as an incorrigible offender deserves. I know I have it in my power, and if he dares me to the task, I want but a hair to make a tether of." — Memoir, p. 107. It must be confessed that no justification can be offered for such HOGG. 375 treatment. Such was my own opinion of Hogg, derived from this source, and from prints of him, with wide open mouth, and huge straggHng teeth, in full roars of drunken laughter, that, on meeting him in London, I was quite amazed to find him so smooth, well- looking, and gentlemanly a person. Of his cotemporary authors Hogg speaks in his life with the highest honour. He confesses that he used most unmeasured lan- guage towards both Sir Walter Scott and John Wilson, when they offended him, but records their refusal to be offended -ndth him, and their cordial kindness. Of Southey, Lockhart, Sym, the Timothy Tickler of Blackwood, Gait, &c. his reminiscences are full of life and interest. Of Wordsworth's poetry he entertained the high notion that a true poet must do ; but there occurred a scene at Rydal which James gires in explanation of his caricaturing Wordsworth, which, as it is his own account, is worth transcribing. " I dined with Wordsworth, and called on himself seveml times afterwards, and certainly never met with anything but the most genuine kindness ; therefore people have wondered why I should have indulged in caricaturing his style in the Poetic Mii'ror. I have often regretted that myself ; but it was merely a piece of iU nature at an afiront which I conceived had been put upon me. It was the triumphal arch scene. This anecdote has been told and told again, but never truly ; and was likewise brought forward in the Noctes Ambrosianse, as a joke ; but it was no joke ; and the plain, simple truth of the matter was this : — " It chanced one night, when I was there, that there was a re- splendent arch across the zenith, from the one horizon to the other, of something like the Aurora Borealis, but much lighter. It was a scene that is well remembered, for it struck the country with admiration, as such a phenomenon had never before been witnessed in such perfection ; and, as far as I can learn, it had been more brilliant over the mountains and pure waters of Westmoreland than anywhere else. Well, when word came into the room of the splendid meteor, we all went out to view it ; and on the beautiful platform at Mount Rydal, we were walking in twos and threes, arm-in-arm, talking of the phenomenon, and admiring it. Now, be it remembered, that there were present, Wordsworth, Professor Wilson, Lloyd, De Quincy, and myself, besides several other literary gentlemen, whose names I am not certain that 1 remember aright. Miss Wordsworth's arm was in mine, and she was expressing some fears that the splendid stranger might prove ominous, when I by ill luck blundered out the following remark, thinking that I was saying a good thing: — ' Ilout, me'em ! it is neither mair nor less than joost a triumphal airch, raised in honour of the meeting of the poets.' " ' That's not amiss. Eh 1 eh ? — that's very good,' said the Pro- fessor, laughing. But Wordsworth, who had l)e Quincy 's arm, gave a grunt, and turned on his heel, and leading the little opium-chewer aside, he addressed him in these disdainful and venomous words : — 'Poets l Poets ? What does the fellow mean ? — Where are they ? ' " Who could forgive this 1 For my part, I never can, and never 376 HOGG. will ! I admire Wordsworth, as who does not, whatever they may pretend 1 But for that short sentence I have a lingering ill will at him which I cannot get rid of. It is surely presumption in any man to circumscribe all human excellence within the narrow sphere of his own capacity. The ' Where are thcyf was too bad. I have always some hopes that De Quincy was Iceing, for I did not myself hear Wordsworth utter the words." Whether Wordsworth did utter these words, or De Quincy only quizzed Hogg with them, it is a great pity that poor Hogg's mind was suffered to the last to retain the rankling supposition of it. The anecdote appeared in the Noctes ; it was made the subject of much joke and remark, and must have reached Wordsworth's ears. What a thousand pities then, that, by a single line to Hogg, or in public, he did not take the sting out of it ! Nobody was so soon propitiated as Hogg. To have been acknowledged as a brother-poet by Words- worth would have filled his heart with much happiness. Imme- diately after his death, Wordsworth hastened to make such a recognition ; but of how little value is posthumous praise ! Hogg died on the 21st of November, and on the 30th Wordsworth sent the following lines to the Athenaeum, which I quote entire, because they commemorate other departed lights of the age. THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD. Extempore Effusion, upon reading, in the Newcastle Journal, the notice of the death of the poet, James Hogg " When first descending from the moorland, I saw the stream of Yarrow glide Along a fair and open valley, The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide. " When last along its hanks I wandered, Through groves that had began to shed Their golden leaves upon the pathways. My steps the Border Minstrel led. " The mighty minstrel breathes no longer, 'Mid mouldering ruins low he lies : And death upon the braes of Yarrow Has closed the shepherd-poet's eyes. " Nor has the rolling year twice measured From sign to sign his steadfast course, Since every mortal power of Coleridge Was frozen at its marvellous source. " The rapt one of the god-like forehead. The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in death ; And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle. Has vanished from his lonely hearth. " Like clouds that rake the mountain summits. Or waves that own no curbing hand. How fast has Brother followed Brother, From sunshine to the sunless land ! " Yet I, whose lids from infant slumbers Were earlier raised, remain to hear A timid voice that asks in whispers, • AVho next will drop and disappear?' " Our haughty life is crowned with darkness. Like London with its own black wreath, On which with thee, O Crabbe, forth looking, I gazed from Hampstead's breezy heath. HOGG. 377 " As if but yesterday departed, Thou, too, art gone before; yet why For ripe fruit, seasonably gathered, Should frail survivors heave a sigh f " No more of old romantic sorrows, The slaughtered youth and love-lorn maid ; With sharper grief is Yarrow smitten, And Ettrick mourns with her their Shepherd dead." These extracts throw much hght on the pecuHar character of Hogg's mind. Simple, candid to an astonishment, vain without an attempt to conceal it, sensitive to an extreme, with such a develop- ment of self-esteem, that no rebuffs or ridicule could daunt him, and full of talent and fancy. But to estimate the extent of all these qualities, you must read his prose as well as his poetry ; and these, considering how late he began to write, and that he did not die very old, are pretty voluminous. During the gi'eater part of his literary life, he was a very popular contributor to various magazines. Of his collected works he gives us this list. VOL. VOL. The Queen's Wake 1 The Spy 1 Pilgrims of the Sun 1 Queen Hynde 1 The Hunting of Badlewe ... 1 The Three Perils of Man ... 3 Mador of the Moox 1 The Three Perils of Woman . . 3 Poetic Mirror 1 Confessions of a Sinner .... 1 Dramatic Tales 2 The Shepherd's Calendar .... 2 Brownie of Bodsheck 2 A Selection of Songs I Winter Evening Tales 2 The Queer Book 1 Sacred Melodies 1 The Royal Jubilee 1 Border Garland 1 The Mountain Bard 1 Jacobite Kelics of Scotland ... 2 The Forest Minstrel 1 Total 31. It may be imagined that while the produce of his literary pen was so abundant, that of his sheep-pen would hardly bear comparison with it. That was the case. Hogg continually broke down as a shepherd and a farmer. He " Tended his flocks upon Parnassus hill ; " his imagination was in Fairyland, his heart was in Edinburgh, and his affairs always went wrong. To afford him a certain chance of support, the Duke of Buccleuch gave him, rent free for life, a little farm at Altrive in Yan'ow, and then Hogg took a much larger farm on the opposite side of the river, which he called Mount Benger. From this, it will be recollected that he often dated his literary articles. The farm was beyond his capital, and far beyond his care. It brought him into embarrassments. To the last, however, he had Altrive Lake to retreat to ; and here he lived, and wrote, and fished, and shot grouse on the moors. Let us, before visiting his haunts, take a specimen or two of his poetry, that we may have a clear idea of the man we have in view. In all Hogg's poetry there is none which has been more popular than the Legend of Kilmeny in the Queen's Wake. It is the tra- dition of a beautiful cottage maiden, who disappears for a time, and returns again home, but, as it were, glorified and not of the earth. She ha.s, for her purity, been transported to the laud of spirits, and bathed in the river of immortal life. 378 nooa. *' They lifted Kilmeny, they led her away, And slie walked in the light of a sunless day : The sliy was a dome of crystal hriKlit, The fountain of vision and fountain of light : Tlie emerald fields were of dazzling glow, And the flowers of everlasting blow. Then deep in the stream her body they laid, That her youth and beauty never might fade ; And they smiled on heaven when they saw her lie In the stream of life that wandered by. , And she heard a song, she heard it sung, She kenned not where, but sae sweetly it rung, It fell on her ear like a dream of the morn ; O I blest be the day Kilmeny was born. Now shall the land of the spirits see. Now shall it ken what a woman may be ! The sun that shines on the world sae bright, A borrowed gleid frae the fountain of light'; And the moon that sleeks the sky sae dun, Like a gowden bow, or a beamless sun. Shall wear avvay, and be seen nae mair, And the angels shall miss them travelling the air. But lang, lang after baith night and day, When the sun and the world have elyed away ; When the sinner has gaed to his waesome doom, Kilmeny shall smile in eternal bloom ! " But Kilmeny longs once more to revisit the earth and her kindred at home, and — " Late, late in a gloaming, when all was still. When the fringe was red on the westlin hill. The wood was sere, the moon i' the wane, The reek o' the cot hung over the plain, Like a little wee cloud in the world its lane ; When the ingle glowed with an eiry lenie. Late, late in the gloaming Kilmeny came hame ! ' Kilmeny, Kilmeny, where have you been? Lang hae we sought baith holt and den ; By linn, by ford, and greenwood tree. Yet you are hailsome and fair to see. Where gat you that joup o' the lily scheen ? That bonny snood o' the birk sae green ? And these roses, the fairest that ever were seen ? — Kilmeny, Kilmeny, where have you been f ' Kilmeny looked up with a lovely grace. But nae smile was seen on Kilmeny's face; As still was her look, and as still was her ee. As the stillness that lay on the emerant lea. As the mist that sleeps on a waveless sea. For Kilmeny had been she knew not where, And Kilmeny had seen what she could not declare ; Kilmeny had been where the cock never crew, Where the rain never fell, and the wind never blew 1 " But on earth the spell of heaven was upon her. All loved, both man and beast, the pure and spiritual Kilmeny ; but earth could not detain her. " When a month and a day had come and gane, Kilmeny sought the greenwood wene; There laid her down on the leaves so green, And Kilmeny on earth was never mair seen. But O tlie words that fell from her mouth Were words of wonder, and words of truth ! But all the land were in fear and dread. For they kenned na whether she was living or dead. It wasna her hame, and she couldna remain ; She left this world of sorrow and pain. And returned to the land of thought again." HOGG. 379 The Legend of Kilmeny is as beautiful as anything in that depart- ment of poetry. It contains a fine moral ; that purity of heart makes an earthly creature a welcome denizen of heaven ; and the tone and imagery are all fraught with a tenderness and grace that are as unearthly as the subject of the legend. There is a short poem introduced into the Brownie of Bodsbeck, which is worthy of the noblest bard that ever wrote. DWELLER IN HEAVEN. " Dweller in heaven high, Ruler below! Fain would I know thee, yet tremble to know! How can a mortal deem, how it may be, That being can ne'er be but present with thee ? Is it true that thou sawest me ere I saw the mom ? Is it true that thou knewest me before I was born? That nature must live in the light of thine eye ? This knowledge for me is too great and too high ! " That, fly I to noonday or fly I to night, To shroud me in darkness, or bathe me in light, The light and the darkness to thee are the same, And still in thy presence of wonder I am ! Should I with the dove to the desert repair, Or dwell with the eagle in cleugh of the air; In the desert afar — on the mountain's wild brink — From the eye of Omnipotence still must I shrink ! " Or mount I, on wings of the morning, away, To caves of the ocean, unseen by the day. And hide in the uttermost parts of the sea. Even there to be living and moving in thee ! Nay, scale I the clouds, in the heaven to dwell, Or make I my bed in the shadows of hell, Can science expound, or humanity frame. That still thou art present, and all are the same? " Yes, present for ever ! Almighty ! Alone ! Great Spirit of Nature ! vmbounded ! unknown ! What mind can embody thy presence divine : I know not my own being, how can I thine? Then humbly and low in the dust let me bend. And adore what on earth I can ne'er comprehend : The mountains may melt, and the elements flee, Yet an universe still be rejoicing in thee ! " The last poem that we will select is one which was written for an anniversary celebration of our great dramatist ; yet is distinguished by a felicity of thought and imagery that seem to have sprung spon- taneously in the soul of the shepherd-poet, as he mused on the airy brow of some Ettrick mountain. TO THE GENIUS OP SHAKSPEARE. " Spirit all limitless. Where is thy dwelling-place f Spirit of him whose high name we revere I Come on thy seraph wings. Come from thy wanderings. And smile on thy votaries who sigh for thee here I " Come, O thou spark divine ! Rise from thy hallowed shrine! Here in the windings of Forth tliou slialt see Hearts true to nature's call, Spirits congenial. Proud of theii country, yet bowing to thee ! 3S0 HOGG. Here with rapt heart and tongue, While our fond minds were younp, Oft thy bold numbers we poured in our mirth ; Now in our hall for aye This shall be holiday, Bard of all nature ! to honour thy birth. " Whether thou tremblest o'er Green grave of Elsinore, Stayest o'er the hill of Dunsinnan to hover, Bosworth, or Shrewsbury, Egypt, or Pliilippi ; Come from thy roamings the universe over. " Whether thou journeyest far. On by the morning star, Dream'st on the shadowy brows of the moon. Or lingerest in Fairyland, 'Mid lovely elves to stand, Singing thy carols unearthly and boon : " Here thou art called upon, Come thou to Caledon ! Come to the land of the ardent and free ! The land of the lone recess, Mountain and wilderness. This is the land, thou wild meteor, for thee I " O never, since time had birth, Rose from the pregnant earth Gems such as late have in Scotia sprung ; Gems that in future day. When ages pass away. Like thee shall be honoured, like thee shall be sung ! " Then here, by the sounding sea. Forest, and greenwood tree. Here to solicit thee, cease shall we never Yes, thou effulgence bright. Here must thy flame relight. Or vanish from nature for ever and ever ! " Such strains as these serve to remind us that we go to visit the native scenes of no common man. To reach Ettrick, I took the mail from Dumfries to Moffat, where I breakfasted, after a fresh ride through the woods of Annandale. With my knapsack on my back, I then ascended the vale of Moffat. It was a fine morning, and the green pastoral hills rising around, the white flocks scattered over them, the waters glittering along the valley, and women spreading out their linen to dry on the meadow grass, made the walk as fresh as the morning itself. I passed through a long wood, which stretched along the sunny side of the steep valley. The waters ran soimding on deep below ; the sun filled ah the sloping wood v?ith his yellow light. There was a wonderful resemblance to the mountain wood- lauds of Germany. I felt as though I was once more in a Swabian or an Austrian forest. There was no waU. or hedge by the way, — aU was open. The wild raspberry stood in abundance, and the wild strawberries as abundantly clothed the ground under the hazel bushes. I came to a cottage and inquired, — it was Craigieburn Wood, — where Burns met " The lassie wi' the lintwhite locks." But the pleasure of the walk ceased with the sixth milestone. Here it was necessary to quit Moffat and cross over into Ettrick dale. And here the huge hills of Bodsbeck, more villauous than the Brownie in his most vindictive mood, interposed. I turned off HOGG. 381 the good road which would have led me to the Grey-Mare's-Tail, to the inn of Innerleithing (St. Eonan's well), and St. Mary's lake on Yarrow, and at Capel-gall forsook Moflfat water and comfort at once. And here, by-the-bye, as all the places in these dales are called gills and hopes and cleughs, as Capel-gill, Capel-hope, Gamel-cleugh, &c., I may as well explain that a hope is a sort of slight ravine aloft on the hill-side, generally descending it pretty perpendicularly ; a cleugh, a more deep and considerable one ; and a gill, one down which a torrent pours, continuing longer after rains than in the others. At least, this was the definition given me, though the dif- ferent terms are not, it seems, always very palpably discriminative. Turning off at Capel-gill, I crossed the foot-bridge at the farm of Bodsbeck, where the Brownie used to haunt, and began to ascend the hill, assuredly in no favour with the Brownie. These hiUs are long ranges, enclosing deep valleys between them ; and there are but few entrances into the dales, except by crossing the backs of these great ridges. I found the ascent of the Bodsbeck excessively steep, rugged, boggy, stony, and wet, and. far higher than I had anticipated. A more fatiguing mountain ascent I never made. I was quite ex- hausted, and lay down two or three times, resolving to have a good long rest and sleep on the grass, with my knapsack for a pillow ; but the Brownie came in the shape of rain, and woke me up again. I suppose I was two hours in getting to the summit ; and then I did lie down, and slept for a quarter of an hour, but the Brownie was at me again with a bluster of wind and rain, and awoke me. Preparing to set forward, what was my astonishment to see a cart and horse coming over the mountain with a load of people ! It was a farmer with his wife and child, and they were about to descend the rugged, rocky, boggy, steep hill-side, with scarcely a track ! They descended from the cart ; the man led the horse, the woman walked behind, carrying the child, and they went bumping and banging over the projecting crags, as if the cart was made of some unsmashable timber, the horse a Pegasus, and the peoj^le without necks to break. 'Tis to be hoped that they reached the bottom somehow. I had supposed by my map that from Moffat to Ettrick kirk Would be about six miles. Imagine, then, my consternation at the tidings these adventurous people gave me — that I had still eight miles to go ! that, instead of six, it was sixteen from Moffat to Ettrick kirk ! There was a new road made all down this side of the moun- tain ; very fair to look at in the distance, but infamous for foot- travellers, being all loose, sharp cubes of new-broken whinstone. My feet were actually strained with coming up the mountain, and were now so knocked to pieces and bhstered in going down it, that I suppose I crawled on at about two miles an hour. In fact, I was seven hours and a half between Moffat and Ettrick kirk on foot. Down, down, down I went for eight weary miles, one long descent, with nothing on either hand but those monotonous green mountains which extend all over the south of Scotland. Soft they can look as 382 HOGG. the very hills of heaven under the evening light, with their white flocks dotting them all over, and the shepherds shouting, and their dogs barking from afar. And dark, beautifully dark they can look beneath tlie shadow of the storm, or the thunder-cloud. Wild, drearily wild, they can look when the winds come sweeping and roar- ing Uke some broken-loose ocean, fierce and strong as ocean waters, and with this mighty volume fiU the scowling valleys and rush, without the obstacle of house or tree, over the smooth round heights ; and men at ease, especially if in want of a stroU, and in good company, may, and no doubt do, find them very attractive. But to me they were an endless green monotony of swelling heaps ; and Ettrick dale, with its stream growing continually larger in its bottom, an endless vale of bare greenness, with but here and there a solitary white house, and a cluster of fir-trees, with scarcely a cul- tured field, even of oats or potatoes, for eight miles. It was one eternal sheep-walk, and for me eight miles too much of it. Yet the truth is, that every one of these hiUs, and every portion of this vale, and every house with its hope, or its cleugh, or its plantation, and every part of the river where the torrent has boiled and raged for a thousand years, till it has worn the iron-like whinstone into the most hideous channels and fantastic shapes, has its history and its tradition. There is Phaup, and Upper Phaup, and Gamelshope, and Ettrick-house, and all have their interest ; but to me they were then only white houses with black plantations, many of them on the other side of the water, without bridge, or any visible means of access ; and with huge flocks of sheep collected and collecting in their yards and pens, with the most amazing and melancholy clamour. It was the time when they prepare for the great lamb fairs, and were separating those they meant to sell ; and here was one loud lamentation all through these hiUs. It is amazing what a sentiment of attachment and distress can exist in mutton ! But no sentimental piece of mutton was ever more in distress than I was. I was quite famished and knocked up ; and when at length I saw the few grey houses at Ettrick kirk, I actually gave a shout of exultation. I shouted, however, before I was out of the wood ; for Ettrick kirk was not, as I had fancied, a kirk Ettrick — that is, a village — it was Ettrick kirk, and nothing more. I knew that Hogg was born and buried here, and that here I must stop ; but unluckily I saw no village, no stopping place. To my left hand stood the kirk, a little elevated on the side of the valley, and what was clearly the manse near it, in a garden. A little farther on was a farm-house, and then a cottage or two, and that was all. I saw a large, queer sign over a door, and flattered myself that that at least must be a public-house; but a gipsy with his stockings off in a Uttle stream tickling trout, while his basket and his set of tea-trays stood on the road, soon told me my fortune. " Is -that an inn 1 " " No, •Sir, the inn is three miles further down ! " Three miles further down ! It was enough to have finished aU Job's miseries ! " What ! is it not a public- house even V " No, it is a shop." HOGG. 383 And a shop it was ; and when I hoped at least to find a shop that Bold breati, it turned out to be a tailor's shop I Just as I was driven to despair, I fancied that the next building looked like a school ; in I went, and a school it was. I had hopes of a Scotch schoolmaster. He is generally a scholar and a gentleman. The master was just hearing his last class of boys : I advanced to him, and told him that I must take the liberty to rest, for that I was outrageously tired, and hungry, and was told that it was three miles to the next inn. He said it was true, but that it was not three hundred yards to his house, and he would have much pleasure in my accompanying him to tea. Never, of aU the invitations to tea which I have received in the course of this tea-drinking life, did I receive so welcome a one as that ! I flung oflE" my knapsack, laid up my legs quite at my ease on a bench, and heard out the class with great satisfaction. Anon, the urchins were dismissed, and Mr. Tait, the master, a tail and somewhat thin young man, with a very intelligent and thoughtful face, declared himself ready to accompany me. I told him I wanted to visit the birth-place and gi-ave of Hogg, and presented my card. " Ha ! " exclaimed he, on reading the name, " why, we are not strangers, I find — we are old friends. A hearty welcome, Mr. Howitt, to Ettrick ! " Mr. Tait was an old friend of Hogg'.s, too — the very man of all others that I should have sought out for my purpose. We were soon at a very handsome new cottage, with a capital garden, the upper end full of flowers, and the lower of most flourishing kitchen-garden produce. Tired as I was, I coidd not avoid staying to admire this garden, which was the master's own work ; and was then introduced to his mother and sister. The old lady was in a consternation that, by one of those accidents that sometimes in mountainous districts afflict a whole country, the baker had upset his cart, broken his leg, and by his absence deprived all the vales from Moffat to the very top of Ettrick, namely, Upper Phaup, of wheaten bread. It was a circumstance that did not m the least trouble me, except on account of the lady's housewifery anxiety. An old friend of mine said that he never knew the want of bread but once in his life, and then he made a good shift with pie-crust, and I made an actual feast on barley cake and tea. The schoolmaster and I were now soon abroad, and on oiir way up the valley to Hogg's birthplace. Ettrick-house, where Hogg saw the hght, accorchng to the people, though according to his tombstone it was Ettrick-hall, on the opposite side of the valley, is now a new- built farm-house, standing within a square embankment, which is well grown with a row of fine trees. This marks the site of an old house, and no doubt was the site of Ettrick old house. But the house in which Hogg was born, or, if not born, wnere he lived as a child, was only a sort of hind's house, belonging to the old house. That, too, is now pulled clean down. Hogg, during his lifetime, never liked to hear its demolition proposed. Here he had lived as a child, and here he lived when grown up, and rented the farm, before going to Altrive. He used always to inquire of people from Ettrick, if the house really were yet destroyed. I believe it stood 384 HOGG. till after his death, but is now quite gone. The bricklayers ? There is no such thing here ; all is built of the iron-like, hard whinstoue of the hills ; — the builders, then, with a sentiment which does honour to them, were reluctant to pull down the birth-place and home of the shepherd-poet ; and, when obHged to do so, to mark and commemorate the exact spot, when they built the wall along the front of the ground by the highway, built a large blue sort of stone upright in it. The stone is very conspicuous, by its singular hue and position, and on it they have inscribed the poet's initials, J. H. Ettrick-hall, as already said, lying on the oppo- site side of the valley, was in Hogg's father's hands. Afterwards, in Mr. Brydon's, of Crosslee, with whom Hogg was shepherd. This Mr. Brydon, who, Hogg says, was the best friend their family had in the world, died worth 15,000/. ; and, indeed, these sheep-farmers generally do well. There was a Mr, Grieve here, who used to live up the valley, at a house where I saw a vast flock of sheep collected, who was also a most excellent fi-iend of Hogg's. Hogg had lived as a herd-boy at most of the houses in this valley, and from that association he laid the scene of most of his poems and tales here, Hogg's birthplace and his grave are but a few hundred yards asunder. The kirkyard of Ettrick is old, but the kirk is recent ; 1824 is inscribed over the door. Like most of the country churches of Scotland, it is a plain fabric, plainly fitted up with seats, and a plain pulpit. Such a thing as "a kist full o' whistles" the Scotch cannot endure. It is a curious fact, that neither in Scotland nor Ireland do you find those richly-finished old parish churches that are so common in England. This is significant of the ancient state of these countries. Catholic though they all were, neither Scotland nor Ireland could at any age pretend to anything like the wealth of England. Hence, in those countries, the fine abbeys and cathedrals are rare, the parish churches are very plain ; whilst in England, spite of all the ravages of puritanism, the country abounds with the noblest specimens of cathedral and conventual architecture, and the very parish churches, in obscure villages, are often perfect gems of architecture and carving, even of the old Saxon period. Ettrick kirk lifts its head in this quiet vale with a friendly air. It is built of the native adamantine rock, the whinstone ; has a square battlemented tower ; and, what looks singular, has, instead of Gothic ones, square doorways, and very tall square sash windows. Hogg's grave lies in the middle of the kirkyard. At its head stands a rather handsome headstone, with a harp sculptured on a border at the top, and this inscription beneath it : — " James Hogg, the Ettrick Shep- herd, who was born at Ettrick Hall, 1770, and died at Altrive Lake, the 21st day of November, 1835." After a wide space left for other inscriptions, as of the widow and children, this is added : " This stone is erected, as a tribute of affec- tion, by his widow, Margaret Hogg." As Hogg used to boast that he was born on the same day as Bums, and as this assertion was negatived by the parish register, we cannot HoaG. 385 but admire the thoughtful dehcacy which induced the widow to omit the day of his birth altogether, though carefully inserting the day of his death. On the right hand of the poet's headstone stands another, erected by the Shepherd himself, as follows: "Here lieth William Laidlaw, the far-famed Will o' Phaup, who, for feats of frolic, agility, and strength, had no equal in that day. He was born at Ettrick, a. d. 1691, and died in the eighty-fourth year of his age. Also Margaret, his eldest daughter, spouse to Robert Hogg, and mother of the Ettrick Shepherd, born at Over Phaup in 1730, and died in the eighty-third year of her age. Also Robert Hogg, her husband, late tenant of Ettrick Hall, born at BowhiU in 17^9, and died in the ninety-third year of his age." There are several curious particulars connected with these stones. Those which I have pointed out — Hogg's birthday being omitted ; Ettrick-hall being given as his birthplace, yet the people asserting it to be Ettrick-house ; and the much shorter life of the poet than those of his jjarents and ancestors. His father died at the age of ninety-three, his mother at eighty-three, his grandfather at eighty- four; he died at sixty-three. The poet had lived faster than his kindred. What he lost in duration of life he had more than made up in intensity. They held the quiet tenor of their way in their native vale ; he had spread his hfe over the whole space occupied by the English language, and over generations to come. In his own pleasures, which were of a far higher character than theirs, he had made thousands and tens of thousands partakers. Many of Hogg's family and friends were not pleased at the memorial he thus gives to Will o' Phaup ; but it is very characteristic of the Shepherd, who gloried as much himself in the sports, feats, and exploits of the Borders, as in poetry. Hogg, in his younger years, displayed much agility and strength in the border games, and in his matured years was often one of the umpires at them. In Lockhart's Life of Scott are related two especial occasions in which James Hogg figured in such games. One was of a famous foot-ball match played on the classic mead of Car- terhaugh, between the men of Selkirk and of Yarrow, when the Duke of Buccleuch, and numbers of other nobles and gentlemen, as well as ladies of rank, were present. When the difi'erent parties came to the ground with pipes playing, the Duke of Buccleuch raised his ancient banner, called the banner of Belleudcn, which being given by Lady Ann Scott to young Walter Scott, he rode round the Held displaying it ; and then Sir Walter led on the men of Selkirk, and the Earl of Home, with James Hogg as his aide-de-camp, led ou the men of Yarrow. The other occasion was at the annual festival of St. Ronau's Well, when James Hogg used to preside as captain of the band of border bowmen, in Lincoln green, with broad blue bon- nets ; and when, already verging on threescore, he used often to join at the exploits of racing, wrestling, or hammer-throwing, and would carry off the prizes, to universal astonishment ; afterwards prcsiihng, too, at the banquet in the evening with great ecluf, supported by CO 386 HOGG. Sir Walter Scott, Professor Wilson, CaiDtain Adam Fergusson, and Peter Robertson. Another curious thing is, that he states himself in his Life to be one of four sons, and, on the headstone, that his father and three sons lie there. Now he himself was living, of course, when he set up the stone, and his brother William still survives. There could then be but two, if he were one oi fovr. Hogg died at Altrive, but was buried here, as being his native parish ; and, indeed, I question whether there be a nearer place where he could be buried, though Altrive is six miles off, and over the hills from one valley to another. His funeral must have been a striking thing in this solitary region — striking, not from the sensa- tion it created, or the attendance of distinguished men, bvit from the absence of all this. The shepherd-poet went to his grave with little pomp or ceremony. Of all the great and the celebrated with whom he had associated in life, not an individual had troubled himself to go thus far to witness his obsequies, except that true-hearted man, Professor Wilson. An eye-witness says : " No particular solemnity seemed to attend the scene. The day was dull and dismal, windy and cloudy, and everything looked bleak, the ground being covered with a siirinkling of snow. Almost the whole of the attendants were relatives and near neighbours, and most of them, with stolid irreverence, were chatting about the affairs of the day. Professor Wilson remained for some time near the newly-covered grave after all the rest had departed." I walked over this road to Altrive the day after my arrival in Ettrick. But before quitting Ettrick, I must remark, that every part of it presents objects made familiar by the Shepherd. At the lower end are Lord Napier's castle, Thirlstane, a quaint castellated house with round towers, and standing in pleasant woodlands ; and the remains of the old tower of Tushielaw, and its hanging-tree, the robber chief of which stronghold James VI. surprised, and hanged on his own tree where he had hanged his victims, treating him with as little ceremony as he did Johnny Armstrong and others of the like profession. All these the hearty and intelligent schoolmaster pointed out to me, walking on to the thx'ee-mile -distant inn, and seeing me well housed there. What is called Altrive Lake, the farm on the Yarrow, given for life by the r>uke of Buccleuch to Hogg, and where he principally lived after leaving Ettrick, and where he died, stands in a consider- able opening between the hills, at the confluence of several valleys, where the Douglas burn falls into the Yarrow. Thus, from some of the windows, you look up and down the vale of Yarrow, but where the vale has no very striking features. The hills are lower than on Ettrick, and at a greater distance, but of the same character, green and round. Shepherds are collecting their flocks ; the water goes leaping along stony channels ; you see, here and there, a small white farm-house with its clump of trees, and a circular enclosure of stone wall for the sheepfold. A solitary crow or gull flies past ; there are black stacks of peat on the bogs, and on the hill-tops HOGG. 387 — for there are bogs there too, and you perceive yoni- approach to a house by the smell of peat. That is the character of the whole district. Altrive Lake is, in truth, no lake at all. One had always a plea- sant notion of Hogg's house standing on the borders of a cheerful little lake. I looked naturally for this lake in the wide opening between the streams and hills, but could see none. I inquired of the farmer who has succeeded Hogg, for this lake, and he said there never was one. Hogg, he said, had given it that dignified name because a little stream, that runs close past the house, not Douglas burn, but one still less, is called the Trive lake. The farmer at the time of my visit, who was an old weather-beaten Scotchman, eighty-two years of age, but hardy and pretty active, and well-off in the world, expressed himself as quite annoyed with the name, and said it was not Altrive Lake ; he would not have it so called. It should be Aldenhojae, for it was now joined to his farm, which was the Alden farm. I believe the Altrive farm is but about a hundred acres, including sheepwalk on the hills, and lets for 45/. a-year ; but old Mr. Scott, the then tenant, had a larger and better farm adjoining ; and in his old house, which was just above this, across the highway from Ettrick, but almost hidden in a hollow, he kept his hinds. Hogg's house is apparently two white cottages, for the roof in the middle dips down like it, but it is really but one. It stands on a mound, in a very good and pleasant flower garden. The gai'den is enclosed with palisades, and the steep bank down from the house, descending to the level of the garden, is gay with flowers. It has another flower garden behind, for the tenant has his kitchen garden at his other house ; and around lie green meadows, and at a distance, slope away the green pastoral hills. As you look out at the front-door, the Yarrow I'uns down the valley at the distance of, perhaps, a quarter of a mile on the left hand, with a steep scaur, or precipitous earthy bank, on its further side, in full view, over the top of which runs the highway from Edinbiugh to Galashiels. Down the valley, and on the other side of the water, lies, in full view also, the farm of Mount Benger, which Hogg took from the Duke of Buccleuch, after he came to Altrive. It is mucli more enclosed and cultivated in tillage than Altrive. The house where Hogg lived, however, is now i3ulled down, all except one ruinous white wall, and a very capital farm-house is built near it ; with a quadrangle of trees, which must have been originally planted to shelter a house long ago gone. An old farmer and his wife in the neighbourhood, who seemed the last peoi)Ie in the world to admire poets or poetry, though very worthy people in their way, blamed Hogg extremely for taking Mount Benger. He was more fitted for books than for farming, said they. "Perhaps," I observed, "he did not find that little farm of Altrive enough to maintain him." " Why should he not ? " asked they. " He had nothing to do there but look after his little flock — that was all he had to care for — and that was the proper business of a man that called himself the Ettrick Slicpherd — as though there was never a shepherd in Ettrick besides himself. And if he wanted cc2 388 HOOG. more income, had not he his pen, and was not he very popular with the periodicals ? But he was always wanting to take great farms, without any money to stock them. He was hand-and-glove with great men in Edinburgh, Professor Wilson, and Scott, and the like ; he was aye going to Abbotsford and Lord Napier's ; and so he thought himself a very great man too, and Mrs. Hogg thought herself a great woman, and looked down on her neighbours. These poets think nothing's good enough for them. Hogg paid the Duke no rent, but he caught his fish, and killed his game ; he was a desperate fellow for fishing and shooting. If people did not do just what he wanted, he soon let them know his mind, and that without much ceremony. He wrote a very abusive letter to Sir Walter Scott, because he would not give him a poem to print when he asked him, and would not speak to him for months ; and when he took Mount Benger he wrote to his generous friend Mr. Grieve, of Ettrick, and desired him to send him 350/. to stock the farm, which Mr. Grieve refused, because he knew that the scheme was a ruinous one ; on which he wrote hiiii a very abusive letter, and would not speak to him for years. The upshot was that he failed, and paid eighteen- pence in the pound ; and yet the Duke, though he got no rent, allows the widow the rental of Altrive." It is curious to hear the estimation that a man is held in by his neighbours. It is generally the case, that a man who raises himself above those with whom he set out on equal or inferior terms in life, is regarded with a very jealous feeling. I found Grace Darling denied all merit by those of her own class in her own neighbourhood. Hogg, who is admired by the more intellectual of his countrymen, is still, in the eyes of the now mattei'-of-fact sheeja farmers of Ettrick and Yarrow, looked upon only as an aspiring man, and bad farmer. They cannot comprehend why he should be so much more regarded than themselves, who are great at market, great on the hills, and pay every man, and lay up hard cash. Yet these men who pay eighteenpeuce in the pound, have farms for nothing, and their famines after them, and associate with lords and dukes, — that is very odd, certainly. For worldly prudence, I am afraid, we cannot boast of Hogg ; and he confesses that he did rate Sir Walter soundly for not giving him a poem for his Poetic Mirror, and that he would not speak to him, till Scott heaped coals of fire on his head by sending the doctor to him when he was ill, and by Hogg finding out that Scott had come or sent daily to inquire how he was going on, and had told his friends not to let Hogg want for anything. Hogg was a creature of the quickest impulse ; he resented warmly, and he was as soon melted again by kindness. He had the spirit of a child, sensitive, quick to resent, but forgiving and generous. His imprudence in taking I\Iount Benger is much lessened, too, when we learn that he expected 1,000/. from his wife's father, whose circumstances, however, became embarrassed, and Hogg had already, through the intervention of Scott, obtained possession of the farm, and incurred the debt for the stocking of it, before he became aware of the disastrous fact. In HOGG. 389 truth, he was probably too good a poet to be a good farmer ; nor ueed we wonder at the opinion yet held of him by some of his neighbours, when we find him relating in his Life that, when leaving Edinburgh once because his literary projects had failed, he found his character for a shepherd as low in Ettrick, as it was for poetry in the capital, and that no one would give him anything to do. Such are the singular fortunes of men of genius ! It is said in his own neighbourhood, that his last visit to London hastened his death. That the entertainments given him there, and the excitement he went through, had quite exhausted him. That he never afterwards seemed himself again. That he was listless and feeble, and tried to rally, but never did. Probably his breach with Blackwood might prey upon his spirits ; for, on Blackwood declining to give a complete edition of his works, he had entered into arrange- ments with Cochrane and Johnstone of London, who commenced his edition, but failed on the issue of the first volume. By the act of quitting Blackwood, all the old associations of his life, its happiest and most glorious, seemed broken up. After that, his name vanished from the magazine, and was no more seen there, and the new staff on which he leaned proved a broken reed. Truly many ai"e the verificatioiis of the melancholy words of Wordsworth : — " We poets in our youth bep;in in gladness ; But thereof comes in the end, despundtncy and madness." I have received the following account of his last days from one of his oldest and most intimate friends : — "Innerleithen, 21st Feb. 1846. " Mr. Hogg, although apparently in good health, had been ailing for some years previous to his death, with water in the chest. When this was announced to him by his friend, Dr. W. Gray, from India, a nephew of Mr. Hogg's, he seemed to laugh at the idea, and pro- uoiuiced it impossible, as one drop of water he never drank. Not- withstanding, he very shortly after had a consultation with some of the Edinburgh medical folks, who corroborated Dr. Gray's opinion. Mr. Hogg, on his return from town, called upon me in pa.ssing, and seemed somewhat depressed in spirits about his health. The Shep- herd died of what the country folks call black jaundice, on the 21st November, 1835, and was buried on the 27th, in the chui'chyard of Ettrick, within a few hundred yards of Ettrick-house, the place where he was born. It was a very imposing scene, to see Professor Wilson standing at the grave of the Shepherd, after every one else had left it, with his head uncovered, and his long hair waving in the wind, and tlie tears literally running in streams down his check. A monu- ment has been erected to the memory of Hogg, by his poor wife. At this the good people of the forest should feel ashamcil. Mr. Hogg was confined to the house for some weeks, and, if I recollect right, was insensible some days i^revious to his death. He has left one son and four daughters ; the son, as is more than probable you are aware, went out to a banking establi.-ihmeut in Bombay, some two years ago. Mr. Hogg left a considerable library, which is still in the pos- 390 HOGG. session of Mrs. Hogg and family. With regard to the state of his mind at the time of his death, I am unable to speak. I may nien- tion, a week or two previous to his last illness, he spent a few days with me in angling in the Tweed ; the last day he dined with me, the moment the tuu^blers were produced, he begged that I would not insist upon him taking more than one tumbler, as he felt much inclined to have a tumbler or two with his friend Cameron, of the inn, who had always been so kind to him, not unfrequently having sent him home in a chaise, free of any charge whatever. The moment the tumbler was discussed, we moved off to Cameron's ; and, by way of putting off the time until the innkeeper returned from Peebles, where he had gone to settle some little business matter, we had a game at bagatelle ; but no sooner had we commenced the game, than poor Hogg was seized with a most violent trembling. A glass of brandy was instantly got, and swallowed ; still the trembling con- tinued, until a second was got, which produced the desired effect. At this moment the Yarrow carrier was passing the inn, on his way to Edinburgh, when Mr. Hogg called him in, and desired him to sib down until he would draw an order on the Commercial Bank for twenty pounds, as there was not a single penny in the house at home. After various attempts he found it impossible even to sign his name, and was, therefore, obliged to tell the carrier that he must of necessity defer drawing the order until next week. The carrier, however, took out his pocket-book, and handed the Shepherd a iive- pound note, which he said he could conveniently want until the following week, when the order would be cashed. A little before the gloaming, Mr. Hogg's caravan cart landed for him, which he instantly took possession of ; but, before moving off, he shook hands with me, not at all in his usual way, and at the same time stated to me that a strong presentiment had come over his mind that we would never meet again. It was too true. I never again saw my old friend, the Shepherd, with whom I had been intimately acquainted since the year 1802. " Yours truly, " P. Boyd." I went over his house at Altrive with much interest. His little study is in the centre of the front of the house ; and within that is the equally small bedroom where he died. The house has been much improved, as well as the garden about it, since his time, for all agree that Hogg was very slovenly about his place. However, as Lockhart has justly observed, there will never be another such a shepherd. He had a brother still living, William Hogg, who had always been considered a very clever man. He lived somewhere in Peebleshire, as a shepherd. Hogg's widow and family were living in Edinburgh. In many of my visits to the homes and haunts of the poets, I have fallen in with persons and things which I regret that I could not legitimately introduce, and which yet are so full of life that they HOGG. 391 deserve to be preserved. Exactly such a person did I meet with at Altrive Lake, at Mr. Scott's, the successor of Hogg. He was a jolly wool-buyer ; a stout, fine, jovial-looking man, one of that class who seem to go through the world seeing only the genial side of it, and drawing all the good out of it, as naturally as the sun draws out of the earth flowers and fruit. The hearty fellow was sitting at luncheon with Mr. Scott as I went in, and I was requested to join them. His large, v/ell-fed person, and large handsome face, seemed actually to glow and radiate with the fulness of this world's joyousness and prosperity. His head of rich bushy black hair, and his smooth black suit, both cut in town fashion, marked him as belonging to a more thronged and bustling region than these tawny, treeless, solitary hills. The moment I mentioned Hogg, and my object iu visiting Altrive and Ettrick, the stranger's countenance lit up with a thorough high-flowing tide of rosy animation. "Eh, but ye shoidd ha' had me in Ettrick wi' ye ! I know every inch of all these hills and the country round. Haven't I bought the wool all over this country these tW',-nty years 1 Hogg ! why, Sir, I've bought his wool many a time, and had many a merry ' clash ' and glass of toddy wi' him at this verra table." Nothing would do but I must accejjt half his gig thence to Galashiels that evening, a distance of twenty miles. It was a very friendly offer, for it saved me much time. Our drive was a charming one, and my stout friend know- ing all the country, and apparently everybody in it, pointed out everything, and had a nod, a smile, a passing word, for every one that we met or passed in their cottages by the road-side. He pointed out the piece of a wall, the only remains of Hogg's old house at Mount Benger, adding^" Ay, I bought his wool !" We descended the vale of Yarrow, passing through the beautiful woods of llanrjing- skaw. "■ Ye'll remember," said he, " what was said by some English noblemen in the rising in '45, when they heard that the lairds of liangingshmo and GalloicsJdels were among the Scotch conspirators. These are ominous names, said they, we'll ha' naething to do with 'em ; and withdrew, and thereby saved their own necks." So we went on, every few hundred yards bringing new histories of my jolly friend's wool-buying, and of matters which seemed nearly as im- portant in his eyes. There was Newark tower — a beautiful object — standing on a lofty green mound on the other side of the Yarrow, the banks of which are most beautifully wooded. The tower, indeed, is included in the pleasure-grounds of Bowhill, a seat of the Duke of Buccleuch's, within sight ; and you see neat walks running all along the river-side for miles amid the hanging woods, and looking most tempting. Opposite to Newark my friend pointed out a farm-house. " Do you know what that is ? " "A farm-house," I replied. " Ay, but what fann-house, that's the thing? Why, Sir, that's the house where Mungo Park lived, and where his brother now lives." He then related the fact recorded in Scott's Life, of Sir Walter finding Mungo Park standing one day in an abstracted mood, flinging stones into the Yarrow ; and asking him why he did that, he told Scott that he wa.s soimding the depth of the river, it being a plan he had dis- 392 HOGG. covered and used on his African tour; the length of time the bubblea look coming to the top indicating the comparative depth, and show- ing whether he might venture to ford tlie stream or not. Soon after Park again set out for Africa, never to return. " There, too, I buy the wool," added my companion. "But do you see," again he went on, " the meadow there below us, lying between those two streams 1 " — " Yes." — " Well, there meet the Ettrick and YaiTow, and become the Tweed ; and the meadow between is no other than thiit of Carterhaugh ; you've heard of it in the old ballads. I buy all the wool ofi' that farm." I have no doubt if the jolly fellow had fallen in with the fairies on Carterhaugh, he would have tried to buy their wool too. Ever and anon, out of the gig he sprung, and bolted into a house. Here there was a sudden burst of exclamations, a violent shaking of hands. Out he came again, and a whole troop of people after him. " Well but, Mr. — , don't you take my wool this time 1 " " Oh ! why not ? What is it ? what weight ? what do you want % " "It is so and so, and I want so much for it." " Oh, fie, mon ! I'll gi'e ye so much ! " " That's too little." " Well, that's what I'll gi'e — ye cau send it, if ye like the price ; " and away we drove, — the man all Hfe and jollity, giving me a poke in the side with his elbow, and a knowing look, with — " He'll send it ! It won't do to spend much time over these little lots ; " and away we went. At one house, no sooner did he enter, than out came a bonny lass with a glass and the whisky- bottle, most earnestly and respectfully ^jressing that I should take a glass ! " What could the bonny girl mean by being so urgent that I should take some of her whisky i" " Oh," said he, laughing heartily, " it was because I told her that ye were a Free-kirk minister frae London, and they're mighty zealous Free-kirk folk here." At Selkirk my jolly friend put himself and horse to a gi'eat deal of labour in ascending the steep hill into the town, which we might have avoided, that I might see the statue of Sir Walter Scott, by Ritchie, in the market-place. This, however, was but part of his object. Leaving the gig at the inn, he said we must just look in on a friend of his. It was at a little grocer's shop, and, in a little dusky I^arlour, he introduced me to a young lady, his wife's sistei', and we must have some tea with her. The young lady was a comely, quiet, dark-complexioned person, who seemed to have a deal of quiet sense, and some sly humour ; just such a person as Scott woidd have intro- duced into one of his stories as a Jenny Middlemass, or the like ; and it was most amusing to sit and listen to all their talk, and jokes, and his mystifications, and her quick detection of them, and their united mirtli over them. The good man finally lauded me in Galashiels, and there I had no little difficulty in getting away to my inn ; as he thought of nothing less than my staying to supper with him, and hearing a great deal more of all the country round, of Scott and Burns, Hogg and wool-buying, trading and tradition, the old glories of Border-reiving, and new g'ories of Galashiels, and its spinning and weaving, without end. '111 |» "'''I' SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. Coleridge, whose simple, unworldly cliai-actcr is as well known as his genius, seems to have inherited his particular disposition from his fatlier, the Rev. John Coleridge, the vicar of Ottei-j St. Mary, in Devonshire. He was a learned man, the head master of the free grammar-school at Ottery, as weU as vicar. He had been previously head master of the school at South Molton, and was one of the persons who assisted Ur. Kennicott in his Hebrew Bible. "He was an exceedingly studious man," says Gillnian, on the authority of Coleridge himself, "pious, of primitive manners, and the most simple habits: passing events were little heeded by him, and therefore he was usually characterised as ' the absent man.' " Coleridge was bom October 21st, 1772, the yoimgest of thirteen children, of which nine were sons, one of whom died in inHincy. Of all these sons, Coleridge is said to have most resembled his father in mind and habit. His mother was, except for education, in which she was deficient, a most fitting wife for such a man. She was an active, careful housekeeper and manager, looked well after worldly aftairs, and was ambitious to place her sons well in the world. She always told them to look after good, substantial, sensible women, and not after fine harpsichord ladies. Coleridge used to relate many 394 COLERIDGE. instances of his father's absence of inind, one or two of which we may quote. On one occasion, having to breakfast with his bishop, he went, as was the practice of that clay, into a barber's shoj), to have his head shaved, wigs being then in common use. Just as the operation was completed, the clock struck nine, the hour at which the bishop punctually breakfasted. Roused as from a reverie, he instantly left the barber's shop, and in his haste forgetting his wig, appeared at the breakfast-table, where the bishop and his party had assembled. The bishop, well acquainted with his absent manners, courteously and playfully requested him to walk into an adjoining room, and give his opinion of a mirror which had arrived from London a few days previously, and which disclosed to his astonished guest the consequence of his haste and forgetfulness. The old gentleman, Coleridge also related, had to take a journey on some professional business, which would detain him from home for three or four days : his good wife, in her care and watchfulness, had packed a few things in a small trunk, and given them in charge to her husband, with strong injunctions that he was to put on a clean shirt every day. On his return home, his wife went to search for his linen, when, to her dismay, it was not in the trunk. A closer search, however, discovered that the vicar had strictly obeyed her injunctions, and had put on daily a clean shirt, but had forgotten to remove the one underneath. This might have been the pleasantest and most portable mode of carrying half-a-dozen shirts in winter, but not so in the dog-days. The poor idolized him and paid him the greatest reverence ; and amongst other causes, for the odd practice of quoting the original Hebrew liberally in his sermons. They felt themselves particularly favoured by his giving them " the very words the Spirit spoke in ; " the agricultural population flocked in from the neighbourhood with great eagerness to hear him on this account ; and such an opinion did they acquire of his learning, that they regarded his successor with much contempt, because he addressed them in simple English. This worthy man died when Coleridge was about seven years old only. He seems to have been a delicate child, of timid disposition. Being so much younger than his brothers, he never came to be a play- fellow of theirs, and thus to acquire physical hardihood and activity. " I was," he says, " in earliest childhood hufted away from the enjoy- ment of muscular activity in play, to take refuge at my mother's side, or on my little stool to read my book, and listen to the talk of my elders. I was driven from life iii motion, to life in thought and sensation. I never played except by myself, and then only acting over what I had been reading or fancying ; or half one, half the other, with a stick cutting down weeds and nettles, as one of the seven champions of Christendom. Alas ! I had all the simplicity, all the docility of a child, but none of the child's habits. I never thought as a child, never had the language of a child. I forget whether it was in my fifth or sixth year, but I believe the latter, in consequence of some quarrel between me and my brother, in the COLERIDGE. 395 first week in October, I ran away from fear of being whipped, and passed the whole night, a night of rain and storm, on a bleak side of a hill on the Otter ; and was there found at daybreak, without the power of using my limbs, about six yards from the naked bank of the river." This anecdote has been differently related by Cottle, and by the author of Pen and Pencil Sketches. Thej'^ state that little Sammy Coleridge, as they call him, when between three and four years of age, had got a thread and a crooked pin from his elder sister Ann, and, unknown to the family, had set out to fish in the Otter. That he had wandered on and on, till, overtaken by fatigue, he lay down and slept. That he continued out all night, to the consternation of the famil}^, and was found by a waggoner the next morning, who, going along the road at four o'clock, thought he heard a child's voice. He stopped and listened. He now heard the voice cry out, " Betty ! Betty ! I can't pull up the clothes." The waggoner went to the margin of the river, where he saw to his astonishment, a little child with a withy bough in his hand, which hung over the stream, pulling hard, and on the veiy point of dragging himself into the water. The child, when awakened as well as friglitened, could only say his name was Sammy ; and the waggoner carrying him into Ottery, joy inde- scribable spread through the town and the parsonage. Which version of this story is the more correct, who shall decide ? Little Coleridge, at the age of ten, was placed in Christ's Hospital, in London, through the influence of Judge Buller, who had been educated by his father. This school was then, it seems, conducted in a very miserable and unkind manner. Coleridge was half-starved there, neglected, and wretched. The first bitter exjieriences of chil- dren who have had happy homes, of such as have had loving parents or friends, is on going to school. There has, no doubt, been much improvement in these as in other res^jects of late years. School- masters, like other men, have felt the growing influences of civiliza- tion and true feeling ; but there is yet much to be done in schools. Let it be remembered that fagging and flogging still continue in our great public schools of Westminster, Eton, and others. Riding the other day on the top of an omnibus through London, we could, from that popular eminence, see the master of a naval and military school exercising his vocation with the cane on one of his imhappy scholars. This, I presume, is a part of what the boys are systematically taught there — the preparatory initiation into the floggings that they are likely to get in the army or navy. That is bad and brutalizing enough, but that we are not yet advanced beyond the absurd idea of driving learning into our gentlemen with the cudgel and the birch, says very little indeed for our advance in true social philosophy. Southey gives a very lively idea of the school change in a boy's hfe, in his Hymn to the Penates : — *' When first a little one I left my Home, I can runienibcr the lirst f,'ricf I felt, And the lirst jjaiiitul smile that clothed my front With tcelinfis not its own. Sadly at ni^:ht I sate me down heside a stranger's hearth ; And when the lingerin;; hour of rest was come, First wet with tears my pillow." 396 COLERIDGE. In The Retrospect he has still more clearly depicted his introductioa to the school at Corston : — " Tliere now, in pettj' empire o'er the school, The iiiip;lity master held despotic rule ; 'J'rembling in silence, all his deeds we saw, His look a mandate, and his word a law ; Severe his voice, severe and stern his mien, And wondrous strict he was, and wondrous wise, I ween. " Even now, through many a Ion?, long year, I trace The hour when first with awe I viewed his face ; Even now, recal my entrance at the dome, — 'Twas the first day I ever left my home ! Years, intervening, have not worn away Tlie deep remembrance of that wretehid day. " Methinks e'en now the interview I see. The 'mistress's glad smile, the master's glee. Much of my future happiness they said, Much of the easy life the scholars led ; Of spacious playground, and of wholesome air, 'riie best instruction, and the tenderest care; And when I f dlowed to the garden door My father, till, through tears, I saw no more, — How civilly they soothed my parting pain, And how they never spake so civilly again." Bravo, Southey ! In these lines how many feelings of how many oppressed little hearts you have given vent to ! Improvement, I do believe, has found its way, in a great degree, since then into private schools ; but in many of them still, how much remains to be done ! How much more may the spirits of masters and mistresses be humanized ! How much more the law of love be substituted for the law of severity ! It cannot be too deeply impressed ou the hearts of those who take the charge of children, often at a great distance, that there is no tyranny so cowardly and mean as that which is exercised, not over grown men, but over tender children. Coleridge calls this change, being "first plucked up and trans- planted;" and adds, — "Oh, what a change! I was a depressed, moping, friendless, poor orphan, half-starved : — at that time the portion of food to the Bluecoats was cruelly insufficient for those who had no friends to supply them." For those who had friends to supply them, the distinction set up was of the most detestable kind. They had luxuries brought in and served up before these poor half- starved little wretches. Charles Lamb, under the title of Elia, describes his own case as one of these favoured ones. " I remember Lamb at school, and can well remember that he had some jieculiar advantages, which I and others of his schoolfellows had not. His friends lived in town and were at hand, and he had the privilege of going to see them almost as often as he wished, through some invidious distinction which was denied us. The present treasurer of the Inner Temple can explain how it happened. He had his tea and hot rolls in the morning, while we were battening upon our quarter of a penny loaf ; our rru// moistened with attenuated small beer in wooden iiiggins, smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was poured from. On Mondays, milk porritch, blue and tasteless, and the pease soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were enriched for COLERIDGE. 397 him with a slice of ' extraordinary bread and butter ' from the hot loaf of the Temple. The Wednesday's mess of millet, somewhat less repugnant — (we had three banyan to four meat daj's in the week) — was endeared to his palate with a lump of double-refined, and a smack of ginger, or the fragrant cinnamon, to make it go down the more glibly. In Heu of our half-pickled Sundays, or quite fresh, boiled beef on Thursdays, strong as caro equina, with detestable marigolds floating in the j^ail to poison the broth ; our scanty mutton crags on Fridays ; and rather more savoury but grudging portions of the same flesh, rotten-roasted, or rare, on the Tuesdays — the only dish which excited our appetites, and disappointed our stomachs in almost equal proportion ; he had his hot plate of roast veal, or the more tempting griskin, exotics unknown to our palates, cooked in the paternal kitchen." " I," says Coleridge, giving us the other side of the case, " was a poor friendless boy ; my j^arents, and those who should have cared for me, were far away. Those few acquaintances of theirs, which they could reckon on being kind to me in the great city, after a little forced notice, which they had the grace to take of me on my first arrival in town, soon grew tired of my holiday visits. They seemed to them to recur too often, though I thought them few enough ; one after another, they all failed me, and I felt myself alone among six hundred playmates. 0, the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early homestead ! The yearnings which I used to have towards it in those unfledged years ! How in my dreams would my native town, far in the west, come back, with its churches, and trees, and faces ! To this late hour of my life do I trace the impressions left by the painful recollections of those friendless holidays. The long warm days of summer never return, but they bring with them a gloom from the haunting memories of those -whole chii/s leave, when, by some strange arrangement, we were turned out for the livelong day, upon our own hands, whether we had friends to go to or none. I remember those bathing excursions to the New River, which Lamb recals with such relish, better, I think, than he can, for he was a home-seeking lad, and did not care for such water parties. How we would sally forth into the fields, and strip under the first warmth of the sun, and wanton like young dace in the streams, getting appetites for the noon which those of us that were penniless had not the means of allaying ; while the cattle, and the birds, and the fishes were at feed about us, and we had nothing to satisfy our cravings : the very beauty of the day, the exercise of the pastime, and the sense of liberty, setting a keener edge upon them ! How faint and languid, finally, we would return, towards nightfall, to our desired morsel, half rejoicing, half reluctant, that the hours of uneasy hberty had expired ! " It was worse, in the days of winter, to go prowling about the streets objectless ; shivering at cold windows of print-shops, to extract a little amusement ; or, haply, as a last resoi't, in the hope of a little novelty, to pay a fifty-times-repcated visit to the lions in the Tower, to whose levee, by courtesy immemorial, we had a pre- 398 COLERIDGE. scriptive right of atlmission, and where our indiviihial faces would be as well kiiowu to the warden as those of his own charges." What an amount of cruelty may be perpetrated even under the show of favour ! what hard days for the .stomach, under the guise of holidays ! Coleridge w^as, from all accounts, at this time, " a delicate and .suffering boy." His stomach was weak, his feet tender, so that he was obliged to wear very large easy shoes. This might be one cause why he more readily fell into sedentary reading haVjits. He was to be found during play-hours, often, with the knees of his breeches xmbuttoned, and his shoes down at the heel, walking to and fro, or sitting on a step, or in a corner, deeply engaged in some book. The future author of the Ancient Mariner, and translator of Walleu- stein, sitting on door-steps and at corners, with his book on his knee, was a very interesting object, if the Ancient Mariner and Wallenstein could have been seen seated in that head of black cropped hair ; as it was, it did excite attention ; and Bowyer, one of those clever brutes who, on the strength of a good store of Latin and Greek, think themselves authorized to rain a good store of blows on the poor children in their power, testified his hopes of Coleridge's progress by continually and severely punishing him. He was often heard to say that " the lad was so ordinary a looking lad, with his black head, that he generally gave him, at the end of a flogging, an extra cut ; for," said he, " you are such an i:gly fellow." Books wei'e the poor fellow's solace for the flagellations of the masters and the neglect of the boys, amongst whom Lamb was not to be reckoned, for he was very fond of him and kind to him. " From eight to foui-teen I was a playless day-dreamer," he observes ; " a lielluo librortim ; my appetite for which was indidged by a singular incident —a stranger who was struck by my conversation, made me free of a circulating library in King-street, Cheapside." This incident, says Gillman, was indeed singular. Going down the Strand, in one of his day-dreams, fancying himself swimming across the Hellespont, thrusting his hands before him as in the act of swimming, one hand came in contact with a gentleman's pocket. The gentleman seized his hand, turned round, and looked at him with some anger, exclaiming — " What ! so young and so wicked ! " at the same time accusing him of an attempt to jDick his pocket. The frightened boy sobbed out his denial of the intention, and explained to him how he thought himself Leander swimming across the Hellespont. The gentleman was so much struck and delighted with the novelty of the thing, and with the simplicity and intelli- gence of the boy, that he subscribed, as before stated, to the library, in consequence of which Coleridge was further enabled to indulge his love of reading. It is stated that at this school he laid the foundation of those bodily sufferings, which made his life one of sickness and torture, and occasioned his melancholy resort to opium. He greatly injured his health, it is said, and reduced his strength by his bathing excur- sions ; but is it not just as likely that the deficiency of food, and those holiday days when he was turned out to starvation, had quite COLERIDGE. 399 as much to do with it ? On one occasion he swam across the New River in his clothes, and dried them on his baclc. This is supposed to have laid the foundation of his rheumatic pains ; but may not that lying out all night in the rain at a former day have been even a still earlier predisposing cause 1 However that might be, he says, that " full half the time from seventeen to eighteen was passed in the sick- ward of Christ's Hospital, afHicted with jaundice and rheu- matic fever." At an earlier day he had undergone a medical treatment which was, oddly enough, the cause of his breaking out into verse. He had a remarkably delicate white skin, which was once the cause of gi-eat punishment to him. His dame had undertaken to cure him of the itch, with which the boys of his ward had suffered much ; but Coleridge was doomed to suffer more than his comrades, from the use of sulphur ointment, through the great sagacity of his dame, who with her extraordinary eyes, aided by the power of glasses, could see the malady in the skin, deep and out of power of common vision ; and, consequently, as often as she employed this miraculous sight, she found, or thought she found, fresh reason for continuing the friction, to the prolonged suffering and morti- fication of her patient. This occurred when he was about ten years of age, and gave rise to his first attemjjt at making a verse, as follows : — " O Lord, have mercy on me! For I am very sad ! For why, ^ood Lord? I've pot the itch, And eke I've got the tad!" the school name for ringworm. In classical study Coleridge made wonderful progress, though but little in mathematics. He read on through the catalogue, folios and all, of the library in King-street, and was always in a low fever of excitement. His whole being was, he says, with eyes closed to every object of present sense, to crumple himself up in a sunny corner, and read, read, read ; foucying himself on Robinson Crusoe's island, finding a mountain of plum-cake and eating a room for himself, and then eating out chairs and tables — hunger and fancy ! So little affection had Coleridge for the school, that he greatly wanted at fifteen to put himself apprentice to a shoemaker. It was of the same class of odd attempts as his future one at soldierintr. " Near the school there resided a worthy, and in their rank of life, a respectable middle-aged couple. The husband kept a little shop and was a shoemaker, with whom Coleridge had become intimate. The Avife also had been kind and attentive to him, and that was sufficient to captivate his affectionate nature, which had existed from earliest childhood, and strongly endeared him to all around him. Coleridge became exceedingly desirous of being apprenticed to this man, to learn the art of shoemaking ; and in due time, when some of the boys were old enough to leave the scliool and be put to trade, Coleridge, being of the number, tutored his friend Crispin how to apply to the head master, and not to heed his anger should 400 COLERIDGE. he become irate. Accordingly, Crispin applied at the hour proposed to see Bowyer, who having heard the proposal to take Coleridge aa an apprentice, and Coleridge's answer and assent to become a shoe- maker, broke forth with his favourite adjuration: — 'Ods my life, man, what d'ye mean 1 ' At the sound of his angry voice Crispin stood motionless, till the angry pedagogue, becoming infuriate, pushed the intruder out of the room with such force, that Crispin might have sustained an action at law against him for the assault. Thus, to Coleridge's mortihcation and regret, as he afterwards in joke would say, 'I lost the opportunity of su]-)plying safeguards to the understandings of those who, perhaps, will never thank me for what I am aiming to do in exercising their reason.' " Disappointed in becoming a shoemaker, he was next on fire to become a surgeon. His brother Luke was now in Loudon, walking the London hospitals. Here every Saturday he got leave and went, delighted beyond everything if he were permitted to hold the plasters or attend dressings. He now plunged headlong into books of medicine, Latin, Greek, or English ; devoured whole medical dictionaries ; then fell from physic to metaphysics ; thence to the writings of infidels ; fell in love, like all embryo poets, and wrote verse. He was, however, destined neither to make shoes nor set bones, but for the University ; whither he went in 1791, at the age of nineteen, being elected to Jesus College, Cambridge. Here his friend Middleton, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, who had been his most distinguished schoolfellow at Christ's Hospital, had preceded him, and was an undergraduate at Pembroke College. Their friendship was revived, and Coleridge used to go to Pembroke Col- lege sometimes to read with him. One day he found Middleton intent on his book, having on a long pair of boots reaching to the knees, and beside him, on a chair next to the one he was sitting on, a pistol. Coleridge had scarcely sat down before he was startled by the report of the pistol. " Did you see that 1 " said Middleton. " See what 1 " said Coleridge. " That rat I just sent into his hole again. Did you feel the shot ? It was to defend my legs that I put on these boots. I am frightening these rats from my books, which, without some precaution, I shall have devoured." Middleton, not- withstanding his hard studies, failed in his contest for the classical medal, and so in his hopes of a fellowship, — a good thing eventually for him, for it drove him out of college into the world and a bishopric. Coleridge came to the University with a high character for talent and learning ; and the Blues, as they are called, or Christ's Hospital iDoys, anticipated his doing great honour to their body. This he eventually did by his poetical fame, and might have done by his college honours, had he but been as well versed in mathematics as in the classics. In his first year he contested for the prize for the Greek ode, and won it. In his second year he stood for the Craven scholarship, and of sixteen or eighteen competitors, four were selected to contend for the prize ; these were Dr. Butler, late bishop of Lich- field ; Dr. Keate, the late head master of Eton ; Mr. Bethell, and COLERIDGE. 401 Coleridge. Dr. Butler was tlie successful candidate, and Coleridge was supposed to stand next. But college honours were contingent on a good mathematical stand ; this Coleridge, who hated mathe- matics, despaired of, and determined to quit the university. He was, moreover, harassed with debts, the most serious of which, it seems, was incurred immediately on his arriving at Cambridge. He was no sooner at his coUege, than a pohte upholsterer accosted him, requesting to be permitted to furnish his rooms. The next question was, " How would you hke to have them furnished ? " The answer, prompt and innocent enough, was, " Just as you please, Sir," — think- ing the individual employed by the coUege. The i-ooms were there- fore furnished according to the taste of the artisan, and the bill presented to the astonished Coleridge. On quitting the college, it seems that his debts were about one hundi-ed poimds — no great matter, but to him as overwhelming as if they had been a thousand. Cottle, in his account of him, says, he had fallen in love, as well as into debt, with a Mary G , who rejected his ofier. He made his way to London, and there, of aU things in the world, enlisted for a soldier. The story is very cm-ious, and, as related both by Cottle and GiUman, who were intimate with him at different periods of his life, is no doubt ti-ue. In a state of gi-eat dejection of mind, he strolled about the streets of London till night came on, when he seated himself on the steps of a house in Chancery-lane, speculating on the future. In this situation, overwhelmed with his own painful thoughts, and in misery himself, he had now to contend with the misery of others, — for he was accosted by various kinds of beggars importuning him for money, and forcing on him their real or pretended sorrows. To these appli- cants he emptied his pockets of his remaining cash. "Walking along Chancery -lane, he noticed a bill posted on the wall — " Wanted a few smart lads for the 15th, EUiott's Light Dragoons;" he paused a moment, and said to himself, " Well, I have had aU my life a violent antipathy to soldiers and horses, the sooner I cure myself of these absurd prejudices the better ; and so I will enUst in this regiment." Foithwith, he went as directed to the place of enlistment. On his arrival, he was accosted by an old sergeant, with a remarkably bene- volent countenance, to whom he stated his wish. The old man, look- ing at him attentively, asked him if he had been in bed ? On being answered in the negative, he desired him to take his, made him breakfast, and bade him rest himself awhile, which he did. This feeling sergeant, finding him refreshed in his body, but still suffering apparently from melancholy, in kind words begged him to be of good cheer, and consider well the step he was about to take ; gave him half-a-guinea, which he was to repay at his convenience, desiring him at the same time to go to the play, and shake off his melancholy, and not to return to him. The first part of the advice Coleridge attended to, but returned after the play to the quarters he had left. At the sight of him, this kind-heai'ted man burst into tears. " Then it must be so," said he. This sudden and unexpected sympathy from an entire stranger deeply affected Coleridge, and nearly shook his D D 402 COLERIDGE. resolution ; but still considering that he could not in honour even to the sergeant retreat, he kept his secret, and, after a short chat, they retired to rest. In the morning the sergeant mustered his recruits, and Coleridge, with his new comrades, was marched to Reading. On his arrival at the quarters of the regiment, the general of the district inspected the recruits ; and looking hard at Coleridge, with a military air, said, " What's your name. Sir 1 " He had previously determined to give one thoroughly Kamtschatkan ; but, having ob- served somewhere, over a door, Cumberbatch, he thought this suffi- ciently outlandish, and therefore gave it with a slight alteration, which implied a joke on himself as a horseman : Silas Tomken Comberbacke, as thus it is spelt in the books at the War-office. " What do you come here for ? " said the officer, as if doubting that he had any business there. "Sir," said Coleridge, "for what most other persons come, — to be made a soldier." " Do you think," said the general, " you can run a Frenchman through the body ? " "I don't know," replied Coleridge, " as I never tried ; but I'll let a Frenchman run me through before I'll run away." " That will do," said the general ; and Coleridge was turned into the ranks. Here, in his new capacity, laborious duties devolved on Mr. Cole- ridge. He endeavoured to think on Csesar, Epaminondas, and Leonidas, with other ancient heroes, and composed himself to his fate, remem- bering that in every service there must be a commencement ; but still he found confronting him no imaginary difficulties. Perhaps he who had most cause of dissatisfaction was the drill-sergeant, who thought his professional character endangered ; for, after using his utmost effisrts to bring his raw recruit into anything like a training, he expressed the most serious fears, from his imconquerable awkward- ness, that he never should be able to make a proper soldier of //im. It appears that he never advanced bej^ond the awkward squad, and that the drill-sergeant was obliged continually to warn the members of this squad by vociferously exclaiming — " Take care of that Cumber- back ! take care of him, for he wiU ride over you ! " and other such complimentary warnings. Coleridge, or Cumberbatch, or Cumberback, could never manage to rub down his own horse. The creature, he said, was a vicious one, and would return kick or bite for all such attempts ; but then, in justice to the poor animal, the awkwardness of the attempts should be taken into the account. Cumberback at this time com- plained of a pain at the pit of his stomach, accompanied with sickness, which totally prevented his stooping ; and, in consequence, he could never rub the heels of his horse at all. He would very quietly have left his horse unrubbed, but then he got a good rubbing down himself from the drill-sergeant. Between sergeant and steed he was in a poor case ; for when he mounted his horse, it, like Gilpin's nag, " What thing upon its back had got Did wonder more and more." But the same amiable and benevolent conduct which was so interwoven in his nature, soon made him friends, and his new COLERIDaE. 403 comrades vied witli each other in their endeavours to be useful to him. They assisted to clean his horse, and he amply repaid the obligation by writing all their letters to their sweethearts and wives. Such an amanuensis, we may well affirm, no lucky set of soldiers ever had before. Their lasses and good wives must have wondered at the new burst of affectionate eloquence in the regiment. Poor Cumberback's skill in horsemanship did not progress. He was always encountering accidents and troubles. So little did he often calculate for a due equilibrium, that in mounting on one side — perhaps the wrong stirrup — the probability was, especially if his horse moved, that he lost his balance, and if he did not roll back on this side, came down ponderously on the other ! The men, spite of their liking for him, wonld burst into a laugh, and say to one another, " ^ilas is off again!" Silas had often heai'd of campaigns, but he never before had so correct an idea of hard service. From his inability to learn his exercise, the men considered him a sort of natural, though of a peculiar kind — a talking natural. This fancy he stoutly resisted, but no matter — what was it that he could do cleverly ? — therefore a natural he must be. But now came a change. He had been placed as a sentinel at the door of a ball-room, or some pubhc place of resort, when two of his officers passing in, stopped for a moment near Coleridge talking about Euripides, two lioes being quoted by one of them as from that poet. At the sound of Greek the sentinel instinctivelj'' turned his » ear, when, with all deference touching his cap, he said, " I hope your honour will excuse me, but the lines you have repeated are not quite accurately cited. These are the lines ;" which he gave in their true form. " Besides," said Cumberback, " instead of being in Euripides they wiU be found in the second antistrophe of the CEdipus of Sophocles." " Why, who the d — 1 are you ? " said the officer ; " old Faustus ground young again ? " — " I am only your honour's humble sentinel," said Coleridge, again touching his cap. The officers hastened into the room, and inquired about that " odd fish " at the door ; when one of the mess, the surgeon it is believed, told them that he had had his eye upon him, but he coiild neither tell where he came from, nor anything about the fiimily of the Combcrbacks. " But," continued he, " instead of an ' odd fi.sh,' I suspect him to be a ' stray bird ' from the Oxford or Cambridge aviary." They learned also the laughable fact that he was bruised all over by frequent falls from his horse. The officers kindly took pity on the poor scholar, and had him removed to the medical department, where he was appointed "assistant" in the regimental hospital. This change was a vast improvement in Mr. Coleridge's condition ; and happy was the day also on which it took place, for the sake of the sick patients ; for Silas Tomken Comberback's amusing 'stories, they said, did them more good than all the doctor's physic. If he began talking to one or two of his comrades, — for they were aU on a perfect equality, except that those who were clever in their exer- cise lifted their heads a little above the awkward squad, of which Comberback was, by acclamation, the preeminent member, — if he D D 2 404 COLERIDGE. began to talk, however, to one or two, others drew near, increasing momently, till by and by the sick beds were deserted, and Comber- back formed the centre of a large circle. Many ludicrous dialogues occurred between Coleridge and his new disciples, particularly with the "geographer." On one occasion he told them of the Peloponnesian war, which lasted twenty-seven years. " There must have been famous promo- tions there," said one poor fellow, haggard as a death's head. Another, tottering with disease, ejaculated, "Can you tell, Silas, how many rose from the ranks ? " He now still more excited their wonderment by recapitulating the feats of Archimedes. As the narrative proceeded, one restrained his scepticism till he was almost ready to burst, and then vociferated, " Silas, that's a lie ! " " D'ye think so ? " said Coleridge, smiling, and went on with his story. The idea, however, got amongst them that Silas's fancy was on the stretch, when, finding that this would not do, he changed his subject, and told them of a famous general called Alexander the Great. As by a magic spell, the flagging atten- tion was revived, and several, at the same moment, to testify their eagerness, called out, " The general ! the general ! " " I'll tell you all about him," said Coleridge, and impatience marked every coun- tenance. He then told them who was the father of this Alexander the Great, — no other than Philip of Macedon. " I never heard of him," said one. " I think I have," said another, ashamed of being thought ignorant. " Silas, wasn't he a Cornish man ? I knew one of the Alexanders at Truro." Coleridge now went on, describing to them, in glowing colours, the valour, the wars, and the conquests of this famous general. "Ah," said one man, whose open mouth had complimented the speaker for the preceding half hour — " Ah," said he, " Silas, this Alexander must have been as great a man as our colonel ! " Cole- ridge now told them of the " Retreat of the Ten Thousand." " I don't like to hear of retreat," said one. " Nor I," said a second ; " I'm for marching on." Coleridge now told of the incessant con- flicts of those brave warriors, and of the virtues of " the square." " They were a parcel of crack men," said one. " Yes," said another, " their bayonets fixed, and sleeping on their arms day and night." " I should like to know," said a fourth, " what rations were given with all that hard fighting ;" on which an Irishman replied, " To be sure, every time the sun rose, two pounds of good ox beef and plenty of whisky." At another time he told them of the invasion of Xerxes, and his crossing the icicle Hellespont. " Ah ! " said a young reciniit, a native of an obscure village in Kent, who had acquired a decent smattering of geography, knowing well that the earth went round, was divided into land and water, and that there were more countries on the globe than England, and who now wished to show off" a little before his ' comrades — " Silas, I know where that ' Hellspont ' is. I think it must be the mouth of the Thames, for 'tis very wide." Coleridge now told them of the heroes of Thermopylae ; when COLERIDGE. 405 the geographer interrupted him by saying, "Silas, I know, too, where that there Moppily is ; it's somewhere up in the north." " You are quite right, Jack," said Coleridge, "it is to the north of the line." A conscious elevation marked his countenance ; and he rose at once five degrees in the estimation of his friends. But the days of Comberback were drawing to an end. An officer, supposed to be Captain Nathaniel Ogle, who sold out of that regi- ment towards the end of the same year that Coleridge left it, had, it is said, had his attention drawn towards this singular private, by finding the following sentence written on the walls of the stable where Comberback's horse-equipage hung : — " I^heu ! quam infortunii miser- rimum est fuisse felicem ! " He showed him particular distinction. When Captain Ogle walked the streets, Coleridge walked behind him as his orderly ; bat when out of town, they walked abreast, to' the great mystification of his comrades, who could not compre- hend how a man out of the awkward squad could merit this hououi'. It was probably Ogle who wormed the secret out of Coleridge, and informed his friends where he was. It has, however, been said to have been through a young man, who had lately left Cambridge for the army, and on his road through Reading to join his regiment, met Coleridge in the street, in his dragoon's dress, who was about to pass him ; on which he said, " No, Coleridge, this will not do ; we have been seeking you this six months. I must and will converse with you, and have no hesitation in declaring that I shall immediately inform your friends that I have found you." Whether owing to one or both of these causes, as Comberback was sitting as usual at the foot of a bed, in the hospital, in the midst of one of his talks, and surrounded by his usual gaping auditors, the door suddenly opened, and in came two or thi-ee gentlemen, his friends, looking in vain some time for him, amid the uniform dresses. At length they pitched on their man, and taking him by the arm, led him in silence out of the room. As the sup- posed deserter passed the door, one of the astonished auditors uttered, with a sigh — " Poor Silas ! I wish they may let him off with a cool tive hundred ! " Comberback was no more ! but his memory was long and aflfec- tionately preserved amongst his hospital companions, one of whom he had volunteered to attend during a most malignant attack of small-pox, when all others deserted him, and had waited on him, and watched by him, for six weeks. To prevent contagion, the patient and his noble-hearted nurse, and eventual saviour, were put into an out-house, where Coleridge continued all that time, night and day, administering medicine, guanling him from himself during violent delirium, and when again capable of listening, sitting by his bed, and reading to him. In the annids of humanity, that act must stand as one of the truest heroism. Connected with this singular passage in Coleridge's life, an old friend of his told Cottle this anecdote. The inspecting officer of his regiment, on one occasion, was examining the guns of the men ; and coming to one piece which was rusty, he called out in an autho- 406 COLERIDGE, ritative tone, " Whose rusty gun is this ? " " Is it verjf rusty, Sir ? " asked Coleridge. " Yes, Comberbatch, it is," said the officer, sternly. " Then, Sir," replied Coleridge, " it must bo mine ! " The oddity of the reply disarmed the officer, and the " poor scholar " escaped without punishment. There are various anecdotes abroad, at once illustrative of Cole- ridge's queer horsemanship and hap^iy knack at repartee, of which a specimen or two may be given here, before we dismiss him as a trooper. His awkwardness on horseback was so marked that it attracted general notice. Once riding along the turnpike road in the county of Durham, a wag approaching him, noticed his peculiarity, and thought the rider a fine subject for a little fun. Drawing near, he thus accosted Coleridge, " I say, young man, did you meet a tailor on the road ? " " Yes," replied Coleridge, " I did, and he told me if I went a little further I should meet a goosed'' The goose trotted on, quite satisfied with what he had got, Coleridge is represented as being at this time on his way to a neighbouring race-course ; that a farmer, at whose house he was staying, knowing his sorry horsemanship, had put him on the least and poorest animal he had, with old saddle and bridle, and rusty stirrups. On this Rosinante, Coleridge went in a black dress coat, with black breeches, black silk stockings, and shoes. Two other friends, as better horsemen, were entrusted with better steeds, and soon left him on the road. At length, reaching the race-ground, and thrusting his way through the crowd, he arrived at the spot of attraction to which all were hastening. Here he confronted a barouche and four, filled with smart ladies and attendant gentlemen. In it was also seated a baronet of sporting celebrity, steward of the course, and member of the House of Commons ; well known as having been bought and sold in several parliaments. The baronet eyed the figure of Coleridge, as he slowly passed the door of the barouche, and thus accosted him: "A pretty piece of blood, Sir, you have there." " Yes ! " answered Coleridge. " Rare paces, I have no doubt, Sir ! " "Yes," answered Coleridge, "he brought me here a matter of four miles an hour." He was at no loss to perceive the honourable baronet's drift, who wished to show off before the ladies : so he quietly waited the opportunity of a suitable reply. " What a fi'ee hand he has ! " continued Nimrod ; " how finely he carries his tail ! Bridle and saddle well suited, and appropriately appointed ! " " Yes," said Coleridge. " Will you sell him ?" asked the sporting baronet. " Yes," was the answer, " if I can have my price," " Name your price, then, putting the rider into the bargain ! " " My price," replied Coleridge, " for the horse. Sir, if I sell him, is o?ie hundred guineas ; as to the rider, never having been in ijarliament, and never intending to go, his price is not yet fixed." The baronet sat down more suddenly than he had risen — the ladies began to titter — while Coleridge quietly now moved on. Coleridge returned to Cambridge, but only for a very short time. The French Revolution, in its early promise, had raised the spirit COLERIDGE. 407 of enthusiasm for liberty in the bosom of all generous-natured young men. This had brought together Coleridge, Southey, and others of the like temperament. Coleridge now went to visit Southey, at Oxford, where they hit upon the Pantisocracy scheme, an offshoot from the root of Rousseau's visions of primitive hfe. Coleridge is said first to have broached it, and that it was eagerly adopted by Southey, and a college friend of his, George Burnet. These young men, soon after, set off to Bristol, Southey's native place, where they were soon joined by Coleridge. Here Southey, Coleridge, and Burnet occupied the same lodging ; Robert Lovell, a young quakei', had adopted this scheme, and they all concluded to embark for America, where, on the banks of the Susquehannah, they were to found their colony of peace and perfection, to follow their own ploughs, harvest their own corn, and show forth to the world the union of a patriarchal life of labour, with the highest exercise of intellect and virtue. Luckily for them, the mainspring was wanting. Without the root of aU evil, they could not rear tiiis tree of aU good fruits. They were obliged to borrow cash of Cottle even to pay for their lodgings ; and the shrewd bookseller, while he listened to their animated descriptions of their future transatlantic Eden, chuckled to himself on the impossibility of their ever carrying it out. The dream gradually came to an end. Lovell died unexpectedly, being carried off by a fever, brought on through a cold, caught on a journey to Sahsbury. Symptoms of jarring had shown themselves amongst the friends, which were rather ominous for the permanence of a pantisocracy. Coleridge had quarrelled with Lovell before he died, because Lovell, who was married to a Miss Fricker, opposed Cole- ridge's marriage with her sister till he had better prospects. Coleridge and Southey quarrelled about the pantisocracy afterwards. The most important results to Southey and Coleridge of this pan- tisocratic coalition were, that they eventually married the two sisters of Lovell's wife. Both these young poets, with their minds now fermenting with new schemes of politics and doctrines of religion, commenced at Bristol as lecturers and authors. The profits of the lectures were to pay for the voyage to America ; they did not even pay the rent. Coleridge lectured on the English Rebellion and Charles L, the French Revolution, and on Religion and Philo- sophy ; Southey, on General History : both displaying their peculiar talents and characters — Coleridge all imagination, absence of mind, and impracticability ; Southey, with les.s genius, but more order, prudence, and worldly tact. Both of those remarkable men began by proclaiming the most ultra-liberahsm in politics and theology — both came gradually back to the opinions which early associations and education had riveted on them unknown to themselves, but ■with very different degrees of rapidity, and finally with a very different tone. Coleridge ran through infidelity, unitarianism, the philosophy of Berkeley, Spinoza, Hartley, and Kant ; and came back tinaUy to good old Church-of-Euglandism, but full of love and tolerance. Southey, more prudent, and notoriously timid, startled at once by the horrors which the French committed iu the name of 408 COLERIDGE. liberty, saw that the way of worldly prosperity was closed for life to him who was not orthodox, and became at once orthodox. But the consciousness of that sudden change hung for ever upon him. He knew that reproach would always pursue the suspicious recon- version, and on that consciousness grew bitterness and intolerance. Coleridge, having wandered through all opinions himself, was afraid to condemn too harshly those who differed from him. He con- tented himself with loving God, and preaching the true principles of Christianity : — " He prayeth best who loveth best All things, both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us He made and loveth all." Southey, on the contrary, stalked into the fearful regions of bigotry, assumed in imagination the throne and thunderbolts of Deity, and " Dealt damnation round the land On all he deemed his foes." But this was the worst view of Southey's character. He had that lower class of virtues which Coleridge had not ; and out of his pru- dence and timidity sprung that worldly substance which Coleridge was never likely to acquire, and by which he kindly made up for some of Coleridge's deficiencies. Coleridge could not provide pro- perly for his family ; Southey helped to provide for them, and invited Coleridge's wife and daughter to his house, where for many years they had a home. In all domestic relations Southey was admirable ; he failed only in those which would have given him a name, perhaps, little short of Milton for glorious patriotism, had he proceeded to the end as he began. Of the literary life of Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth, who soon after joined them in the west, I have yet to speak. We must now fallow Coleridge. The circumstances which had brought Coleridge to Bristol, though they did not end in pantisocracy, ended in marriage, which for some years fixed him in that part of the country. Cottle, who, a poet of some merit himself, saw the great talent of these young men, offered Southey fifty guineas for his Joan of Arc, and became its publisher. He also offered Coleridge thirty guineas for a volume of poems, the cash to be advanced when he pleased from timo to time. On this slender foundation Coleridge began the world. He took a cottage at Clevedon, some miles from Bristol, and thither he took his bride. It appears truly to have been the poetic idea — love in a cottage, for there was love and little more. Cottle says it had walls, and doors, and windows ; but as for furniture, only such as became a philosopher. This was not enough even for poetic lovers. Two days after the wedding, the poet wrote to Cottle to send him the following unpoetical, but very essential articles : — " A riddle-slice ; a candle-box ; two ventilators ; two glasses for the wash-hand stand ; one tin dust-pan ; one small tin tea-kettle ; one pair of candlesticks ; one carpet brush ; one flour- dredge ; three tin extinguishers ; two mats ; a pair of slippers ; a cheese-toaster ; two large tin spooias ; a Bible ; a keg of porter ; COLERIDGE. 409 coffee, raisins, currants, catsup, nutmegs, allspice, rice, ginger, and mace." So Coleridge began the world. Cottle, having sent these articles, hastened after them to congratulate the young couple. This is his account of their residence. " The situation of the cottage was jJecu- liarly eligible. It was in the extremity, not in the centre of the village. It had the benefit of being but one story high ; and, as the rent was only five pounds per annum, and the taxes nought, Mr. Coleridge had the satisfaction of knowing that, by fairly mounting his Pegasus, he could make as many verses in a week as would pay his rent for a year. There was also a small garden, with several pretty flowers, and the ' tallest tree-rose ' did not fail to be pointed out, which ' peeped at the chamber window,' and has been honoured with some beautiful hnes." The cottage is there yet in its garden ; but Coleridge did not long inhabit it. He soon found that even Clevedon was too far out of the world for books and intellect ; and returning to Bristol, took lodgings on Redclifi-hill. From this abode he soon again departed, being in- vited by his friend, Mr. Thomas Poole, of Nether Stowey, to visit him there. During this visit, he wrote some of his first volume of poems, includmg the Religious Musings ; he then returned to Bristol, and started the idea of his Watchman, and made that journey through the principal manufacturing towns, to obtain subscribers for it, which he so amusingly describes in his Biographia Literaria. This was a failure ; but about this time, Charles Lloyd, the eldest son of Charles Lloyd, the banker, of Birmingham, whom Byron has commemorated in the alliterative line of " Lovell, Lamb, and Lloyd," was smitten with admiration of Coleridge's genius, and offered to come and reside with him. He, therefore, took a larger house on Kingsdown, where Lloyd was his inmate. Mr. Poole, of Stowey, however, was not easy to be without the society of Coleridge ; he sent him word that there was a nice cottage there at liberty, of only seven pounds per annum rent, and pressed him to come and fix there. Thither Coleridge went, Lloyd also agreeing to accompany them. Unfortunately, Lloyd had the germs of insanity as well as poetry in him. He was subject to fits, which agitated and alarmed Coleridge. They eventually disagreed, and Lloyd left, but was afterwards recon- ciled, well perceiving that his morbid nervousness had had much to do with the difference. This place became for two years Coleridge's home. Here he wrote some of his most beautiful poetry. " The manhood of Coleridge's true poetical life," has been observed by a cotemporary, " was in the year 1797." He was yet only twenty-five years of age, but his poetical faculty had now acquired a wide grasp and a deep ])ower. Here he wrote his Tragedy of Remorse, Christabel, the L)ark Ladie, the Ancient Mariner (which was published in the Lyrical Ballads jointly with Wordsworth's first poems), his Ode on the Departing Year, and his Fears in Solitude. Those works are at once imbued with the 410 COLERIDGE highest spirit of his poetry, and the noblest sentiments of humanity. Here he was visited by Charles Lamb, Charles Lloyd, Southey, Hazlitt, De Quincey (who had previously presented him generously with 300/.), the two great potters, the Wedgwoods, and other eminent men. Wordsworth lived near him at Allfoxden, and was in almost daily intercourse with him. The foot of Quantock was to Coleridge, says one of his biographers, a memorable spot. Here his studies were serious and deep. They were directed not only to poetry, but into the great bulk of theological philosophy. Here, with his friend Thomas Poole, a man sympathising in all his tastes, and with Words- worth, he roamed over the Quantock hills, drinking in at every step new knowledge and impressions of nature. In his Biographia Lite- raria, he says, " My walks were almost daily on the top of Quantock, and amongst its slo23ing coombs." He had got an idea of writing a poem called The Brook, tracing a stream which he had found, from its source in the hills amongst the yellow-red moss and conical glass-shaped tufts of bent, to the first break, or fall, where its drops become audible, and it begins to form a channel ; thence to the peat and tm-f barn, itself built of the same dark masses as it sheltered ; to the sheepfold ; to the first cultivated spot of ground ; to the lonely cottage, and its bleak garden won from the heath ; to the hamlets, the market towns, the manufactories, and the sea-jiort. It will be seen that this was not quite on so fine a scale as Childe Harold, and that Wordsworth has carried out the idea in the Sonnets on the river Duddon, not quite so amply as the original idea itself. He says, when strolling alone he was always with book, paper, and pencil in hand, making studies from nature, whence his striking and accurate transcripts of such things. It will be noticed in the article on Wordsworth, that these rambles, in the ignorant minds of the country people, converted him and Coleridge into suspicious charac- ters. Coleridge was so open and simple, that they said, " As to Coleridge, he is a whirlbrain, that talks whatever comes uppermost ; but that Wordsworth ! he is a dark traitor. You never liear him say a syllable on the subject ! " Coleridge himself, in his Biographia Literaria, tells us, that a cer- tain baronet in the neighbourhood got Government to send down a spy to watch them. That this spy was a very honest fellow, for a wonder. That he heard them, he said, at first, talking a deal of Spy Nosey (Spinoza), and thought they were up to him, as his nose was none of the smallest ; but he soon found that it was all about books. Coleridge also gives the amusing dialogue between the inn- keeper and the baronet, the innkeejaer having been ordered to enter- tain the spy, but, like the spy, soon found that the strange gentlemen were only poets, and going to put Quantock into verse. Many are the testimonies of attachment to this neighbourhood and the wild Quantock hills, to be found in the poems of Coleridge ; and in the third book of the Excursion, Wordsworth describes the Quantock and their rambles with all the gusto of a fond memory. In Coleridge's poem of Fears in Solitude, a noble-hearted poem, COLERIDQE. 411 these hills, and one of these very dells, are described with gi-aphic truth and aflfection. " A green and silent spot amid the hills, A small and silent dell ! O'er stiller place No singing skylark ever poised himself; The hills are heathy, save that swelling slope, Which hath a gay and gorgeous covering on, All golden with the never bloomless furze Which now blooms most profusely; but the dell, Bathed by the mist, is fresh and delicate As vernal corn field, or the unripe flax. When through its half-transparent stalks at eve, The level sunshine glimmers with green light. Oh ! 'tis a quiet, spirit-healing nook ! Which all, methinks, would love : but chiefly he, The humble man. who, in his youthful years, Knew just so much of folly as had made His early manhood more securely wise ! Here he might lie on fern or withered heath, While from the singing lark, that sings unseen The minstrelsy that solitude loves best. And from the sun, and from the breezy air, Sweet influences trembled o'er his frame; And he with many feelings, many thoughts. Made up a meditative joy, and found Religious meanings in the forms of nature ! And so his senses gradually wrapt In a half sleep, he dreams of better worlds. And dreaming hears thee still, O singing lark, That singest like an angel in the clouds." Here, buried in summer beauty from the world, in this green and delicious oratory, he lay and poured out those finely human thoughts on war and patriotism, which enrich this poem ; which closes with a descriptive view of these hills, the wide prospects from them, and of little quiet Stowey lying at their feet. " But now the gentle dew-fall sends abroad The fruit-like perfume of the golden furze; The light has left tlie summit of the hill ; Though still a sunny gleam lies beautiful Aslant the ivied beacon. Now farewell. Farewell, awhile, O soft and silent spot ! On the green sheep-track, up the heathy hill. Homeward I wind my way ; and lo! recalled From bodings that have well-nigh wearied me, I find myself upon the brow, and pause Startled ! And after lonely sojoiirning In such a quiet and surrounded nook. This burst of prospect, — here the shadowy main, Dim-tinted, there the mighty majesty Of that huge amphitheatre of rich And elmy fields, seems like society Conversing witli the mind, and giving it A livelier impulse and a dance of thought ! And now, beloved Stowey ! I behold Thy church-tower, and, methinks, the four huge elms Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend; And close behind them, hidden from my view. Is my own lowly cottage, where my babe, And my babe's mother, dwell in peace ! With light And quickened footsteps thitherward I tend. Remembering thee, O green and silent deil I And grateful that, by nature's quietness And solitary musings, all my heart Is softened, and marie worthy to ind\ilge Love, and the thoughts that yearn fur liumankind." 412 COLERIDGE. Stowey, like all other places where remarkable men have lived, even but a few years ago, impresses us with a melancholy sense of" rapid change, of the swift flight of human life. There is the little town, there ascend beyond it the green slopes and airy range of the Quantock hills, scattered with masses of woodland, which give a feeling of deep solitude. But where is the poet, who used here to live, and there to wander and think 1 Where is his friend Poole ? All are gone, and village and country are again resigned to the use of simple and little-informed people, who take poets for spies and dark traitors. The httle town is vastly hke a continental one. It consists of one street, which at an old market cross diverges into two others, exactly forming an old-fashioned letter Y. The houses are, like continental ones, white, and down the street rolls a little full stream, quite in the fashion of a foreign village, with broad flags laid across to get at the houses. It stands in a particularly agree- able, rich, and weU-wooded country, with the range of the Quantock hills, at some half mile distance, and from them a fine view of the sea and the "Welsh coast, on the other side of the Bristol channel. The house in which Thomas Poole used to hve, and where Coleridge and his friend had a second home, is about the centre of the village. It is a large old-fashioned house, with pleasant garden, and ample farm-yard, with paddocks behind. I found it inhabited by a medical man and his sister, who did aU honour to the memory of Coleridge, and very courteously allowed me to see the house. The lady obHgingly took me round the garden, and pointed out to me the windows of the room overlooking it, where so many remarkable men used to assemble. Mr. Poole, who was a bachelor, and a magistrate, died a few years ago, leaving behind him the character of an upright man, and a genuine friend to the poor. On his monument in the church is inscribed, that he was the friend of Coleridge and Southey. The cottage inhabited by Coleridge is the last on the left hand going out towards Allfoxden. It is now, according to the very com- mon and odd fate of poets' cottages, a Tom and Jerry shop. Moore's native abode is a whisky shop ; Burns's native cottage is a httle public-house : Shelley's house at Great Marlowe is a beer shop ; it is said that a public-house has been built on the spot where Scott was born, since I was in that city ; Coleridge's house here is a beer shop. Its rent was about 71. a-year, and it could not be expected to be very superb. It stands close to the road, and has nothing now to distinguish it from any other ordinary pot-house. Where Coleridge sate penning the Ode to the Nightingale, with its " Jug, jug, jug, And that low note more sweet than all; " which the printer, by a very natural association, but to the poet's infinite consternation, converted into "Jug, jug, jug. And that low note more sweet than ale ; " sate, when I entered, a number of country fellows, and thought their ale more sweet than any poet's or nightingale's low notes. Behind COLERIDGE. 413 the house, however, there were traces of the past pleasantness, two good large gardens, and the old orchard where Coleridge sate on the apple-tree, "crooked earthward;" and while Charles Lamb and his sister went to ascend the hills and gaze on the sea, himself detained by an accident, wrote his beautiful lines, " This Lime-tree Bower, my prison," including this magnificent picture : — " Yes, they wander on In gladness all : tut thee, methinks, most glad, My gentle-hearted Charles ! for thou hast pined And hungered after nature, many a year; In the great city pent, winning thy way, With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain, And strange calamity ! Ah ! slowly sink Behind the western ridge, thou glorious sun ! Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb, Ye purple heath flowers I richlier beam, ye clouds ! Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves ! And kindle, thou blue ocean ! So my friend. Struck with deep joy, may stand as I have stood, Silent with swimming sense : yea, gazing round On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem Less gross than bodily ; and of such hues As veil the Almighty Spirit when yet he makes Spirits perceive his presence." The woman in the house, — her husband was out in the fields, — and her sister, had neither of them heard of such a thing as a poet. When I asked leave to see the house and garden, on account of a gentleman who had once lived there, " Yes," said the landlady, quite a young woman, " a gentleman called one day, some time ago, and said he wished to drink a glass of ale in this house, because a gi-eat man had hved in it." " A great man, did he say ? Why, he was a poet." " A poet. Sir, what is that 1 " " Don't you know what a poet is ? " " No, Sir." " But you know what a ballad-singer is ? " " Oh yes ; to be sure." " Well, a poet makes ballads and songs, and things of that kind." " Oh, lauks-o' me ! why, the gentleman said it was a great man." " Well, he was just what I teU you — a poet — a ballad maker, and all that. Nothing more, I assure you." " Good lauk-a-me ! how could the gentleman say it was a great man ! Is it the same man you mean, think you ? " " Oh ! no doubt of it. But let me see your garden." The sister went to show it mc. There were, as I have said, two gardens, lying high above the house, so that you could see over part of the town, and, in the other direction, tlie upland slopes and hills. Behind the garden was still the orchard, in which Coleridge had so often mused. Returning towards the house, the remains of a fine bay-tree caught my attention, amid the ruins of the garden near the house, now defaced with weeds, and scattered with old tubs and empty beer barrels. " That," said I, " was once a fine bay-tree." " Ay, that was here when we came. ' 414 COLERIDGE. " No doubt of it. That poet planted it, as sure as it is there. That is just one of those people's tricks. Wherever they go they are always planting that tree." " Good Lord, do they ? what odd men they must be ! " said the young woman. Such is the intelligence of the common people in the west, and in many other parts of England. Is it any wonder that the parents of these people took Coleridge for a spy, and Wordsworth for a dark traitor 1 But these young women were very civil, if not very enlightened. As I returned through the house, the young landlady, evidently desirous to enter into further discourse, came smiling up, and said, "It's very pleasant to see i-elations addicting to the old place." Not knowing exactly what she meant, but supposing that she imagined I had come to see the house because the poet was a relation of mine, I said, " Very ; but I was no relation of the poet's." " No ! and yet you come to see the house ; and perhaps you have come a good way ? " " Yes ; from London." " From London ! what, on purpose 1 " " Yes, entirely on purpose." Here the amazement of herself, her sister, and the men drinking, grew astoundingly. " Ah ! " I added, " he was a great man — a very great man — he was a particular friend of Mr. Poole's." " Oh, indeed ! " said they. " Ay, he must have been a gentleman, then, for Mr. Poole was a very great man, and a justice." Having elevated the character of Coleridge from that of a poet into the friend of a justice of the peace, I considered that I had vindicated his memory, and took my leave. In September, 1798, Coleridge quitted Stowey and England, in company with Wordsworth, for a tour in Germany. His two wealthy friends, Thomas and Josiah Wedgwood, the great Stafford- shire potters, had settled on him 150/. a-year for life, which, with other slight means, enabled him to undertake this journey, with Wordsworth and his sister. The Wedgwoods were Unitarians, and now looked on Coleridge as the great champion of the cause, for he preached at Taunton and other places in the chapels of that denomi- nation ; and in his journey on account of the Watchman had done so in most of the large manufacturing towns, entering the pulpit in a blue coat and white waistcoat, that not a rag of the woman of Babylon might be seen on him. These are his own words, in his Biographia Literaria. Thomas Wedgwood either died long before Coleridge, and so the annuity died with him, or he might have with- drawn his moiety when Coleridge ceased to fulfil his religious hopes : it did, however, cease ; but the 751. from Josiah. Wedgwood was paid punctually to the day of his death. From this journey to Germany we may date a great change in the tone of Coleridge's mind. He became more metaphysical, and a thorough Kantist. From this period, there can be no doubt, on looking over his poems, that bis poetry suffered from the effects of COLERIDGE. 415 his philosophy. But to this journey we owe also the able translation of Wallenstein, which was then a new production, the original being published ouly on the eve of Coleridge's return to England, Septeni ber, 1799, and the translation appearing in 1800. In Coleridge's own account of his tour, the description of the ascent of the Brocken is one of the most living and graphic possible. Having gone over the ground myself, the whole scene, and feeling of the scene, has never since been revived by anything which I have read in any degree hke the account of Coleridge. In that, too, is to be found the same story of their rude treatment at an inn in Hesse, which is given in the article on Wordsworth. On Coleridge's return to England, he settled in London for a time, and brought out his translation of WaUenstein, which was purchased by the Messrs. Longman, on the condition that the Enghsh version, and Schiller's play in German, should be published simultaneously. Coleridge now engaged to execute the literary and political depart- ment of the Morning Post, to which Southey, Wordsworth, and Lamb were also contributors. In this situation he was accused by Mr. Fox, under the broad appellation of the Morning Post, but with allusion to his articles, of having broken up the peace of Amiens, and renewing the war. It was a war, said Fox, produced by the ]\Iorning Post. Coleridge's strictures on Buonaparte occasioned that tyrant to select him for one of the objects of his vengeance, and to issue an order for his arrest when in Italy. Coleridge, on quitting the Morn- ing Post, went to reside near his friends Southey and Wordsworth. He was much at the houses of each. In 1801, he regularly took a house at Keswick, thinking, like his two great friends, to reside there permanently. The house, if not built for him, was expressly finished for him by a then neighbour, Mr. Jackson ; but it was soon found that the neighbourhood of the lakes was too damp for his rheumatic habit. In 1803, his health was so much worse that it was considered necessary for him to seek a warmer climate ; and he accepted an invitation from his friei^d Mr., since Sir John Stoddart, to visit him at Malta, which he accepted. Here he acted for some time as public secretary of the island. In 1805 he returned, not much benefited by his sojourn. He came back through Italy, and at Rome saw Allston, the American painter, and Tieck, the German poet. It was on this occasion that he was warned of the order of Buonaparte to arrest him ; and hastening to Leghorn with a passport furnished him by the Pope, was carried out to sea by an American captain. At sea, however, they were chased by a French vessel, which so alarmed the American that he compelled Coleridge to throw all his papers overboard, by which all the fruits of his literary labours in Eomc were lost. On his return to England he again went to the lakes, but this time was more with Wordsworth than with Southey. Wordsworth was at this time living at Grasmere, and we have a humorous account of Coleridge, in his " Stanzas in my pocket copy of Thom- son's Castle of Indolence," as "the noticeable man with large grey eyes." In another place Wordsworth has, in one line descriptive of 416 COLERIDGE. him there, given us one of the most beautiful portraitures of a poet dreamer, — • ^ ,. . , , " The brooding poet with the heavenly eyes." At Grasmere he planned The Friend, Wordsworth and some other of his friends furnishing a few contributions. From this period till 1816, he appears to have been fluctuating between the Lakes, London, and the west of England. In 1807 we find him at Bristol ; and then at Stowey again, at Mr. Poole's. It was at this time that De Quincey sought an interview with him. He went to Stowey, did not meet with Coleridge, but stayed two days with Mr. Poole, and describes him and his house thus : " A plain-dressed man, in a inistic old-fashioned house, amply furnished with modern luxuries, and a good library. Mr. Poole had travelled extensively, and had so entirely dedicated himself to his humbler fellow-countrymen who resided in his neighbourhood, that for many miles round he was the general ai'biter of their disputes, the guide and counsellor of their daily life ; besides being appointed executor and guardian to his children by every third man who died in or about the town of Nether Stowey." De Quincey followed Coleridge to Bridgewater, and found him thus : " In Bridgewater I noticed a gateway, standing under which •was a man, corresponding to the description given me of Coleridge, whom I shall presently describe. In height he seemed to be five feet eight inches ; in reality he was about an inch and a half taller, though, in the latter part of life, from a lateral curvature in the spine, he shortened gradually from two to three inches. His person was broad and full, and tended even to corpulence ; his complexion was fair, though not what painters technically style fair, because it was associated with black hair ; his eyes were large and soft in their expression ; and it was by a peculiar appearance of haze or dimness which mixed with their light, that I recognised my object. This was Coleridge. I examined him steadily for a moment or more, and it struck me that he neither saw myself, nor any other object in the street. He was in a deep reverie ; for I had dismounted, made two or three trifling arrangements at the inn-door, and advanced close tc him, before he seemed apparently conscious of my presence. The sound of my voice announcing my name first awoke him. He stared, and for a moment seemed at a loss to understand my purpose, or his own situation ; for he repeated rapidly a number of words which had no relation to either of us. There was no mciuvaise honte in his manner, but simple perplexity, and an apparent difficulty in re^ covering his position among daylight realities. This little scene over, he received me with a kindness of manner so marked that it might be caUed gracious." Mr. De Quincey then tells us that Coleridge was at this moment domesticated with a most amiable and enlightened family, descend- ants of Chubb, the philosophic writer; and that, walking out in the evening with Coleridge, in the streets of Bridgewater, he never saw a man so much interrupted by the courteous attentions of young and old. COLERIDGE. 4l7 In 1809 we find him again at the Lakes ; in 1810 he left them again with Mr. Basil Montague, and remained some time at his house. In 1811 he was visiting at Hammersmith with Mr. Morgan, a common friend of himself and Southey, whose acquaintance they had made at Bristol ; and here he dehvered a course of lectures on Shakspeare and Itlilton. While still residing with Mr. Morgan, his Tragedy of Remorse was brought upon the stage at Drury-lane, at the instance of Lord Byron, then one of the managing committee, with admirable success. After this he retired to the village of Calne, in Wiltshire, with his friend Morgan, partly to be near Lisle Bowles ; where he arranged and puhhshed his Sibylline Leaves, and wrote the greater part of the Biogi'aphia Literaria. He also dedicated to Mr. Morgan the Zapolya, which was oflfered to Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, for Drury-lane, and declined. The effect of this refusal Colei'idge has noticed in some lines at the end of the Biographia Literaria, quoted from this very play : — " O we are querulous creatures ! Little less Than all things can suffice to make us happy ; Thouj;h little more than nothing is enough To make us wretched." In 1816 he took refuge under the roof of Mr. Gillman, the surgeon, in the Grove, at Highgate. The motive for his going to reside with this gentleman was, that he might exercise a salu- tai'y restraint upon him as it regarded the taking of opium. His rheumatic pains had first led him to adopt the use of this insidious drug ; and it had, as usual, in time, acquired so much power over him as to render his life miserable. He became the victim of its worst terrors, and so much its slave, that all his resolutions and Ijrecautions to break the habit, he regularly himself defeated. At one time a friend of his hired a man to attend him everywhere, and to sternly refuse all his solicitations for, or attempts to get opium • but this man he cheated at his pleasure. He would send the man on some trifling errand, while on their walks, turn into a druo-f^ist's shop, and secure a good stock of the article. Mr. Gillman, wlicThad only himself and wife in his family, was recommended to him as the proper man to exercise a constant, steady, but kindly autliurity over him in this res])ect. Coleridge, at the first interview, was so much delighted with the prospect of this house, that he was impatient to get there, and came very characteristically with Christabel in his hand, to send to his host. With the Gillmans Coleridge continued till his death ; and his abode here is too well known to need much mention of it. Here he held a species of soiree, at which numlicrs of persons were in the habit of attending to listen to his extra- ordinary conversations, or rather monologues. Those who lieard him on these occasions used to declare that you could form no adequate idea of the intellect of the man till you had also heard him. Yet, by some strange neglect, or some wish of his own, these extra- ordinary harangues were never taken down ; which, if they merited the praises conferred on them, is a loss to the world, as well as to his full fame. 418 COLERIDGE. Coleridge died on the 25th of July, 1834, being about three months short of sixty-two years of age. He lies buried in Highgate. The house which Mr. Gillman occupied is now occupied by hif successor, Mr. Brendon. There is nothing remarkable about the house except its view. Coleridge's room looked upon a delicious prospect of wood and meadow, with a gay garden full of colour, under the window. When a friend of his first saw him there, he said he thought he had taken his dwelling-jjlace like an abbot. There he cultivated his flowers, and had a set of birds for his pen- sioners, who came to breakfast with him. He might be seen taking his daily stroll up and down near Highgate, with his black coat and white locks, and a book in his hand : and was a great acquaint- ance of the little children. He loved, says the same authority, to read great folios, and to make old voyages with Purchas and ]\Iarco Polo ; the seas being in good visionary condition, and the vessel well stocked with botargoes. In England there has been of late years a decided tendency to underrate his poetry, and we have even seen his claim to the character of a poet all but denied. There has been an industrious endeavour to trace almost every fine idea, and fine composition bearing his name, to some borrowed source, EngUsh or foreign. But while the " Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni," and similar poems remain, though Wordsworth always asserted that Coleridge " never was at Chamouni, nor near it," the character of Coleridge will still continue that of one of the noblest poets of any country. Though his philosophy is but little thought of in this country, it is highly estimated in America; some of his works are class-books in the Universities, and his " Aids to Eeflection " has, perhaps, more than any other production, formed the minds of the studious young men of the United States. Such is the enthusiasm for the memory of Coleridge in the States, that numbers of Americans visit his last residence at Highgate, and one of them offered a large price for the very doors of his room, that he might set them up in his own house across the Atlantic. FELICIA HEMANS. If the lives of our poets had been written with the same attention to the placing of their abodes as clearly before you as that of Mrs. Hemans has been, both by Mr. Chorley and by her own sister, it might have saved me some thousand of miles of travel to visit and see them for myself. Felicia Dorothea Browne, the future poetess, bearing the familiar name of Mrs. Hemans, was born in Duke-street, Liverpool, on the 25th of September, 1793. The house is still pointed out to strangers, but has nothing besides this event to give it a distinction from other town houses. Her father was a considerable merchant, a native of Ireland. There seems to have been a particular connexion with the state of Venice, for her mother was descended from an old Italian family. Her father was the Imperial and Tuscan Consul at Liverpool. The old name of i\Irs. Hemans's maternal ancestry is said to have been Veniero, but had got corrupted to the German name of Wagner. Mrs. Hemans was the fifth of seven children, one of whom died in infancy. Before she was seven years old, her father, having suflered losses in trade, retired from business, and settled at Gwrych, near Abergele, in Denbighshire, close to the sea, in a large, old, solitary mansion, shut in by a range of rocky mountains. Here the family resided nine years, so that the greater and more sensitive part of her girlhood was passed here. She was sixteen when they removed K E 2 420 MRS. HEMANS. Here, then, the intense love of nature and of poetry, which dis- tinguished her, grew and took its full possession of her. How strong this attachment to the beauty and fresh liberty of nature had become by her eleventh year, was shown by the restraint which she felt in passing a winter in London, at that age, with her father and mother ; and her intense longing to be back. Her rambles on the shore, and amongst the hiUs ; her wide range through that old house, with a good library, and the companionship of her brothers and sister-s, were all deeply calculated to call forth the spirit of poetry in any heart in which it lay. Her elder sister died ; and she turned for companionship to her younger sister, since her biographer, and her younger brother, Claude Scott Browne, who also died young. Her two elder brothers, who with her younger sister only remain, became officers in the army ; and this added a strong martial tendency to the spirit of her genius. Her mother, who was a very noble-minded and accomplished woman, bestowed great care on her education, and her access to books filled her mind with all the food that the young and poetical heart craves for. The Bible and Shakspeare were her two great books ; and the traces of their influence are conspicuous enough in the genuine piety and the lofty imagery of her wi-iting. She used to read Shakspeare amongst the branches of an old apple tree. In this secret retreat, and in the nut wood, the old arbour and its swing, the post-office tree — a hoUow tree, where the family put letters for each other, — the pool where they launched their little ships, used to be referred to by her as belonging to a perfect elysium of childhood. She was fond of dwelling on " the strange creeping awe with which the solitude and stillness of Gwrych inspired her." It had the reputation of being haunted — another spur to the imagi- native facidty. There was a tradition of a fairy greyhound, which kept watch at the end of the avenue, and she used to sally forth by moonlight to get a sight of it. The sea-shore was, however, her favourite resort ; and one of her biographers states that it was a favourite freak of hers, when quite a child, to get up of a summer night, when the servants fancied her safe in bed, and making her way to the water side, indulge in a stolen bathe. The sound of the ocean, and the melancholy sights of wreck and ruin which follow a storm, are said to have made an indelible impression upon her mind, and gave their colouring and imagery — " A sound and a gleam of the moaning sea," to many of her lyrics. In short, a situation cannot be imagined more certain to call forth and foster aU the elements of poetry than this of the girlhood of Mrs. Hemaus. To the forms of nature, wild, lonely, and awful, the people, with their traditions, their music, and then- interesting characteristics, added a crowning speU. The young poetess was rapidly t-priuging in this dehghtful wilderness into the woman. She is described by her sister, at fifteen, as " in the fuU glow of that radiant beauty which was destined to fade bo early. The mantling bloom of her cheeks was shaded by a profusion of natural ringlets, of a rich, golden brown ; and the ever-varying MKS. HEMANS, 421 expression of her brilliant ejes gave a changeful play to her counte- nance, which would have made it impossible for any painter to do justice to it." According to all accounts, at this period she was one of the raost lovely and fascinating creatures imaginable ; she was at once beau- tiful, warm-hearted, and enthusiastic. Her days had been spent in wandering through mountain and glen, and along the sea-shore, with her brothers and sister, or in brooding over the pages of Froissart and Shakspeare. Her mind was full of visions of romance, her heart of thrilling sensibilities ; and at this moment the feeling of martial glory came to add a new enthusiasm to her character. Her two elder brothers were in the army, and one was fighting in Spain. There were many poetic and chivalrous associations with this country, which now were felt by her with double force, and which turned all her heart and imagination in this direction. In this critical hour, a young officer who was visiting in the neighbourhood was introduced to the family, and her fate was decided. It was Captain Hemans. The hero of the horn*, he became completely so, when he also set sail for Spain. It was natural for so enthusiastic and poetic a damsel to contemplate him as a warrior doing battle for the deliverance of that land of Gothic and of Moorish romance, in the most delusive colouring. When he returned, it was to become her husband in an iU-fated marriage. In the mean time, in 1809, and when she was about seventeen, her family quitted Gwrych, so long her happy home. Since then the greater part of the house has been pulled down, and a baronial- looking castle has arisen in its stead, the seat of Mr. Lloyd Bamford Hesketh. Bronwylfa, near St. Asaph, in Fhntshire, became the residence of her family. Here she lived for about three years, or till 1812, when Captain Hemans returned, and they were married. For a short time she lived with her husband at Daventry, when they returned to Bronwylfa, where they lived till 1818, or about six years, the whole period of their married life that they lived together. From that time till the death of I\Irs. Hemans, seventeen years more, they lived apart — she in Wales, England, and Ireland, he in Italy. At the time of Captain Hemans's first acquaintance with her, or in 1808, she was already an avowed poetess, having not only written much verse, but having already published a volume. While they lived together, though called upon to care for a rapidly-increasing family, — for at the time of Captain Hemans's departure for Italy he was the father of five boys, — she still pursued her studies, and wrote and pidilished her poems. In 1812 ajipeared Domestic Affections and other Poems ; and soon after. Tales and Historic Scenes. After her husband's departure she continued her writing with undaunted fortitude. In 1819 she contended for the prize for a poem on Sir William Wallace, and bore it away Irom a host of competitors. In 1820 she jiublished The Sceptic : and the following year she won another prize from the Royal Society of Literature, for the best poem on Dartmoor. From this time Mrs. Hemans may be said to 422 MRS. HEMANS. be fairly before the public ; and her fame, from year to year, con- tinued steadily to advance. There is something admirable in the manner in which Mrs. Hemans, as a deserted wife, her father also now being dead, and at such a distance from the literary world, marched on her way, and at every step won some fresh ground of honour. During this period she made a firm and fatherly friend of Dr. Luxmore, the bishop of St. Asaph, and, at his house, became acquainted with Eeginald Heber. Her sister returning from a visit to Germany, where one of her brothers then was, brought with her a store of German books, and a great enthusiasm about German literature. This opened up to her a new field of intellectual life, and produced a decided effect on her poetic tone and style. From the hour of Mrs. Hemans's acquaintance with the German literature, you perceive that she had discovered her o^n forte, and a new life of tenderness and feeling was manifest in all she wrote. She became an almost constant writer in Blackwood's and Colburn's Magazines. Schiller, Goethe, Korner, and Tieck, — how sensibly is the influence of their spirit felt in The Forest Sanctuary ; how different was the tone of this to all which had gone before ! The cold classical model was abandoned, the heart and the fancy spoke out in every line, warm, free, solemn, and tenderly thoughtful. She dared the stage, in The Vespers of Palermo ; and though the tragedy was cruelly used in London, she bore up bravely against the unkindness, and was afterwards rewarded by a reception of it in Edinburgh, as cordially rapturous, and which brought her the friendship of Sir Walter Scott. In 1825 Mrs. Hemans made another remove, though but a short one. The house in which she lived at Bronwylfa had been purchased by her elder brother, who came to live in it; and she, with her mother, sister, and her children, removed about a quarter of a mile, to Rhyllon, yet in full view of the old house. This house at Rhyllon is described as being a tall, staring, brick building, almost destitute of trees, of creepers on the walls, or of .shrubbery ; while Bronwylfa, on the contrary, was a perfect bower of roses, peeping, says her sister, like a bird's nest out of the foliage in which it was embosomed. " In spite, however," continues the same sisterly bio- grapher, " of the unromantic exterior of her new abode, the earlier part of Mrs. Hemans's residence at Rhyllon may, perhaps, be con- sidered as the happiest of her life ; as far, at least, as the term hap- piness could ever be fitly applied to any period of it later than childhood. The house, with all its ugliness, was large and con- venient ; the view from the windows beautiful and extensive ; and its situation, on a fine green slope, terminating in a pretty woodland dingle, peculiarly healthy and cheerful. Nevei", perhaps, had she more thorough enjoyment of her boys than in witnessing and often joining in their sports, in those pleasant, breezy fields, where the kites soared so triumphantly, and the hoops trundled so merrily, and where the cowslips grew as cowslips never grew before. An atmo- sphere of home soon gathered round the dwelling ; roses were planted, and honeysuckles trained ; and the rustling of the solitary MRS. HEMANS. 423 poplar near the window was taken to her heart, like the voice of a friend. The dingle became a favourite haunt, where she would pass many dream-hke hours of enjoyment with her books, and her own sweet fancies, and her children playing around her. Every tree, and flower, and tuft of moss that sprung amidst its green recesses, was invested with some individual charm by that rich imagination, so skilled in — " Clothing the palpahle and the familiar With golden exhalations of the dawn." Here, on what the boys would call "mamma's sofa," — a little grassy mound under her favourite beech-tree, — she first read The Talisman, and has described the scene with a loving minuteness, in her Hour of Romance : — " There were thick leaves above me and around, And low sweet sighs, like those of childhood's sleep, Amid their dimness, and a fitful sound. As of soft showers on water. Dark and deep Lay the oak shadows o'er the turf, so still. They seemed but pictured glooms ; a hidden rill Made music — such as haunts us in a dream — Under the fern-tufts ; and a tender gleam Of soft green liglit, as by the glow-worm shed. Came pouring through the woven beech-boughs down." Many years after, in the sonnet. To a distant Scene, she addresses, with a fond yearning, this well-remembered haimt : — " still are the cowslips from thy bosom sjmnging, O far off grassy dell 1 " How many precious memories has she hung round the thought of the cowslip, that flower with its " gold coat " and " fairy favours," which is, of all others, so associated with the " voice of happy child- hood," and was, to her, ever redolent of the hours when her " Heart so leapt to that sweet laughter's tune ! " Another favourite resort was the picturesque old bridge over the Clwyd ; and when her health admitted of more aspiring achieve- ments, she delighted in roaming to the hills ; and the announcement of a walk to Cwm, a remote little hamlet, nestled iu a mountain hollow amidst very lovely sylvan scenery, about two miles from Rhyllon, would be joyously echoed by her elated companions, to whom the recollection of those happy rambles must always be un- speakably dear. Very often, at the outset of these expeditions, the party would be reinforced by the addition of a certain little Kitty Jones, a child from a neighbouring cottage, who had taken an especial fancy to Mrs. Hemans, and was continually watching her movements. This little creature never saw her without at once attacliiug itself to her side, and confidingly placing its tiny hand in hers. So great was her love for children, and her repugnance to hurt the feelings of any living creature, that she never would shake off this singular appendage, but let little Kitty I'ejoice iu her " pride of place," till the walk became too long for her capacity, and she would quietly faU. back of her own accord. Those who only know the neighbourhood of St. Asaph from 424 MRS. HEMANS. travelling along its highways, can be little aware how much delight- ful scenery is attainable within walks of two or three miles' distance from Mrs. Hemans's residence. The placid beauty of the Clwyd, and the wilder graces of its sister stream, the Elwy, particularly in the vicinity of " Our Lady's Well," and the interesting rocks and caves at Cefu, are little known to general tourists ; though, by the lovers of her poetry, it will be remembered how sweetly she has apostrophized the " Fount of the chapel, with ages grey ; " and how tenderly, amidst far dilferent scenes, her thoughts reverted to the " Cambrian river, witli slow music gliding By pastoral hills, old woods, and ruined towers." This is a peep into the daily life of the poetess, which is worth a whole volume of ordinary biography. We see her here amid the lonely roagnificence of nature ; yet, at the same time, surrounded by those affectionate ties that make the only real society on earth. The affectionate mother, the beloved brother and sister, the buoyant hearts and voices of her own children. We see that there and then she was and must be happy. We see how wise was that instinctive love that drew the poetic heart from the flattering and worshipping things of the city, to dwell apart with God, with nature, and with family affection. What has all the society of ordinary city and literary life to equal that ? The throng of drawing-rooms, where people stand and look at each other, and remain strangers as much as if they were sundered by half the globe ! Nay, it is not half a globe, it is a whole world of fast-succeeding engagements ; dissipa- tions that beget indifference ; flittings of the eye from face to face, and of the ear from gossip to gossip, where neither eye nor ear e%-er finds any power or wish for rest, but the heart yawns in insufferable weariness, if decorum keep the mouth shut. It is this dreary world which is thrust between man and man, and kills at once time and enjoyment. What has such a life, with all its petty scandals, and bitterness, and foul criticisms, and rankling jealousies, to compare with the breezy mountain, and the blue sky soaring high above ; with the grey ruin, and the rushing river ; with the dell and its whispering leaves, soothing down the mind to a peaceful conscious- ness, in which thoughts of eternity steal into it, and come forth again to the eternal page 1 It is a deep consolation to know that the teachers and refiners of men do sometimes enjoy a life thus heavenly, and repose at once on the gracious bosom of nature, and on those of long-tried and beloved friends. Such was, for a time, the life of Mrs. Hemans here. For a time the elements of happiness seemed daily to augment them- selves. Her younger brother, a man of a most genial nature, and his amiable wife, came from service in Canada, and settled down among them. The circle of affinity and social pleasure seemed com- plete ; but time rapidly causes a change upon the completest combmations of earth. In rapid succession death and sorrow fell MRS. HEMANS. 425 on the house of her elder brother ; her mother sickened and died ; her younger brother was called to an appointment in Ireland, and her sister was married, and was withdrawn to a distance. The fatal inroad was made into the circle of happiness ; and from that time Mrs. Hemans began to contemplate quitting the scene of so many years' sojourn. She made a visit to Liverpool, which ended in her concluding to quit Wales, and settle there, for more congenial society and the education of her children. One of her last pleasures in Wales was the enjoyment of the society of IVliss Jewsbury, after- wards Mrs. Fletcher, who passed part of the summer and autumn of 1828 in the neighbourhood of St. Asaph. For about thirty years she had resided in Wales — the bulk of her life ; for she was lout about six years of age when her family went to reside there ; and she survived her departure from it only the same number of years. The whole of her existence, therefore, excepting that twelve years, was spent in her favourite Wales. For the short remainder of her life she seemed rather a wanderer in the earth than a settled resident. She was at Liverpool, at the Lakes, in Scotland, in Ireland ; and there, finally, seldom long in one place. Her choice of Liverpool seemed to be determined by the con- sideration of education already mentioned, and by the desire to be near two families to which she was much attached — those of Mrs. Lawrence, of Wavertree-hall, and the Chorleys, of Liverpool. She took a house in the village of Wavertree, a little apart from the road. It must have been a dreary change from the fine, wild, congenial scenery of North Wales, to the flat, countryless neighbourhood of Liverpool. Nothing, surely, but the sense of maternal duty could have made such a change endurable to a mind like Mrs. Hemans's. This residence has been described by the author of Pen and Ink Sketches, who, though some of his relations have been much called in question, seems, in this instance, to have stated the simple facts. " The house," he says, " was one of a row, or terrace, as it was called, situated on the high-road, from which it was separated only by the footway, and a little flower-garden, surrounded by a white-thorn hedge. I noticed that all the other houses on either side of it were unadorned with flowers ; they had either grass lawns or a plain gravel surface ; some of them even grew cabbages and French beans — hers alone had flowers. " I was shown into a very small apartment, but everything about it indicated that it was the home of genius and taste. Over the mantelpiece hung a fine engraving of William Roscoe, author of the Lives of the De Medici, with a presentation line or two in his own handwriting. The walls were decorated with prints and pictures, and on the mantel-shelf were some models in terra cotta, of Italian groups. On the table lay casts, and medallions, and a portfolio of choice prints and water-colour drawings." The writer was first received by Miss Jewsbury, who happened to be there, and whom he truly describes as one of the most frank and open-hearted creatures possible. He then adds : — " It was not long before the poetess entered the room. She held 426 MRS. HEMANS. out her hand and welcomed me in the kindest manner, and then sat down opposite to me, first introducing Miss Jewsbury. I cannot well conceive a more exquisitely beautiful creature than IVLrs. Hemans was ; none of the portraits or busts I have ever seen do her justice, nor is it possible for words to convey to the reader any idea of the matchless, yet serene beauty of her expression. Her glossy waving hair was parted on her forehead, and terminated on the sides in rich and luxuriant auburn curls. There was a dove-hke look in her eyes, and yet a chastened sadness in their expression. Her complexion was remarkably clear, and her high forehead looked as pure and spotless as Parian marble. A calm repose, not unmiugled with melancholy, was the characteristic expression of the face ; but when she smiled, all traces of sorrow were lost, and she seemed to be but ' a little lower than the angels,' — fitting shrine for so pure a mind ! " The writer says that he, some time after, paid a second visit to Wavertree. " Some time I stood before the well-remembered house. The little flower-garden was no more, but rank grass and weeds sprung up luxuriantly ; the windows were many of them broken ; the entrance-gate was off its hinges ; the vine in front of the house trailed along the ground, and a board, with ' This house to Let ' upon it, was nailed on the door. I entered the deserted garden, and looked into the little parlour — once so full of taste and elegance ; it was gloomy and cheerless ; the paper was spotted with damp, and spiders had built their webs in the corners. Involuntarily I turned away ; and dm-iug my homeward walk mused ui^on the probable home and enjoyment of the two gifted creatures I had formerly seen there. Both were now beyond the stars ; and as I mused on the uncertainty of human life, I exclaimed, with the eloquent Burke, — * What shadows we are, and what shadows, alas, do we pursue ! ' " Spite of the warm and congenial friends Mrs. Hemans had at Liverpool, she soon found that it was not the location for her. She had lost all that her mind and heart had been accustomed to sustain themselves upon in a beautiful country ; her hopes of educational advantages were not realized, and she was subjected to all the annoy- ing interraptions which celebrity has to endure from idle curiosity, without any of its attendant advantages. To fly the evils and regain some of her old pleasures, she in 1829 made a journey into Scotland, to visit her friends Mr. Hamilton and his lady, at Chiefswood, near Abbotsford. This, of course, brought her into immediate contact with Sir Walter Scott. She was invited to Abbotsford, and the great minstrel showed her over his estate, and through the classic beauty of all that border-land which must from her early years have been regions of deepest romance to a mind like hers. The particulars of this visit, so cheering and delightful to her whole nature, are to be found in the biography written by her sister. She was, of course, received in Edinburgh with the cordial hospitahty characteristic of that capital, and which was sure to be shown with double extent, in consequence of her great fame, and the pleasui'e which every one had derived from her productions. Dui'ing this visit she was introduced, amongst other distinguished people, to Mrs. MRS. HEMANS. 427 Grant, of Laggan ; Lord Jeffrey ; Captain Basil Hall ; Mr. Alison ; Kirkpatrick Sharpe ; Baron Hume ; Sir Robert Listen, and the old literary veteran, Henry Mackenzie. The advantage and the happiness of this visit to the north, deter- mined her the next summer to pay a visit to the Lakes. Here she took up her abode for a fortnight with Wordsworth, at Rydal IMount, and there so charmed was she with the country, and so much did her health need the quiet refreshment of rural retirement, that she took for the remainder of the summer a small cottage overlooking Windermere, called Dove's Nest. But quiet as the spot appeared, secluded as it is, it was a great mistake to suppose that a woman of any reputation could escape the inroads of the Tourist Vandals so near Ambleside, and Lowood. " The soothing and healthful repose which had been so thoroughly and thankfully appreciated," says her sister, " was, alas ! not destined to be of long continuance." Subse- quent letters speak of the irruption of pai-ties hunting for lions in Dove's Nest ; of a renewal of " the Album persecution ; " of an absolute mail storm of letters and papers, threatening "to boil over the drawer to which they were consigned ; " tiU at last the despairing conclusion is come to that " one might as well hope for peace in the character of a shadowless man as of a literary woman." The inundation was irresistible and overwhelming ; in August she fled in desperation, and again made a journey into Scotland. Mrs. Hemans had three of her boys with her at Dove's Nest, and they enjoyed the place to perfection. It was just the place for boys to be turned loose in ; and with fishing, sketching, and climbing the hill above the Nest, they were in elysium. Her own health, however, was so far undermined now, that she complains in her letters that she cannot follow them as she would, though she is more a child in heart than any of them. Her own description of the Dove's Nest is this : — *' The house was originally meant for a small villa, though it has long passed into the hands of farmers ; and there is in conse- quence an air of neglect about the little demesne, which does not at all approach desolation, and yet gives it something of attractive interest. You see everywhere traces of love and care beginning to be effaced ; rose trees spread into wildness ; laurels darkening the windows with too luxuriant branches ; and I cannot help saying to myself, ' Perhaps some heart like my own in its feelings and suffer- ing, has here sought refuge and repose.' The groimd is laid out in rather an antiquated style, which, now that nature is beginning to reclaim it from art, I do not at all dislike. There is a little grassy terrace immediately under the window, descending to a small court with a circular grass plat, on which grows one tall white rose-tree. You cannot imagine how I delight in that fair, solitary, neglected- looking tree. I am writing to you from an old-fashioned alcove in the little garden, round which the sweet-briar and moss-rose trees have completely run wild ; and I look down from it upon lovely Windermere, which seems at this moment even like another sky, so tndy is our summer cloud and tint of azavc pict\ired in its transpa- rent mirror." 428 MRS. HEMANS. This cottage is, in fact, a very simple affair. It is let by the people, farmers, who live in one end of it, and who have now built another house near it with farm buildings. It stands perhaps at half the elevation of Professor Wilson's house at Elleray, and not at such a distance from Windermere, and nearer to Lowood inn than to Ambleside. A considerable wild wood ascends above it to the top of the rocky hills, and it seems indeed to have had a place cut out of the front of the wood for it. You can ascend from Lowood by a steep, straight carriage road, all bordered with laurels luxuri- antly grown, and overshadowed by forest trees ; or you may, if coming from Ambleside, ascend a foot-path, which is by far the most charming way. Yes, a very charming way it is — a wild wood walk, reminding you of many of those in Germany. It is naiTow, and overhung with hazels, at the time of my visit fuU of nuts in abundant and large clusters. Here water is running by the wayside, clear, and in fleet abundance. The wood opens its stiU solitudes, ever and anon ; and far above you the rocks are seen lifting themselves into the heavens in a grey silence. This wood walk goes on and on, bordered with wild flowers, and odorous with the scent of meadow- sweet, till you arrive in about half a mile at the cottage. This consists of but four rooms in front ; two little sitting-rooms, and two bed-rooms over them. It is a little white battlemented aflair, with a glass door. The woman of the house pointed out to me the chamber window, that on the right hand as you face the housej at which Mrs. Hemans, she said, used to write ; and which commands a fine view of the lake and its encircling hills. The woman is a character. She was very violent against steam, railroads, and all sorts of new-fangled things. She wondered what Parliament was about that they did not stop the steam. " What are your Sir Eobert Peels, your Grahams, and your Stanleys good for, if they cannot stop the steam ? " She would make them sit, if she could have her way, till they did some good, for they had done none yet. She almost preferred O'Connell to them, for he did get master of the queen ! " You seem to be a gi'eat radical," I said. "Nay, nay ! " she replied ; " I'm naw radical. I stick fast to the Church, but I am a great Politic ! And what will all those navvies do when the railways are all made 1 What is to become of the poor boatmen when there are nothing but steamers ? " "Well, but has not Mr. Wordsworth written against the railroads ? " " Ay, he may write ; but there's more nor Mister Wordsworth now-a-days. People are got too clever now ; and if he writes there's twenty ready to write against him." All the time that the woman was getting on in this style, she had a sort of smile on her face as if she was merely talking for talking's sake ; and, as she proceeded, she led the way to show me the garden, which is a very pleasant little retirement, looking down the hill, and towards Lowood upon the lake, and far across to its distant shores and mountains. We then passed into a second garden, at the top of which is the alcove mentioned by Mrs. Hemans. It is in the wall, MRS. HEMANS. 429 arched above, and white-waslied within, and with seats set round, and a most luxuriant Ayrshire rose climbing and mantling it about, high and thick. Here, said the woman, Mrs. Hemans sate in the fine weather generally to write. At the lower end of the garden stood the tall white rose-tree which Mrs. Hemans so much admired. From this the landlady plucked a flower, and begged me to send it to my wife ; as well as a number of moss-roses growing about, which she said Mrs. Hemans admired, but not so much as this white rose. The strange woman, unpohshed, but evidently full of strong inde- pendent feeUng, and keen spirit of observation, was also as evidently possessed of tender feehngs too. She declared it often made her melancholy to see that rose-tree and that alcove. " Ah, poor thing ! " said she, " it was a pity she did not open her situation sooner ; but she did not open her heart enough to her rich relations, who were very fond of her. It was anxiety. Sir ; it was anxiety, you may depend on it. To maintain five boys, and edicate 'em with one pen, it was too much, you are sure. Ay, I have thought a deal more of her since, than I did at the time ; and so many ladies come here, and wish she had but opened her situation sooner, for when Government did something for her, it was too late ! " " Did she seem quite well here 1 " " Oh, yes ; she seemed pretty well, and she had three of her children with her, and well-behaved, nice children they were. Charles, they tell me, is turned Cathohc, and Henry is gone abroad, and Claude is dead. Who could have believed it, when they were all so merry here ! Poor thing ! if she /lad but made known her situation — it was wearing her away. Mr. Graves, who was the tutor to the boys, and is now rector of Bowness, came here with the boys, when she went to Dublin, and she was to come back, and be with me by the year ; and then the boys could have been still with Mr. Graves, for he got the living just then. He always comes to tell me when he hears anything about them — and her husband is dead too, I hear." Such was the woman's information, and there may be more truth in it than we would hke to believe. There can be no doubt that Mrs. Hemans taxed all her strength and power to maintain her family. It is not to be believed but that her brothers and sister, v/ho were well off, did all she would allow them to do ; but we know the honourable pride of a truly noble mind. — not to be burdensome when it can itself do its own work. How sensitive and shrinking it is ! That J\Ii's. Hemans, in her praiseworthy en- deavour to furnish the means of her boys' education, did overtax herself, and was obliged to write more than either her inchnation or her true fame prompted, we have the evidence of herself in one of her very last letters to her friend Mrs. Lawrence. " You know into how rugged a channel the poor little stream of my life has been forced, and through what rocks it has wrought its way ; and it is now longing for repose in some still valley. It has ever been one of my regrets that the constant necessity of pro- 430 MRS. HEIIANS. vidiiif^ sums of money to meet the exigencies of the boys' education has obliged me to waste my mind in what I consider mere desultory eflfusious : — t> • i^ PourinK myself away, As a wild liirrt, amidst the foliage, tunes That which within him thrills, and beats, and burns, Into a fleeting lay. My wish ever was to concentrate all my mental energy in the? production of some more noble and complete woi'k, something of pure and holy excellence which might permanently take its place as the work of a British poetess. I have always hitherto written as if in the breaking times of storms and billows. Perhaps it may not even yet be too late to accomplish what I wish, though I sometimes feel my health so deeply penetrated that I cannot imagine how I am ever to be raised up again. But a greater freedom from these cares, of which I have been obliged to bear up under the whole reaponsi- biliti/, may do much to restore me ; and though my spirits are greatly subdued by long sickness, I feel the powers of my mind in full maturity." This is a plain enough confession ; and it is the old melancholy story, of genius fighting for the world, and borne down by the world, which should be its friend. Once more, and for the ten thousandth time, under such circumstances, we must exclaim with Shakspeare — " O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown ! " We have here the bright, warm-hearted, fascinating girl of Bron- wylfa, full of all the romance of life and the glorious visions of poetry, now sinking the martyr of the heart betrayed in its tenderest trust, doomed to labour like Pegasus -in the peasant's cart and harness, perishing of exhaustion, and feeling that the unequal contest of life had yet left undeveloped the full affluence of the spirit. I could not avoid gazing again on the empty alcove, — the beautiful prospect, and the wildly-growing white rose, and feeling the full contagion of their and the good woman's melancholy. But at once, out broke the strange creature with a different look and tone — " And we have now got another writer-lady down at Ambleside." "A poet ?" " Nay, nothing of the sort ; another guess sort of person, I can tell you." "Why, who is that?" " Who is that 1 Why, Miss Martineau they call her. They tell me she wrote up the Reform Bill for Lord Brougham ; and that she's come from the Lambtons here ; and that she's writing now about the taxes. Can she stop the steam, eh ? can she, think you ? Nay, nay, I warrant, big and strong as she is. Ha ! ha ! good lauk ! as I met her the other day walking along the muddy road below here — ' Is it a woman, or a man, or what sort of an animal is it ? ' said I to myself. There she came, stride, stride, — great heavy shoes, — stout leather leggins on, — and a knapsack on her back ! Ha ! ha ! that's a political comicalisf, they say. What's that 1 Do they mean HBS. BEMANS. 431 that she can stop steam ? But I said to my husband — goodness ! but that ^l■mld have been a wife for you. Why, she'd ha' ploughed ! and they say she mows her own grass, and digs her own cabbage and potatoes ! Ha ! ha ! well, we see some queer 'ims here. "Words- worth should write a poem on her. What was Peter Bell to a political comicalist ? " The good woman laughed outrageously at the images she had raised in her own mind, and infected by her mirth, as I had been by her melancholy, I bade her good bye. Her husband, a quiet man, sate all this time, and spite of all our talk, never for one moment looked up from his newspaper, nor uttered a syllable. Possibly he might be deaf; otherwise he was as impassive as an old Indian. The warnings of failing health which often operate insensibly on the mind, seemed now to draw Mrs. Hemaus towards the society of her younger brother and his amiable wife, who were then settled in Ireland, and wei-e living at the Hermitage near Kilkenny, where Colonel Browne was acting as a stipendiary magistrate. Here she joined them, and from this point visited Woodstock near Thomas- town, the residence of Mrs. Tighe, and where she is buried. At these places we must not linger. Her brother removed to Dublin, as Commissioner of Police, and she went there also. It was in 1831 that she took up her abode in Dublin. She first resided in Upper Pembroke-street ; then removed to 36, Stephen's-green, and finally to 20, Dawson-street, still within a hundred yards or so of Stephen's-green. It is needless to say that in Dublin Mrs. Hemans received all the respect that was due to her genius and virtues ; but her health was so delicate, as to oblige her to live as quietly as possible. Her boys were now a good deal off her bauds, or, rather, did not require her immediate attention. And she was enabled, the first autumn of her abode in Dublin, to make an excursion to the mountains of Wick- low. Dawson-street was well situated for quietness and airiness. Stephen's-green is one of the largest squares in the world, far larger than any London one. While she resided in it, she had a set of back rooms, the noise of Upper Pembroke-street having been too much for her. The College grounds, of great extent, are at the bottom of Dawson-street, this spacious green at its top. And near are Merrion-square, and the gardens of what was once the palace of the Duke of Leinster ; so that no part of Dublin could ofter more openness. Her lodgings in Dawson-street consisted of the apart- ments over the shop of the proprietor, Mr. Jolliffe, a very respectable tailor. These could, London fashion, be thrown into one drawing- room, but were generally used as two rooms ; and in the back room she nearly always sate and wrote. In 1833, her sister and brother-in-law arrived in Dublin, and Mrs. Hemans and they met after a five years' separation. The ravages of sickness," says her sister, " on her worn and faded form were painfully apparent to those who had not seen her for so long ; yet her spirits rallied to all theii wonted cheerfulness, and the powers of 432 MRS. HEMANS. her mind seemed more vivid and vigorous than ever. With all her ovfu. cordial kindliness, she busied herself in forming vai'ious plans for the interest and amusement of her visitors ; and many happy hours of delightful converse, and old home communion, were passed by her and her sister in her two favourite resorts, the lawn of the once stately mansion of the Duke of Leinster, now occupied by the Dublin Society, and the spacious gardens of Stephen's-green." In the gardens of the Dublin Society Mrs. Hemans took that cold which, seizing on an ah'eady enfeebled frame, terminated fatally. She had one day taken a book with her, and was so much absorbed by it, that she was thoroughly chilled by the autumnal fog ; and, feeling a shudder pass through her frame, she hastened home, already filled with a strong presentiment that her hours were numbered. In her illness, by which she was gradually wasted to a skeleton, she enjoyed all the consolations which affection can bestow. Her sister attended her assiduously, tiU she was called away by the serious illness of her husband. Her place was then tenderly sup- plied by her sister-in-law, the lady of Colonel Browne ; and her son Charles was with her the whole time ; George, now a prosperous engineer, for some days ; and Henry, then a schoolboy at Shrews- bury, likewise, during the Christmas holidays. For a time she was removed to Eedesdale, a seat of the Archbishop of Dublin, about seven miles from the city ; but she returned and died in Dawson- street, on the 16th of May, 1835. During her last illness she wrote some of the finest poetry that she ever produced, especially that most soul-full effusion, Despondency and Aspiration ; and the Sab- bath Sonnet ; which she dedicated to her brother, less than three weeks before her death, the last of her lays. Her remains were interred in a vault beneath St. Ann's church, but a short distance from her house, on the same side of the street ; where, on the wall under the gallery, on the right hand as you enter, you observe a tablet, bearing this inscription : " In the vault beneath are deposited the Mortal Eemains of Felicia Hemans, who died May 16, 1835. ^ , ^^ , , .. ^ . ■' ' " Calm on the bosom of thy God. Fair spirit, rest thee now ; Even while with us thy footsteps trod, His seal was on thy brow. Dust to its narrow house beneath, Soul to its place on hifrh ! They that have seen thy look in death No more will fear to die." The same vault, as nearly as possible three years afterwards, received the remains of her faithful and very superior servant, Anna Creer, a native of the Isle of Man, who had lived with her seven years, and, after her death, married Mr. JoUifte, the master of the house. The worthy man was much affected in speaking of the cir- cumstance, and bore also the highest testimony to the character of Mrs. Hemans, saying, " It was impossible for any one to know her without loving her." To such a tribute, what can be added ? The perfection of human character is to excite at once admiration and lasting affection. L. E. L, There is not much to be said about the homes and haunts of Mrs. Maclean, or, as I shall call her in this article, by her poetical cognomen, L. E. L. She was a creature of town and social life. The bulk of her existence was spent in Hans-place, Sloane-street, Chelsea. Like Charles Lamb, she was so moulded to London habits and tastes, that that was the world to her. The country was not to her what it is to those who have passed a happy youth there, and learned to sympathise with its spirit, and enjoy its calm. In one respect she was right. Those who look for society alone in the country, are not likely to be much pleased with the change from London, where every species of intelligence concentrates, — where the rust of intel- lectual sloth is pretty briskly rubbed oflf, and old prejudices, whicli often lie like fogs in low still nooks of the country, are blown away by the lively winds of discussion. Though descended from a country family, and spending some time, as a child, in the country, she was not there long enough to cultivate those associations with places and things which cling to the heart in after-life. Her mind, naturally quick, and all her tastes, were developed in the city. City Ufe was part and parcel of her being ; and as she was one of the most bril liant and attractive of its children, we must be thankful to take her as she was. It robs us of nothing but of certain attributes of tho picturesque in the account of her abodes. Her ancestors, it seems, from Mr. Blanchard's memoir of her, were, about the commencement of the eighteenth centiuy, settled at Crednall, in Herefordshire, where they enjoyed some landed pro- perty. A Sir William Landon was a successful participator in the F p 434 L. E. L. South Sea Bubble, but afterwards contrived to lose the whole patri- monial estates. A descendant of Sir William was the great grand- father of L. E. L. He was rector of Nursted and listed, in Kent, and a zealous antagonist of all Dissent. His son was rector of Ted- stone Delamere, near Bromyard, Herefordshire. At his death, the property of the family being exhausted, his children, eight in number, were left to make their way through the world as they could. Miss Landon's father, John Landon, was the eldest of these children. He went to sea, and made two voyages, one to the coast of Africa, and one to Jamaica. His friend and patron. Admiral Bowyer, dying, his cai'eer in the naval service was stopped. In the meantime, the next of his brothers, Whittington Landon, had acquired promotion in the Church, and eventually became Dean of Exeter. By his influence the father of the poetess was established as a partner in the prosperoas house of Adair, army agents in Pall Mall. On this he married Catharine Jane Bishop, a lady of Welsh extraction, and settled at No. 25, in Hans-place. Here Miss Landon was born on the 14th of August, 1802. Besides her, the only other surviving child was a brother, the present Rev. Whittington Henry Landon. In her sixth year she was sent to school to Miss Eowden, at No. 22, Hans-place, the house in which she was destined to pass the greater part of her life. This lady, herself a poetess, afterwards became Countess St. Quentin, and died near Paris. In this school Miss Mitford was educated, and here Lady Caroline Lamb was for a time an inmate. At this period, however, Miss Landon was here only a few months. She had occasionally been taken into the country to a farm in which her father was deeply interested, called Coventry Farm, in Hertfordshire. She now went with her family to reside at Trevor Park, East Barnet, where her education was conducted by her cousin. Miss Landon. She was now about seven years old, and here the family continued to live about six years. Here she read a great deal of romance and poetry, and began to show the operation of her fancy, by relating long stories to her parents, and indulging in long meditative walks in the lime-walk in the garden. Her brother was her companion, and, spite of her nascent authorship, they seem to have played, and romped, and enjoyed themselves as children should do. They read Plutarch, and had a great ambition of being Spartans. An anecdote is related of their taking vengeance on the gardener for some affront, by shooting at him with arrows with nails stuck in them for piles, and of his tossing them upon a quickset hedge for punishment, — most jDrobably one of the old-fashioned square-cut ones, where they would be rather prisoners than sufferers. This man, whose name was Chambers, Miss Landon taught to read ; and he afterwards saved money, and retired to keep an inn at Barnet. Now she read the Arabian Nights, Scott's Metrical Romances, and Robinson Crusoe, besides a book called Silvester Trampe. This last professed to be a narrative of travels in Africa, and seems especially to have fascinated her imagination. No doubt that the united effects of this book, of other African travels, and of the fact of her father and one of her cousins having made voyages to that continent, L. E. L. 435 had no little influence in deciding the fatal step of marrying to go out to Cape Coast. To the happy days spent at Trevor Park, and the reading of books hke these, always a period of elysium to a child. Miss Landon makes many references, both in her poems and her prose sketches, called Traits and Trials of Early Life. Some lines addressed to her brother commemorate these imaginative pleasures very graphically : — " It was an August eveniiifr. with sunset in the trees, When home you brought his vo5-ages, who found the fair South Sejis. For weeks he was our idol, we saifed with him at sea. And the pond, amid the willows, our ocean seemed to be; The water-lilies growing beneath the morning smile. We called the South Sea Islands, each flower a different isie. Within that lovely garden what happy hours went by. While we fancied that around us spread a foreign sea and sky." From this place the family removed to Lower-place, Fulham, where they continued about a year, and then removed again to Old Brompton. Miss Landon now gave continually-increasing signs of a propensity to poetry. Mr. Jerdan, the editor of the Literary Gazette, was a neighbom* of her father's, and from time to time her compositions were shown to him, who at once saw and acknowledged their great promise. It does not appear very clear whether JSIiss Landon continued at home during this period — that is, from the time the family came to live here, when she was about fourteen, till the death of her father, when she was about twenty — but it is probable that she was for part of this time at the school. No. 22, Hans-place, which was now in the hands of the Misses Lance, as she says of herself, — " I have hved all my Hfe since childhood with the same people. The Misses Lance," &c. However, it was at about the age of eighteen that her contributions appeared in the Literary Gazette, which excited universal attention. These had been pre- ceded by a little volume now forgotten. The Fate of Adelaide, a Swiss romantic tale ; and was speedily followed by the Improvi- satrice. It was during the writing of this her first volume of successful poetry that her father died, leaving the family in narrow circumstances. The history of her life from this time is chiefly the history of her work.g. The Improvisatrice was published in 1824; the Troubadour in 1825 ; the Golden Violet in 1826 ; the Venetian Bracelet, 1829. In 1830 she produced her first prose work, Romance and Reality. In 1831 she commenced the editorship of Fisher's Drawing-room Scrap Book, which she continued yearly till the time of her mar- riage — eight successive volumes. In ] 835 she published Francesca Carrara ; the Vow of the Peacock, 1835 ; Traits and Trials of Early Life, 1836 ; and in the same year, Ethel Churchill. Besides these works, she wrote largely in the annuals and periodicals, and edited various volumes of illustrated works for the publishers. None of the laborious tribe of authors ever toiled more inces- santly or more cheerfully than !Miss Landon — none with a more devotedly generous spirit. She had the proud satisfaction of con- tributing to the support of her family, and to the end of her hfe F F 2 436 L. E. L. this great object was uppermost in her mind. On her marriage, she proposed to herself to go on writing still, with the prospect of being thus enabled to devote the whole of her literary profits to the com- fort of her mother and the promotion of the fortunes of her brother. In all social and domestic relations no one was ever more amiable or more beloved. With occasional visits to different parts of the kingdom, and once to Paris, Aliss Landon continued living in Hans-place till 1837. The Misses Lance had given up the school, I believe, about 1830, but she continued still to reside there with Mrs. Sheldon, their successor. In 1837 Mrs. Sheldon quitted Hans-place, for 28, Upper Berkeley- street West, whither Miss Landon accompanied her. Here she resided only a few months, when, at the request of some much attached friends, she took up her abode with them in Hyde Park- street. On the 7th of June, 1838, she was married to Mr. Maclean, Governor of Cape Coast Castle, and almost immediately left this country, never to return. Of the abode where the greater part of Miss Landon's life was spent, and where almost every one of her works was written, the reader will naturally wish to have some description. The following particulars are given by Laman Blanchard, as from the pen of a female friend. " Genius," says our accomplished informant, " hallows every place where it pours forth its inspirations. Yet how strongly contrasted, sometimes, is the outward reality around the poet with the visions of his inward being. Is it not D'Israeli, in his Curiosities of Literature, referring to this frequent incongruity, who mentions, among other facts, that Moore composed his LaUa Rookh in a large barn ? L. E. L. remarks on this subject, 'A history of the Jwio and where works of imagination have been produced, would often be more extraordinary than the works themselves.' Her own case was, in some degree, an illustration of independence of mind over all external circumstances. Perhaps to the L. E. L. of whom so many nonsensical things were said — as 'that she should write with a crystal pen, dipped in dew, upon silver paper, and use for pounce the dust of a butterfly's wing ;' a dilettante of hterature would assign, for the scene of her authorship, a fairy-like boudoir, with rose- coloured and silver hangings, fitted with all the luxuries of a fastidious taste. How did the reality agree with this fairy sketch 1 Miss Landon's drawing-room, indeed, was prettily furnished, but it was her invariable habit to wi'ite in her bed-room. I see it now, that homely-looking, almost uncomfortable room, fronting the street, and barely furnished ; with a simple white bed, at the foot of which was a small, old, oblong-shaped sort of dressing-table, quite covered with a common, worn writing-desk, heaped with papers, while some strewed the ground, the table being too small for aught beside the desk ; a high-backed cane chair, which gave you any idea rather than that of comfort. A few books scattered about completed the author's paraphernalia." Certainly one would have imagined a girl's school in London just the last place that a poet would have fixed upon to live and work in. L. E. L. 437 But as London was the city of cities to Miss Landon, so, no doubt, Hans-place, from early associations, was to her the place of places ; and, when she was shut in her little bedroom, was just as poetical as any other place in the world. I recollect there was a Httle garden behind the house, which, if I remember right, you saw into through a glass door from the hall. At all events, a person full of poetic admiration once calling upon her, saw a young girl skipping very actively in this court or garden, and was no little astonished to see the servant go up to her, and announce the caller, whereupon she left her skipping, and turned out to be no other than Miss Landon herself. Of her person, Mr. Blanchard gives this description : — " Nobody who might happen to see her for the first time, enjoying the little quiet dance, of which she was fond, or the snug comer of the room where the httle lively discussion, which she hked still better, was going on, could possibly have traced in her one feature of the senti- mentahst which popular error reported her to be. The listener might only hear her running on from subject to subject, and lighting up each with a wit never ill-natured, and often brilhant ; scattering quotations as thick as hail, opinions as wild as the winds ; defying fair argument to keep pace with her, and fairly talking herself out of breath. He would most probably hear from her lips many a pointed and sparkling aphorism, the wittiest things of the night, let who might be around her, — he would be surprised, pleased ; but his heroine of song, as painted by anticipation, he would be unable to discover. He would see her looking younger than she really was ; and perhaps, struck by her animated air, her expressive face, her slight but elegant figure, his impression would at once find utterance in the exclamation which escaped from the lips of the Ettrick Shep- herd on being presented to her, whose romantic fancies had often charmed him in the wild mountains, ' Hey ! but I did not think ye'd bin sae bonnie ! ' " Without attempting an elaborate description of the person of L. E. L., we cite this expression of surprise as some indication that she was far prettier than report allowed her to be, at the period we are speaking of. Her easy carriage and careless movements would seem to imply an insensibility to the feminine passion for dress; yet she had a proper sense of it, and never disdained the foreign aid of ornament, always provided it was simple, quiet, and becoming. Her hair was dai'kly brown, very soft and beautiful, and always tastefully arranged ; her figure, as before remarked, slight, but well- formed and gracefid ; her feet small, but her hands especially so, and fault- lessly white, and finely shaped ; her fingers were fairy fingers ; her ears also were observably little. Her face, though not regular in any feature, became beautiful by expression ; every flash of thought, every change and colour of feehng, hghtened over it as she spoke, when she spoke earnestly. The forehead was not high, but broad and full ; the eyes had no overpowering brilliancy, but their clear intellectual hght penetrated by its exquisite softness ; her mouth was not less marked by character ; antl, besides the glorious faculty 438 L. E. L. of uttering the pearls and diamonds of fancy and wit, knew how to express scorn, or anger, or pride, as well as it knew how to smile winningly, or to pour forth those short, quick, ringing laughs, which, not even excepting her bon-mots and aphorisms, were the most delightful things that issued from it." This may be considered a very fair portrait of Miss Landon. Yoiu' first impressions of her were, — what a little, light, simple, merry-looking girl. If you had not been aware of her being a popular poetess, you would have suspected her of being nothing more than an agreeable, bright, and joyous young lady. This impres- sion in her own house, or amongst a few congenial people, was quickly followed by a feeling of the kind-heartedness and goodness about her. You felt that you could not be long with her without loving her. There was a fi-ankness and a generosity in her nature that won extremely upon you. On the other hand, in mixed companies, witty and conversant as she was, you had a feeling that she was playing an assumed part. Her manner and conversation were not only the very reverse of the tone and sentiment of her poems, but she seemed to say things for the sake of astonishing you with the very contrast. You felt not only no confidence in the truth of what she was asserting, but a strong assurance that it was said merely for the sake of saying what her hearers would least expect to hear her say. I recollect once meeting her in company, at a time when there was a strong report that she was actually though secretly married. Mrs. Hofland, on her entering the room, went up to her in her plain, straightfor- ward way, and said, " Ah ! my dear, what must I call you % — Miss Landon, or who ? " After a well-feigned surprise at the question, Miss Landon began to talk in a tone of merry ridicule of this report, and ended by declaring that, as to love or marriage, they were things that she never thought of. " What, then, have you been doing with yourself this last month ?" " Oh, I have been puzzling my brain to invent a new sleeve ; pray how do you hke it ? " showing her arm. " You never think of such a thing as love ! " exclaimed a young sentimental man, " you, who have written so many volumes of poetry upon it ? " " Oh ! that's all professional, you know ; " exclaimed she, with an air of merry scorn. " Professional ! " exclaimed a grave Quaker, who stood near — " Why, dost thou make a difference between what is professional and what is real ? Dost thou w:rite one thing and think another ? Does not that look very much like hypocrisy ? " To this the astonished poetess made no reply, but by a look of genuine amazement. It was a mode of putting the matter to which she had evidently never been accustomed. And, in fact, there can be no question that much of her writing was professional. She had to win a golden harvest for the comfort of others as dear to her as herself ; and she felt, like all authors who have to cater for the public, that she must provide, not so much what she would of her free-will choice, but what they expected from L. B. li. 439 her. Still, working for profit, and for the age, the peculiar idiosyn- crasy of her mind showed itself through all. Before we advance to the last melancholy home of L. E. L., let us take a review of her literary career ; rapid, yet sufficiently full to point out some parti- culars in her writings, which I think too pecuhar not to interest strongly the reader. The subject of L. E. L.'s first volume was love ; a subject which, we might have supposed, in one so young, would have been clothed in all the gay and radiant colours of hope and happiness ; but, on the contrary, it was exhibited as the most fatal and melancholy of human passions. With the strange, wayward delight of the young heart, ere it has known actual sorrow, she seemed to riot aiact to revel amid death and woe ; laying prostrate life, hope, and affection. Of all the episodical tales introduced into the general design of the principal poem, not one but terminated fatally or sorrowfully ; the heroine herself was the fading victim of crossed and wasted afltections. The shorter poems which tilled up the volume, and which were mostly of extreme beauty, were still based on the wrecks and agonies of humanity. It might be imagined that this morbid indulgence of so strong an appetite for grief, was but the first dipping of the playful foot in the sunny shallows of that flood of mortal experience through which aU have to pass ; and but the dallying, yet desperate pleasure afforded by the mingled chill and glittering eddies of the waters, which might hereafter swallow up the passer through ; and the first real pang of actual pain would scare her youthful fancy into the bosom of those hopes and fascinations with which the young mind is commonlj^ only too much delighted to surround itself. But it is a singular fact, that, spite of her own really cheerful disposition, and spite of all the advice of her most influential friends, she persisted in this tone from the first to the last of her works, from that time to the time of her death. Her poems, though laid in scenes and times capable of any course of events, and though filled to overflowing with the splendours and high-toned sentiments of chivalry ; though enriched with all the colours and ornaments of a most fertile and sportive fancy, — were still but the heralds and delineations of melancholy, misfortune, and death. Let the reader turn to any, or all, of her poetical volumes, and say whether this be not so, with few, and in most of them, no exceptions. The very words of her first heroine might have Uterally been uttered as her own : — " Sad were my shades ; niethinks they had Almost a tone of prophecy — ■ I ever had, from earliest youth, A feeling what my fate would be." — The Improvisalrice, p. 3. This is one singular peculiarity of the poetry of L. E. L., and her poetry must be confessed to be peculiar. It was entirely her own. It had one prominent and fixed character, and that character belonged wholly to itself. The rhythm, the feeling, the style, and phraseology of L. E. L.'s poetry were such, that you could immediately recognise it, though the writer's name was not mentioned. Love was still the 440 L. E. L, great theme, and misfortune the great doctrine. It was not the less remarkable, that, in almost all other respects, she retained to the last the poetical tastes of her very earliest years. The heroes of chivalry and romance, feudal pageants, and Eastern splendour, delighted her imagination as much in the full growth, as in the budding of her genius. I should say, that it is the young and ardent who must always be the warmest admirers of the larger poems of L. E. L. They are filled with the faith and the fancies of the young. The very scenery and ornaments are of that rich and showy kind which belongs to the youthful taste ; — the white rose, the jasmine, the summer garniture of deep grass and glades of greenest foliage ; festal gardens with lamps and bowers ; gay cavaUers, and jewelled dames, and all that glitters in young eyes and love-haunted fancies. But amongst these, numbers of her smaller poems from the first dealt with subjects and sympathies of a more general kind, and gave glimpses of a nobility of sentiment, and a bold expression of her feeling of the unequal lot of humanity, of a far higher character. Such, in the Improvisatrice, are The Guerilla Chief, St. George's Hospital, The Deserter, Glades- mure, The Covenanters, The Female Convict, The Soldier's Grave, &c. Such are many that might be pointed out in every succeeding volume. But it was in her few last years that her heart and mind seemed every day to develop more strength, and to gather a wider range of humanity into their embrace. In the latter volumes of the Drawing-room Scrap Book, many of the best jsoems of which have been reprinted with the Zenana, nothing was more striking than the steady development of growing intellectual power, and of deep, generous, and truly philosophical sentiments, tone of thought, and serious experience. But when L. E. L. had fixed her character as a poet, and the public looked only for poetical productions from her, she suddenly came forth as a prose writer, and with still added proofs of intellectual vigour. Her prose stories have the leading characteristics of her poetry. Their theme is love, and their demonstration that aU love is fraught with destruction and desolation. But there are other qualities manifested in the tales. The prose page was for her a wider tablet, on which she could, with more freedom and ampler display, record her views of society. Of these, Francesca Carrara, and Ethel Churchill, are unquestionably the best works, the latter preeminently so. In these she has shown, under the characters of Guido and Walter Maynard, her admiration of genius, and her opinion of its fate ; under those of Francesca and Ethel Churchill, the adverse destiny of pure and high-souled woman. These volumes abound with proofs of a shrewd observation of society, with masterly sketches of character, and the most beautiful snatches of scenery. But what surprise and delight more than all, are the sound and true estimates of humanity, and the honest bold- ness with which her opinions are expressed. The clear perception of the fearful social condition of this country, and the fervent advocacy of the poor, scattered through these works, but especially the last L. E. L. 441 do honour to her woman's heart. These portions of L. E. L.'s writings require to be yet more truly appreciated. There is another characteristic of her prose writings which is peculiar. Never were the feelings and experiences of authorship so cordially and accurately described. She tells us freely all that she has learned. She puts words into the mouth of Walter Maynard, ol which all who have known anything of literary life must instantly acknowledge the correctness. The author's heart never was more completely laid open, with all its hopes, fears, fatigues, and enjoy- ments, its bitter and its glorious experiences. In the last hours of Walter Maynard, she makes him utter what must at that period have been daily more and more her own conviction. " I am far cleverer than I was. I have felt, have thought so much ! Talk of the mind exhausting itself ! — never ! Think of the mass of materials which every day accumulates ! Then experience, with its calm, clear light, coi-rects so many youthful fallacies ; every day we feel our higher moral responsibility, and our greater power." They are the convictions of " higher moral responsibiUties and greater power," which strike us so forcibly in the later writings of L. E. L. But what shall we say to the preparation of prussic-acid, and its preservation by Lady Marchmont ? What of the perpetual creed of L. E. L., that all affection brings woe and death ? Whether this melancholy belief in the tendency of the great theme of her writings, both in prose and poetry, — this irresistible annuncia- tion, like another Cassandra, of woe and desolation, — this evolution of scenes and characters in her last work, bearing such dark resem- blance 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 parts of an unsolved mystery. Whatever they are, they are more than strange, and are enough to make us superstitious ; for surely, if ever " Coming events cast their shadows before," they did so in the foreboding tone of this gifted spirit. The painful part of Miss Landon's history is, that almost from the first outbreak of her reputation, she became the mark of the most atrocious calumnies. How far any girlish thoughtlessness had given a shadow of ground on which the base things said of her might rest, is not for me, who only saw her occasionally, to say. But my own impressions, when I saw and conversed with her, were, that no guilty spirit could live in that bright, clear, and generous person, nor could look forth through those candid, playful, and transparent eyes. It was a presence which gave you the utmost confidence in the virtuous and innocent heart of the poetess, however much you might regret the circumstances which had diverted her mind from the cultivation of its very highest powers. In after years, and when I had not seen her for a long time, I'umours of a like kind, but with a show of foundation more startling, were spread far and wide. That 442 L. E. L. they were equally untrue in fact, we may reasonably infer from the circumstance, that they who knew her best still continued her fii'm and unflinching friends. Dr. and Mrs. Todd Thomson, Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, Mr. Blanchard, General Fagan and his family, and many othei's ; amongst them. Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley, Miss Jane Portei', Miss Strickland, Miss Costello, and Mrs. and Miss Sheldon, whose inmate she had been for so many years ; who began with pre- judice against her, and who soon became, and continued to the last, with the very best means of observation, her sincere fi'iends. These calumnies, however, must for years have been a source of anguish to her, haunting, but, happily, not disabhng her in the midst of her incessant exertions for the holiest of purposes. They put an end to one engagement of marriage : they very probably threw their weight into the decision which conducted her into the fatal one she ultimately formed. The circumstances connected with her marriage and death are too well known to require narrating here. Time has thrown no clear light on the mystery. Mr. Lamau Blanchard, in his memoir of her, has laboured hard to prove that she did not die by the poison of prussic-acid. His reasoning will not bear examination. That she died with a bottle in her hand, which contained it, he confesses is proved by other evidence than that of Mrs. Bailey, who first found her dead. But the question still remains, whether she took it purposely ; and it may be very strongly doubted that she did. From all that has transpired, it is more probable that she had taken it by mistake. That she was likely to take this poison purposely, there is no ground to imagine. On the contrary, to the very last, her letters to England were full of a cheerfulness that has all the air of thorough reality. It is true, there are many circumstances that we could wish otherwise : that her husband had, it is believed, u. family by a native Fantee woman ; that he insisted on the marriage with Miss Landou in England remaining a secret till just before sailing, as if fearful of the news preceding him home ; that he went on shore in the night, through the surf, and at great risk, as if to remove this woman from the spot, or to see that she was not on it ; that the last two letters written to her family in England were de- tained by her husband ; that the Mrs. Bailey, who attended on Mrs. Maclean, and was about to sail the next day with her husband for England, not only gave up these letters, but stayed there a year longer ; and that she turned out to be anything but truthful in her statements. Besides these, there are other facts which surprise us. We are told that Mrs. Maclean married under the impression that she was not to go out to Cape Coast at all : that on discovering it, it was stipulated that she was to stay only three years. Mr. ]\Iaclean knew tho. position L. E. L. had held here — that she had been occupied with writing, and not with cooking. He must have been sensible that a woman who had been, for the greater part of her life, the cherish sd and caressed favourite of the most intelligent society 'of London, could not make, for the man of her choice, a more entire L. E. L. 443 sacrifice than to go out to a distant barbarous coast and settlement, in which was no single Englishwoman, except the wife of a mis- sionary ; and we might, therefore, reasonably expect that he should make every arrangement possible for her comfort ; that he should not object to her taking an English maid ; that he should, at least, have pots and pans in his house, where his celebrated wife was to become housekeeper, and almost cook ; that he should not lie in bed all day, and leave her to entertain strange governors and their suites. There are these and other things, which we must always wish had been much otherwise ; but all these will not induce us to let go the belief to which we cling, that L. E. L., though she unquestionably died by her own hand, died so through accident, and not tlu'ough resolve or cause for it. The circumstances connected with this last home of the young poetess are strange enough in themselves, independent of the closing tragedy. That she who was educated in, and for, London ; who could hardly bear the country ; who says she woi'shipped the very pave- ment of London ; who was the idolized object of the ever moving and thronging social circles of the metropoHs, — should go voluntarily out to the desert of an African coast, to a climate generally fatal to Englishwomen, and to the year-long solitude of that government fort, was a circumstance which astonished every one. The picture of this home of exile, and of herself and her duties in it, is drawn livingly by her own pen. Before giving this, we may here simply state that Cape Coast Castle is one of the eight British settlements on the Gold Coast. The castle stands on a I'ock of gneiss and mixed slate, about twenty feet above the level of the sea, in 5° & N. lat., and 1° 10' W. long. Outside there is a native town ; and the ad- jacent country, to a considerable distance, has been cleared, and rendered fit for cultivation. The ruhug natives are the Fantees, a clever, stin-ing, turbulent race. In one of her letters, she gives this account of the situation and scenery of the castle : — " On three sides we are surrounded by the sea. I like the perpetual dash on the rocks — one wave comes up after another, and is for ever dashed in pieces, like human hopes, that only swell to be disappointed. We advance, — up springs the shining froth of love or hope, — 'a moment white, then gone for ever ! ' The land view, with its cocoa and palm trees, is very striking — it is like a scene in the Arabian Nights. Of a night, the beauty is very remarkable ; the sea is of a silvery purple, and the moon de- serves all that has been said in her favour. I have only been once out of the fort by daylight, and then was delighted. The salt lakes were first dyed a deep crimson by the setting sun, and as we returned they seemed a faint violet by the twilight, just broken by a thousand stars ; while before us was the red beacon-light." We may complete the view, exterior and interior, by other ex- tracts. " I must say in itself the place is infinitely superior to all that I ever dreamed of. The castle is a fine building — the rooms excellent. I do not sufier from heat : insects there are few, or none ; and I am in excellent health. The sohtude, except an occasional 444 L. E. L. dinner, is absolute : from seven in the morning, till seven, when we dine, I never see Mr. Maclean, and rarely any one else. We were welcomed by a series of dinners, which I am glad are over, — for it is very awkward to be the only lady ; stiU the great kindness with which I have been treated, and the very pleasant manners of many of the gentlemen, made me feel it as little as possible. Last week we had a visit from Captain Castle of the Pylades. We had also a visit from Colonel Bosch, the Dutch governor, a most gentleman- like man. But fancy how awkward the next morning ! — I cannot induce Mr. Maclean to rise ; and I have to make breakfast, and do the honours of adieu to him and his officers — white plumes, mustachios, and all. I think I never felt more embarrassed." " The native huts I first took for ricks of hay ; but those of the better sort are pretty white houses, with green bhnds. The English gentlemen resident here have very large houses, quite mansions, with galleries running round them. Generally speaking, the vege- tation is so thick, that the growth of the shrubs rather resembles a wall. The solitude here is Robinson Crusoeish. The hills are covered to the top with what we should call calf-weed, but here is called bush : on two of these hills are small forts, built by Mr. Maclean. The natives seem obliging and intelligent, and look veiy picturesque, with their fine dark figures, with pieces of the country cloth flung round them : they seem to have an excellent ear for music. The band seems to play from morning to night. " The castle is a fine building, a sort of double square, shaped hke an H, of which we occupy the middle. A large flight of steps leads to the hall, on either side of which is a suite of rooms. The one in which I am wiiting would be pretty in England. It is of a pale blue, and hung with some beautiful prints, for which Mr. Maclean has a passion. " You cannot imagine how different everything is here to Eng- land. I hope, however, in time to get on pretty well. There is, nevertheless, a deal to do. I have never been accustomed to house- keeping, and here everything must be seen to by yourself ; it matters not what it is, it must be kept under lock and key. I get up at seven, breakfast at eight, and give out flour, butter, sugar, all from the store. I have found the bag you gave me so useful to hold the keys, of which I have a little army. We live almost entirely on chickens and ducks, for if a sheep be killed it must be all eaten that day. The bread is very good : they use palm oil for yeast. Yams are a capital substitute for potatoes ; pies and puddings are scarce thought of, unless there is a party. The washing has been a terrible trouble, but I am getting on better. I have found a woman to wash some of the things, but the men do all the starching and ironing. Never did people require so much looking after. Till Mr. Maclean comes in from court at seven, I never see a living creature but the ser- vants. * * * The weather is now very warm ; the nights so hot that you can only bear the lightest sheet over you. As to the beds, the mattresses are so hard, they are hke iron. The damp is very destructive : the dew is Hke rain, and there are no fire-places : you L. E. L. 445 would not believe it, but a grate would be the first of luxuries. Keys, scissors, everytlaing rusts. * * * I find the servants civil, and not wanting in intelligence, but industry. Each has servants to wait on him, whom they call sense boys, i. e. they wait on them to be taught. Scouring is done by the prisoners. Fancy three men employed to clean a room, which, in England, an old woman could do in an hour, while a soldier stands over them with a drawn bayonet." Such was the last, strange, solitary home of L. E. L. ; such the strange life of one who had been before employed only in diffusing her beautiful fancies amid her countrymen. Here she was rising at seven, giving out flour, sugar, &c., from the stores, seeing what room she would have cleaned, and then sitting down to write. In the midst of this new species of existence, she is suddenly plunged into the grave, leaving the wherefore a wonder. The land which was the attraction of her childhood, singularly enough, thus became her sepidchre. A marble slab, with a Latin inscription, is said to be erected there by her husband. We may now add that Captain Maclean himself died at Oape Coast on the 22d of May, 1846, SIR WALTER SCOTT. Many and wonderful as are the romances which Sir Walter Scott wrote, there are none of them so wonderful as the romance of his own life. It is not that from a simple son of a Writer to the Signet, he raised himself to wealth and title ; — that many have done before him, and far more than that. That many a man of most ordinary brain can achieve; can, as it were, almost stumble into, he knows not how. That many a scrivener, a paviour, or a pawnbroker, has accomphshed, and been still deemed no miracle. The city of London, from the days of Dick Whittington to those of Sir Peter Laurie, can show a legion of such culminations. But Sir Walter Scott won his wealth and title in fields more renowned for starvation and " Calami- ties," than for making of fortunes — those of literature. It was from the barren hills of Parnassus that he drew down wealth in quantities that struck the whole world with astonishment, and made those famous mountains, trodden bare with the feet of glorious paupers, rivals of the teeming heights of Mexico and Peru, of California and Australia. At a period when the sources of literature appeared to have exhausted themselves ; when it was declared that nothing original could be again expected in poetry, that all its secret places SCOTT. 447 were rifled, all its fashions outworn, all its imagery beaten into triteness ; when romance was grown mawkish and even childish ; when Mrs. Eadclift'e and Horace Walpole had exhausted its terrors, and the novehst's path through common Ufe, it was thought, had been gleaned of all possible discovery by Fielding, Richardson and SmoUett, Goldsmith and Sterne, — when this was confu-med in pubhc opinion by the sentimentalities of Henry Mackenzie, forth started Scott as a giant of the tirst magnitude, and demolished all the fond ideas of such dusty-brained dreamers. He opened up on every side new scenes of invention. In poetry and romance, he showed that there was not a corner of these islands which was not, so far from being exhausted, standing thick with the richest materials for the most wonderful and beautiful creations. The reign of the schoolmen and the copyists was at an end. Nature, history, tradition, life, every thing and every place, were shown by this new and vigorous spirit to be full to overflowing with what had been, in the dim eyes of former soi-disant geniuses, only dry bones ; but which, at the touch of this bold necromancer, sprung up living forms of the most fascinating grace. The whole public opened eyes of wonder, and in breatldess amazement and delight saw this active and unweariable agent call round him, from the brooks and mountains of his native land, troop after troop of kings, queens, warrior.s, women of regal forms and more regal spirits ; visions of purity and loveliness ; and lowly creations of no less glorious virtues. The whole land seemed astir with armies, insm'rections, pageantries of love, and passages of sorrow, that for twenty years kept the enraptured public in a trance, as it were, of ever-accumulating marvel and joy. There seemed no bounds to his powers, or the field of Ms operations. From Scotland he descended into England, stepped over into France, Germany, Switzerland, nay, even into Palestme and India ; and people asked, as volumes, any one of which would have established a tirst-rate reputation, were pom'ed out, year after year, with the rapid prodi- gahty of a mountain stream, — is there no hmit to the wondrous powers of this man's imagination and creative faculty ? There really seemed none. Fresh stories, of totally novel construction, fresh characters, of the most startling originality, were continuallj' coming forward, as from an inexhaustible world of soul. Not only did the loftiest and most marked characters of our history, either the Scotch or English, again move before us in all their vitality of passion and of crime, of virtue and of heroism, — as Bruce, James V. and VI., Richard Coeur de Lion, EUzabeth, Mary of Scots, Leicester, James I. of England, Montrose, Claverhouse, Cumberland the butcher ; not only did the covenanters preach and fight anew, and the highland clans rise in aid of the Stuart, but new personages, of the rarest beauty, the haughtiest command, or the most curious humour, swarmed forth upon the stage of life, thick, as if their creation had cost no efibrt. Flora M'lvor, Rose Bradwardine, Rebecca the high- souled Jewess, the unhappy Lucy Ashton and Amy Robsart, the lowly Etfie Deans, and her homely yet glorious sister Jenny, the bewitching Di Vernon, and Minna and Breuda Troil of the northern 448 SCOTT. isles, stand radiant amid a host of lesser beauties ; while Rob Roy, the Robin Hood of the hills, treads in manly dignity his native heather; Balfour of Burley issues a stalwart apparition from his hiding-places ; and for infinitude of humour, and strangeness of aspect and mood, where are the pages that can present a troop like these : the Baron of Bradwardine, Dominie Sampson, Meg Merrilies, Monkbarns, Edie Ochiltree, Dugald Dalgetty, Old Mortality, Bailie Nicol Jarvie, Andrew Fairservice, Caleb Balderstone, Flibbertigibbet, Noma of the Fitful Head, and that fine follow, the farmer of Liddes- dale, with whom every one feels a desire to shake hands, honest Dandie Dinmont, with all his Peppers and Mustards yaffling at his heels ? It may be safely said that, in twenty years, one man enriched the hterature of his country with more story of intense beauty, and more original character, than all its literati together for two hundred years before. And this is only part of the wonder with Sir Walter Scott ; he was all this time a man of business, of grave and various business — a Clerk of Session, sitting in the Parliament-house of Edinburgh daily, during term, from ten to four o'clock — the Sheriff of Selkirk, with its calls — an active cavalry volunteer — a member of gas and other committees — a zealous politician and reviewer — mixed up in a world of printing and publishing concerns, and ready to run off and tra- verse as diligently sea and land, in all directions, at every possible interval. Besides all this, he was a buyer of lands, a planter of extensive woods, a raiser of a fairy castle, a keen sportsman with greyhound and fish-spear. Amidst all these avocations and amuse- ments, his writing appeared the produce of his odd hours ; and this mass of romance, on which his fame chiefly rests, after all, but a fragment of his literary labour. In the enormous list of his works, to be found at the end of his Life by Lockhart, his novels and poems appear but a slight sprinkling amid his heavier toils : — reviews, translations, essays, six volumes ; Tales of a Grandfather, twelve volumes ; sermons, memoirs, a multitude ; editions of Swift and Dryden, in nineteen volumes and eighteen volumes ; Somers' Tracts, in thirteen volumes ; antiquities, lives, &c. &c. The array of works, written and edited, is astounding ; and when we recollect that little of this was done before forty, and that he died at the age of sixty- one, our astonishment becomes boundless. It is in vain to look for another such life of gigantic literary labour, performed by a man of the world, and no exclusive, unmitigated bookworm ; much less of a life of such an affluent produce of originality. In these particulars, Scott stands alone. But though the wonder of his life is seen in this, the romance of it yet remains. He arose to fill a great and remarkable point of time. A new era was commencing, which was to be enriched out of the neglected matter of the old. The suppression of the rebellion of 1745 was the really vitalizing act of the union of Scotland and England. By it the old clan life and spirit were extinguished. The spirit which maintained a multitude of old forms, costumes, and modes of life, was by that event annihilated ; and the rapid amalga- SCOTT. 449 mation of the two nations in a time of internal peace, would soon have obliterated much that was extremely picturesque and full of character, were it not seized and made permanent by some mighty and comprehensive mind. That mind was Scott's ! He stood on the threshold of a new world, with the falling fabric of the past close beneath his view. Every circumstance which was necessary to make him the preserver of the memory and life of this past world met in him, as by a marked decree of the Almighty. He had all the sensibility and imagination of the past, with the keenest relish of everything that was prominent in living character amongst his fellow-men. He was inspired with the love of nature, as an undying passion, by having been, in his earliest years, suffered to run wild amid the rocks of Smailholm, and the beautiful scenery of Kelso. The Reliques of Ancient EugUsh Poetry— that herald of nature to all who were capable of lo\"ing her at that period, and which, with- out saying a word about the false taste of the age, at once awoke in it the true one — was to him but the revelation of still further relics of the like kind in his own country. He had heard similar strains from his nurses; from the country people amongst whom he had been cast ; from the ladies of his family ; and Percy's volumes were but as a trumpet note, awakening him to a consciousness of poetic wealth, that lay all around him thick as the dews of a spring morning. In highland and in lowland, but especially along that wild border-land which had become the delight of his boyhood, the lays and the traditions of the past were in every mouth, and awaited some fortunate hand to gather them. His was the hand destined to do that and more. Every step that he made in the pursuit of the old ballad literature of his country, only showed him more and more of the immense mass of the materials of poetry and romance which the past ages had neglected as vulgar. The so-called poets of two or three generations had gone about on the stilts of classical pride ; and hatl overlooked, nay, had scorned to touch even with tlieir shoe- toes, the golden ore of romantic character and deed, that lay in actual heaps on every mountain, and along every mountain stream. Young Scott, transported at the sight, flew east and west : traversed mountain and heath, with all the buoyancy of youth and the throbbing pulse of poetry. He went amongst the common people, and amidst shepherds, and with housewives at their wheels, and milkmaids over their pails ; he heard the songs and ballads which had been flashed forth amid the clash of swords, or hymned mourn- fully over the fallen, in wild days of wrong and strife, and still stirred the blood of their descendants when they were become but the solace of the long watch on the brae with the flock, or the excitement of the winter fireside. Nay, he found not only poetry and romance, but poets and romancers. Hogg and Leyden, Laidlaw and Shortreed, all men of geniu.s, all glowing with love of their native land, became his friends, companions, and fellow-gatherers. The romance of bis life had now bcgiui. Pull of youth and the delicious buoyancy of its enjoyment, full of expanding hopes and aspirations, dreams of power came upon him. He put forth his volumes of The G *50 SCOTT. Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and found them realized. His horizon was at once wonderfully widened. The brightest spirits of England, as well as of his own country, hailed him as a true brother. The dawn of this new era was kindling apace. The hearts which had caught the same impulse from the same source as him- self, and owned the native charms of nature, were now becoming vocal with the burden of this new music. Campbell, Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, and others, were sending forth new strains of poetry, such as had not been heard since Shakspeare, and Spenser, and Milton had hved. _ But "Walter Scott was to become something more than a poet. His destiny was to become the great romance writer of his age ; to gather up and mould into a new form the life and spirit of the past many-coloured ages of his country, and to leave them as a legacy of dehght to the world for ever. For this purpose he was quaUfied, by sundry accomplishments and experi- ences. He studied the literature of Germany, and drew thence a love of the wild and wonderful ; he became a lawyer, and thus was brought into closer contact with the inner workings of society, its forms and formalities. He was brought to a close gaze upon family history, ujjon the passions that agitate men in the transitions of property, and in the committal of crime, or the process of its arrest and punishment. He was made to study men, both as they were and had been, and was enriched with a knowledge of the techni- calities which are so essential to him who will describe, with accuracy, trials and transactions in which both life and property are at stake, and the crooked arts of villains, especially the villains of the law. To these most auspicious preparations for his great task — a task not yet revealed to him — he added a keen relish for antiquities ; and a memory as gigantic as his frame was robust. Did there yet want anything? It was a genial humour, which rejoiced in the social pleasures of life, and that, while it lived amid the open hearts of his feUow-men, in the hours of domestic freedom and convivial gaiety, saw deej) into those hearts, and hoarded up without knowing it theories of the actuahty of existence, and of original character. This too was eminently his. His Border IVIinstrelsy published, he turned his views northward, and a still more stirring scene presented itself The Highlands, with their beautiful mountains and lakes, their clan life, their thrill- ing traditions and stories of but recently-past conflicts, bloodshed, and sorrow ; — their striking costume, their pipers blowing strains that, amid the rocks, and forests, and dark heather of that romantic region, kindled even in the heart of the stranger a strange enthusiasm, — all was to him full of the fire of poetry, and of a romance too large, with all its quick and passionate characters, and its vivid details, for poetry itself First came forth his Metrical Romances — themselves a new and inspiriting species of poetry, founded indeed on an old basis, but quickened with the soul of modern knowledge, and handled with the harmonious freedom of a modern master. These, however we may now regard them as somewhat overstepped by the more impassioned lays of Byron, and by the more expansive SCOTT. 451 wonders of the author's own prose romances, were, at the time, an actual infusion of new life-blood into the public. They were the opening up of a totally new world, fresh and beautiful as the imagi- nation coiild conceive. They actually seemed to smell of the heather. Every rock, hung with its dark pines, or graceful birches ; every romantic lake, bosomed in its lonely mountains ; the hunt careering along its richly-coloured glens ; the warrior, full of a martial and chivalrous spirit ; the lithe Highlander, with dirk and phihbeg, crouching in the heath, Uke the Indian in his forest, or speeding from clan to clan with the fiery cross of war, — every one of these vivid images was as new to the English public as if they had been brought from the furthest regions of Japan. Then the whole of these newly-discovered regions, the Highlands, for such they were, was covered with traditions of strangest exploits ; the people were a wild, irritable, vengeful, but stiU high-minded people, exhibiting the equally prominent virtues and crimes of a demi-civilized race. How refreshing was the contemplation of such scenes and people to the jaded minds of the Enghsh, so long doomed to mediocre mono- tony! I well remember, then a youth, with what avidity a new poem of Walter Scott's was awaited for and devoiu-ed. It was a poetry welcome to all, because it had not merely the qualities of good poetry, which would have been lost on the majority of readers, but it had all this novelty of scenery and character, and the excite- ment of brilliant story, to recommend it. Then it was perpetually shifting its ground. It was now amid the lonely regions of the south of Scotland ; now high up amid heaths, and lochs, and pine- hung mountains, the shepherd's shelling, the roar of the cataract, and the cry of the eagle mixing with the wild sound of the distant pibroch ; and now amid the gi-een naked mountains and islands of the west, and savage rocks, and thundering seas, and the cries of sea-birds, as they were roused by the wandering Bruce and his followers, on their way to win back the crown of Scotland from the English invader. The sensation which these poems produced is now forgotten, and can only be conceived by those who remember their coming out ; but these were soon to be eclipsed by the prose romances of the same author. The ground, the spirit, and the machinery were the same ; but these were now allowed to work in broad, unfettered prose, and a thousand traits and personages were introduced, which could by no possibility have found a place in verse. The variety of grotesque characters, the full country dialect and dialogues of all sorts of actors in the scenes, thus gave an infinite superiority to the prose over the poetiy. The first reading of Waverley was an era in the existence of every man of taste. There was a life, a colour, a feeling given to his mind, which he had never before experienced. To have lived at that period when, ever and anon, it was announced that a new novel by the Author of Waverley was coming out ; to have sate down the moment it could be laid hold of, and have entered through it into another new world, full of new objects of admiration, new friends, and new .subjects of delight and discussion, dQ -2 452 SCOTT. — was, in truth, a real privilege. The fame of Scott, before great, now became unbounded. It flew over sea and land. His novels were translated into every language which could boast of a printing- press ; and the glory of two such men as himself and Byron made still more proud the renown of that invincible island, which stood against all the assaults of Napoleon, and had now even chained that terrible conqueror, as its captive, on a far sea-rock. I say the fame of Scott was thus augmented by the Waverley Novels. Yes, they were, long before they were owned to be his, felt by the public to be nobody else's. The question might be, and was agitated, but still there was a tacit feeling that Scott was their author, far and wide diffused. Dense, indeed, must they have been who could doubt it. What were they but prose amplifications of his Lady of the Lake, his Marmion, and his Lord of the Isles ? So early as 1822, rambling on foot with Mrs. Howitt in the Highlands, we came to Aberfoil, where the minister, Mr. Graham, who had written Sketches of the Scenery of Perthshire, accompanied us to spots in that neighbourhood which are marked ones in the novel of Rob Eoy. It was he who had first turned the attention of Scott to the scenery of Loch Katrine and the Trosachs. " Can there be any doubt," we asked, " that Scott is the author of Waverley 1 " " Could it possibly be anybody else ? " he replied. " If the whole spirit and essence of those stories did not show it, his visits here during the writing of Rob Roy would have been decisive enough. He came here, and inquired out all the traditionary haunts of Rob. I accompanied him upon Loch Ard, and at a particular sjaot I saw his attention fixed ; he observed my notice, but desired his daughter to sing something to divert it ; but I felt assured that before long I should see that sjaot described — and there, indeed, was Helen Slacgi'egor made to give her celebrated breakfast." Long before the formal acknowledgment was made, few, in fact, were they who were not as fully satisfied of the identity of Walter Scott and the author of Waverley, as was the shrewd Ettrick Shejiherd, who from the first had the Waverley Novels bound and labelled, "Scott's Novels." No one could have seen Abbotsford itself without being at once convinced of it, if he had never been so before. Without, the very stones of the old gateway of the Tolbooth of Edinburgh stared the fact in his face ; within, it was a perfect collection of testimonies to the fact. The gun of Rob Roy ; the pistols of Claverhouse ; the thumbikius which had tortured the covenanters ; nay, a whole host of things cried out, " We belong to the author of Waverley." And never did fame so richly follow the accomplishment of deeds of immortality as in the case of Sir Walter. From the monarch to the meanest reader ; from Edinburgh to the farthest wilds of Russia and America, the enthusiastic admiration of " The Great Northern Magician," as he was called, was one universal sentiment. Wherever he went he was made to feel it ; and from every quarter streamed crowds on crowds to Abbotsford to see him. He was on the kindliest terms of friendship with almost every known writer ; to his most distinguished cotemporaries, especially Byron, Miss Edgeworth, and SCOTT. 453 Miss Joanna Baillie, lie seemed as though he could not testify suffi- cient honour ; and, on the other hand, the highest nobiUty, nay, royalty itself, felt the pride of his presence and acquaintance. Never had the glory of any literary man — not even of those who, like Petrarch, had been crowned publicly as the poetic monarchs of the age — reached such a pitch of intense and universal splendour. The field of this glory was not one country, — it was that of the vast civilized world, in which almost every man was a reader. No evi- dences more striking of this were ever given than on his tour in Ireland, where the play was not allowed to go on in Dublin till he showed himself to the eager people ; and on his return from whence, he declared that his whole journey had been an ovation. It was the same on his last going on the Continent. But the fact mentioned by Lockhart as occurring during his attendance in London at the coronation of George IV. in 1821, is worth a thousand others, as it shows how truly he was held in honour by the common people. He was retirrning from the coronation banquet in Westminster Hall. He had missed his carriage, and " had to return on foot between two and three in the morning, when he and a young gentleman, his companion, found themselves locked in the crowd, somewhere near Whitehall ; and the bustle aud tumult were such, that his friend was afraid some accident might happen to the lame hmb. A space for the dignitaries was kept clear at that point by the Scots Greys. Sir Walter addressed a sergeant of this celebrated regiment, begging to be allowed to pass by him into the open gi-ound in the middle of the street. The man answered shortly, that his orders were strict — that the thing was impossible. While he was endeavouring to per- suade the sergeant to relent, some new wave of turbulence approached from behind, and his young companion exclaimed, in a loud voice — ' Take care. Sir Walter Scott, take care ! ' The stalwart dragoon, hearing the name, said — ' What ! Sir Walter Scott ? He shall get through anyhow.' He then addressed the soldiers near him — ' Make room, men, for Sir Walter Scott, our illustrious countryman ! ' The men answered — ' Sir Walter Scott ! God bless him ! ' and he was in a moment within the guarded line of safety." This is beautiful. Sir Walter had won a proud immortality, and lived now in the veiy noon of its living radiance. But the romance is still behind. When about six-and-twenty, at the pleasant little watering-place of Gilsland, in Cumberland, he fell in love with a young French lady, Charlotte ^largaret Charpentier. The meeting was hke one of those in his own novels. lie was richug with his friend Adam Fergusson — the joyous, genial friend of his whole life — one day in that neighbourhood, when they met a young lady taking an airing on horseback, whom neither of them had before seen. They were so much struck with her appearance, as to keep her in view till they were sure that she was a visitor at the wells. The same evening they met her at a ball ; and so much was Scott charmed with her, that he soon made her a proposal, and she became his wife. All who knew her in her youth speak of her as a very chaiming person, though I confess that her portrait at Abbotsford 454 SCOTT. does not give me much idea of her personal charms. But, says Mr. Lockhart, who had the best opportunity of knowing, " Without the features of a regular beauty, she was rich in personal attractions ; ' a form that was fashioned as light as a fairy's ;' a complexion of the clearest and the brightest olive ; eyes large, deep-set, and dazzling, of the finest Italian brown ; and a profusion of silken tresses, black as the raven's wing : her address hovering between the reserve of a pretty Enghshwoman who has not mingled largely in general society, and a certain natural archness and gaiety that suited well with the accompaniment of a French accent. A loveUer vision, as all who remember her in the bloom of her days have assured me, could hardly have been imagined." With his charming young wife, Scott settled at Lasswade, about seven miles from Edinburgh. Here he had a lonely and retired cottage, in a most beautiful neighbourhood ; and was within an easy distance of Edinburgh, and his practice there as an advocate. Here he busied himself in his literary pursuits, and made those excursions into Liddesdale, and Ettrick forest, and other parts of the border country, in quest of materials for his Border Minstrelsy, in which he found such exquisite delight. Here he found Shortreed, Hogg, Laid- law, — men all enthusiastic in the same pursuits and tastes. At this time, too, he became acquainted in Edinburgh with Leyden, also a border man, full of ballad and poetry, and with powers as gigantic as Scott himself, though uncouth as a colt from the moors. There is nothing in any biography which strikes me so full of the enjoyment of life as Scott's raids, as he called them, into Liddesdale, and other border wildernesses^ at that period. He found everywhere a new country, untrodden by tourists, unknown to fame, but richly de- serving of it. There was a new land discovered, fuU from end to end of wild scenery, and strange, rude, but original character, rich in native wit, humour, and fun. Down Liddesdale there was no road ; in it there was no inn. Scott's gig, on the last of seven years' raids, was the first wheel carriage that ever entered it. " The travellers passed from the shepherd's hut to the minister's manse ; and again from the cheerful hospitality of the manse, to the rough and jolly welcome of the homestead." " To these rambles," says Lockhart, " Scott owed much of the material of his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and not less of that intimate acquaintance with the living manners of those imsophisticated regions, which constitutes the chief charm of one of the most charming of his prose works." " He was makirC himseV a' the time," said Mr. Shortreed, " but he did na ken, may be, what he was about tiU years had passed. At first he thought o' little, I dare say, but the queerness and the fun." That overflowing enjoyment of life, which so much distinguished Scott at aU periods, except the short melancholy one of his decline, now exhibited itself in all its exuberance. " Eh me ! " says Mr. Short- reed, " sic an endless fund o' humour and drollery as he then had wi' him ! Never ten yards but we were either laughing, or roaring, and singing. Wherever we stopped, how brawlie he suited himsel' to everybody ! He aye did as the lave did ; never made himsel' the SCOTT. 455 great man, or took ony airs in tlie company." It was in one of these raids that they fell in with the original of Dandie Dinmont. His Border Minstrelsy came out ; his fame spread. His Metrical 'Romances followed ; and he was the most popular man of the day. In matters of business he rapidly advanced. He was made Clerk of Session and Sheriff of Selkirk. He quitted his cottage at Lasswade for the still more beautiful, but more solitary farm of Ashestiel, on the banks of the Tweed. Lord Byron's poetry blazed out ; but Scott took another flight, in the Historical Novel, and was still, if not the greatest poet, the most popular man of his age. Never had there been any evidence of such pecuniary success in the hterai-y world. He made about 15,000/. by his poetry ; but by his prose he made, by a single work, his 5,000/., his 10,000/., his 12,000/. His facihty was equal to his success ; it was no long and laborious task to complete one of these truly golden volumes — they were thrown off as fast as he could write ; and in three months a novel, worth eight or ten thousand pounds in the market, was finished ! WeU might his hopes and views tower to an unprecedented height. The spirit of poetiy and romance revelled in his brain, and began to show itself not only in the construction of volumes, but in the building of a castle, an estate, a family to stand amid the aristocratic families for ever. The name of Walter Scott should not only descend with his children as that of an illustrious writer, but should clothe them with the world- honoured mantle of titular rank. And everything was auspicious. The tide of fortune flowed on, the wind of pubhc favour blew wondrously. Work after work was thrown off; enormous sums often were netted. Publishers and printers struggled for his patron- age ; but Constable and the Ballantyues, acquaintances of his youth, were selected for his favour, — and great became their standing and business. There seemed not one fortune, but three secure of accom- plishment. The poet, in the romantic solitude of Ashestiel, or galloping over the heathy hills in the neighbourhood, as he mused on new and ever-.succeeding visions of romances amongst them, con- ceived the most fascinating scheme of all. It was to purchase lands, to raise himself a fairy castle, to become, not the minstrel of a lord, as were many of those of old, but a minstrel-lord himself The practical romance grew. On the banks of the Tweed, then, began to rise the fairy castle. Quaint and beautiful as one of his descrip- tions, it arose ; lauds were added to lands ; over hill and dale spread the dark embossment of future woods ; and Abbotsford began to be spoken of far and wide. The poet had chosen his seat in the midst of the very land of ancient poetry itself. At three miles' distance stood the fair pile of Melrose, which he had made so attractive by his Lay of the Last Minstrel to the whole world. Near that showed themselves the Eildon hills, the haunt of True Thomas; at their feet ran the classic stream of Huntly burn. The Cowdenkuows lifted its black summit further down the Tweed ; and upwards was a whole fairyland — Carterhaugh, Newark tower, Ettrick forest, St. Mary's lake, and the Dowie Dens of Yarrow. There was scarcely an object in the whole country round — neither hill, uor wood, nor iS6 SCOTT. stream, nor single rock — which was not full of the associations cf ballad fame. Here, then, ho lived like an old feudal lord, with his hounds and his trusty vassals ; some of the latter, as Laidlaw and Tom Purdie, occupying the station of those humble, faithful friends, who tend so much to complete the happiness of life. In truth, never did the poet himself dream a fairer dream beneath a summer oak than he had now realized around him. His lovely wife, the lady of the domain ; his children shooting fast up into beautiful manhood and womanhood ; his castle and domain built, and won, as they were, from the regions of enchantment ; and friends and worshippers flocking from every country, to behold the far-famed minstrel. Princes, and nobles, and men of high name in every walk of life were his guests. Every man of any note called him friend. The most splendid equii^ages crowded the way towards his house ; the feast was spread continually as it were the feast of a king ; while on the balcony ranging along the whole front, stalked to and fro, in his tartans, the wild piper, and made the air quiver with the tempestuous mtisic of the hills. Arms and armour were ranged along the walls and galleries of his hall. There were portraits of some of the most noted persons who had figured in his lays and stories — as of Claverhouse, Monmouth, the Pretender, the severed head of the Queen of Scots ; with those of brother poets, Dryden, Thomson, Prior, and Gay. There were the escutcheons of all the great clan chieftains blazoned round the ceiling of his hall ; and swords, daggers, pistols, and instruments of torture, from the times and the scenes he had celebrated. Such was the scene of splendour which had sprung from the pen of one man. If it were wonderful, the streams of wealth which continued to pour from the same enchanted goose quill were still more astounding. From Lockhart's Life we see that, independent of what these works have made since, he had pretty early netted above 13,000/. by his poems, though he had sold some of them in their first edition. £ s. d. Border Minstrel, 1st and 2d vol. 1st edit . . " 78 10 Copyright of the same work 500 Lay of the Last Minstrel, copyright sold 769 6 Marmion ditto 1,000 Lady of the Lake ditto 2,100 Rokeby ditto 5,000 Lord of the Isles 3,000 Halidan Hill l.COO £13,447 16 But this was nothing to the produce of his romances. Of Waverley, 51,000 copies had been sold when that Life was pub- lished, and Scott tells us that he cleared 400/. by each 1,000 copies, that is . £20,000. Guy Mannering, 60,000, or £24,000 Rob Roy, 53,000, or 21,300 Of the rest we have no total amount given ; but at a similar rate, his twenty-one novels would make au amount of 460,000/. ! Besides SCOTT. 457 this, he received for the Life of Napoleon above 1 8.000/. In three months be wrote Woodstock, for which he tells us that he received 8,400/. at once. Then there are his Tales of a Grandfather, twelve volumes, a most popular work, but of which no j^roceeds are given. His History of Scotland for Lardner's Cyclopaedia, 1,500/. ; for editing Dryden, 756/. ; for seven Essays for the Encyclopsedia Britannioa, 300/. ; Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk, 1,350/. ; for a contribution to the Keepsake, 400/. which he says he considered poor pay. Then he wrote thirty-five Reviews for the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, for which such a writer could not, on an average, receive less than 50/. each, probably 100/. ; but say, 50/., that is 1,750/. And these items are exclusive of the vast mass of edited editions of Swift, of Memoirs, Antiquities, &c. &c. They do not either, except in the three novels specified, include the proceeds of the collective editions of either his prose or his poetry. It appears certain that his works must have produced to the author or his trustees, at the very least, half a million of money ! ! Ti'uly this was the revenue of a monarch in the realm of letters ! Popular as Lord Byron was, I suppose the whole which he received for his writings did not reahze 30,000/. Scott cleared that by any two of his novels. He could clear a third of it in three months. Weil might he think to lay field to field, and house to house, and plant his children in the land as lords of the soil, and as titled magnates for ever ! But, as the fabric of this glorious estate had risen as by the spell of a necromancer, so it fell. It was like one of those palaces, with its fairy gardens, and lawns scattered with diamonds instead of dews, in the Arabian Nights, which, with the destruction of the spell, passed away in a crash of thunder. A house of cards is proverbial, and this house of books feU at one shock, and struck the world with a terrible astonishment. It was found that the great minstrel was not carefully receiving his profits, and investing them ; but was engaged as partner in the printing and publishing of his works. His publisher and his printers, drained on the one hand by the vast outlay for castle-building, land-buying, and the maintenance of all comers ; and, on the other, infected with the monstrous scene of acquisition which was revealed to their eyes, — were moving on a slijipery course, and, at the shock of the great panic in 1826, went to the ground ; leaving Scott debtor to the amount of 120,000/., besides a mortgage of 10,000/. on his estate. In some instances the darkness and the difficulty of human life come in the early stages, and wind up in light and happiness ; in others, the hght comes first, and the darkness at the end. These latter arc tragedies, and the romance of Scott's life was a tragedy. How sad and piteous is the winding uj) here ! The thunder-bolt of fate had fallen on the "Great Magician." The glory of his outward estate was over, but never did that of his inner soul show so brilliantly. Gentle, and genial, and kindly to all men, had he shown himself in his most prosperous days ; but now the giant strength of his fortitude, and the nobility of his moral pruiciple, 458 SCOTT. came into magnificent play. He was smitten, sorely smitten, but he was not subdued. Not a hero which he had described could match him in his contest with the rudeness of adversity. He could have paid his dividend, as is usual in such cases, and his prolific pen would have raised him a second fortune. But then his honour ! — no, he would jjay to the uttermost farthing ! And so, with a sorrowful, but not murmuring or desponding heart, he went to work again on his giant's work ; and in six years, with his own hand, with his single pen, paid off 16,000/. a-year ! That is an achievement which has no parallel. With faiUng health, with all his briUiant hopes of establish- ing a great family dashed to the ground, with the dearest objects of his heart and health dropping and perishing before him, he went on, and won 60,000/., resolved to pay all or perish. And he did perish ! His wife, shattered by the shock, died ; he was left with a widowed heart stiU to labour on. Awful pangs, and full of presage, seized his own frame ; a son and a daughter failed, too, in health ; his old man, Tom Purdie, died suddenly ; his great publisher, and one of his printers, died, too, of the fatal malady of ruined hopes. All these old connexions, formed in the bright morning of life, and which had made his ascent so cheering and his toil so easy, seemed now to be giving way ; and how dark was become that life which had exceeded all others in its joyous lustre ! Yet, in the darkness, how the invincible soul of the heroic old man went on rousing himself to fight against the most violent shocks of fortune, and of his own constitution. " I have walked the last on the domains I have planted ; sat the last in the halls I have built ; but death would have taken them from me if misfortune had spared them. My poor people whom I loved so well ! There is just another die to turn against me in this run of ill luck ; i. e. if I should break my magic wand in the fall from this elephant, and lose my popularity with my fortune ! . . . But I find my eyes moistening, and that will not do ; I will not yield without a fight for it." " Well, exertion, exertion. invention, rouse thyself ! May man be kind ! may God be propitious ! The worst is, I never quite know when I am right or wrong." " Slept ill, not having been abroad these eight days ; now a dead sleep in the morning, and when the awaking comes, a strong feeling how well I could dispense with it for once and for ever. This passes away, however, as better and more dutiful thoughts arise in my mind." Poor man ! and that worst which he feared came. His publisher told him, though reluctantly, that his power had departed, and that he had better lay by his pen ! To a man hke Scott, who had done such wonders, and still doggedly laboured on to do others as great, that was the last and the bitterest feeling that could remain with life. Is there anything in language more pathetic than the words of Sir Walter, when at Abbotsford he looked round him, after his wife's death, and wrote thus in his journal ? — " AVhen I contrast what this place now is, with what it has been not long since, I think my heart will break. Lonely, aged, deprived of my family — all but poor Anne ; an impoverished, an embarrassed man, deprived of the sharer of my SCOTT. 459 thouglits and counsels, who could always talk down my sense of the calamitous apprehensions which break the heart that must bear them alone." Sir Walter was the Job of modern times. His wealth and prosperity had been like his, and the fabric of his fortune was smitten at the four corners at once by the tempest of calamity ; but his patience and resignation rivalled even those of the ancient patriarch. In no period of his life, though he was admirable in aU, did he display so lofty a nobility of nature as in that of his adversity. Let us, who have derived such boundless enjoyment from his labours, praise with a fitting honour his memory. How descriptive are the words of Prior, which in his last days he apphed to himself ! — " Whate'er thy countrjmen have done, By Jaw and wit, by sword and gun, In thee is faithfully recited ; And all the living world that view Thy works, give thee the praises due — At once instructed and delighted." That tragic reverse which bowed down himself and so many of those who had shared with him in his happiness, did not stop with his death. His daughters and one of his sons soon followed him. ■ His elde.st, the second Sir Walter, had no family, and did not hve long ; there remained no heir of his name, though there were two of his blood, the son and daughter of !Mr. Lockhart, of the third gene- ration. The son of Lockhart succeeded to the title, and died ; the daughter, married to Mr. Hope, has succeeded to the estate ; and it is said the fine hbrary at Abbotsford is now a Catholic chapel. As in the greatest geniuses in general, — in Milton, Shakspeare, Byron. — the direct male Une has failed in Sir Walter Scott. " The hope of founding a family," says Lockhart, " died with him." Such is the wonderful and touching romance of the life of Sir Walter Scott. We might pause and point to many a high teaching in it, — but enough ; in the beautiful words of Sir Egerton Brydges, quoted by Lockhart, — " The glory dies not, and the grief is past." We will now visit seriatim the homes and haunts of this extraor- dinary man. Sir Walter has himself pointed out in his autobiography the place of his birth. He says, " I was born, I believe, on the 15th of August, 1771, in a house belonging to my father, at the head of the College Wynd. It was pulled down with others to make room for the northern part of the new college." In ascending the Wynd, it occu> pied the left-hand corner at the top, and it projected into what is now North College-street. According to the accotmt of my friend, Mr. Eobert Chambers, in his Eeekiana, it has been pulled down upwards of sixty years. " The site," he says, " is now partly occu- pied as a wood-yard, and partly used in the line of North CoUege- street. Mr. Walter Scott, W. S., father of the poet, here lived au troisieme, according; to the simple fashion of our fathci"s, ihejiat which he occupied being accessible by a stair leading up from the little court behind. It was a house of what would now be considered humble aspect, but at that time neither humble from its individual 460 SCOTT. appearance, nor from its vicinage. When required to be destroyed for the pubhc convenience, Mr. Scott received a good price for it ; he had some time before removed to a house on the west side of George's-square, where Sir Walter spent all his schoolboy and college days. At the same time that Mr. Scott hved in the third flat, the two lower floors were occupied as one house by Mr. Keith, W. S., grandfather to the late Sir Alexander Keith, knight-marischal of Scotland. " In the course of a walk through this part of the town in 1S25, Sir Walter did the present writer the honour to point out the site of the house in which he had been born. On Sir Walter mentioning that his father had got a good price for his share of it, in order that it might be taken down for the public convenience, the individual who accompanied him took the liberty of expressing his belief that more money might have been made of it, and the public much more gratified, if it had remained to be shown as the birthplace of a man who had written so many popular books. ' Ay, ay,' said Sir Walter, * that is very weU ; but I am afraid it would have been necessary for me to die first, and that, you know, would not have been so comfortable.' " Thus, the birthplace of Scott remained, at the time of my visit, exactly in the condition described above, being used for a wood- yard, and separated from North College-street merely by a wooden fence. The other spots in Edinburgh connected with Scott, are his father's house in George's-square ; his own house, 39, North Castle- street ; 19, South Castle-street, the second flat, which he occupied immediately after his marriage ; the High School, and the Parha- ment House. We may as well notice these at once, as it will then leave us at hberty to take his country residences in consecutive order. George's-square is a quiet and respectable square, lying not far from Heriot's Hospital, and opposite to Watson's Hospital, on the left hand of the Meadows-walk. Mr. Eobert Chambers — my great in- formant in these matters in Edinburgh, and who is an actual walking history of the place — every house, and almost every stone, appear- ing to suggest to him some memorable fact connected with it — ■ stated that this was the first square built, when Edinburgh began to extend itself, and the nobility and wealthy merchants to think of coming down from their lofty stations in flats of the old town ten- storied houses, and seeking quieter and still more airy residences in the suburbs. It was the first sign of the new life and growth before the new town was thought of. No doubt, when Scott's father removed to it, it was the very centre of fashion, and still it bears traces of the old gentility. Ancient families stiU linger about it, and you see door-plates bearing some aristocratic title. At the top, or north side of the square, lived Lord Duncan, at the time that he set out to take command of the fleet, and fight the battle of Camper- down. Before his setting out, he walked to and fro on the pavement here before his house, and, with a friend, talked of his plans ; so that SCOTT. 461 the victory of Caraperdo\\Ti may be said to have been planned in this square. The house still belongs to the family. Many other remark- able people have lived just about here. Blacklock, the blind poet, lived near ; and Anderson, the publisher of the series of The Poets, imder his name, hved near also, in Windmill-street. A quieter square now could not, perhaps, be found; the grass was growing greenly amongst the stones when I visited it. The houses are capa- cious and good, and from the upper windows, many of them look out over the green fields, and have a full view of the Pentland hills. The new town, however, has now taken precedence in public favour, and this square is thought to be on the wrong side of the city. The house which Scott's father occupied, is No. 25. On the window of a small back room, on the ground floor, the name of Walter Scott still remained written on a pane of glass, with a diamond, in a schoolboy's hand. The j^resent occupiers of the house told us, that not only the name, but verses had been found on several of the windows, undoubtedly by Walter Scott, and that they had had the panes taken out, and sent to London to admirers of the great author. The room in which this name is written on the glass, used to be his own apartment. To this he himself, in his autobiography, par- ticularly refers ; and Lord Jeffrey relates, that, on his first call on young Walter Scott, " he found him in a small den, on the sunk floor of his father's house, in George's-square, suiTounded with dingy books." Mr. Lockhai-t says, " I may here add the description of that eai-ly den, with which I am favoured by a lady of Scott "s family: — ' Walter had soon begun to collect out-of-the-way things of all sorts. He had more books than shelves; a small painted cabinet, with Scotch and Eoman coins in it, and so forth. A claymore and Lochabar axe, given him by Mr. Invernahyle, mounted guard on a little print of Prince Charlie ; and Brouglitons Sattcer was hooked up against the wall below it.' Such was the germ of the magnificent library and museum at Abbotsford ; and such were the ' new realms' in which he, on taking possession, had arranged his little parapher- naha about him, ' with all the feelings of novelty and liberty.' " " Since those days," says Mr. Lockhart, " the habits of hfe in Edin- burgh, as elsewhere, have undergone many changes; and 'the convenient parlour' in which Scott first showed Jefi'rey his col- lection of minstrelsy, is now, in all probability, thought hardly good enough for a menial's sleeping-room." This is very much the fact; such a poor little damp den did this appear, on our visit, being evidently used by the cook, as it was behind the kitchen, for a sort of httle lumber-room of her own, that my companion contended that Scott's room must have been the one over this. The evidence here is, however, too strong as to its identity ; and, indeed, who docs not know what httle dingy nooks chikben, and even youths, with ardent imaginations, can convert into very palaces. This house wiU always be one of the most truly interesting spots connected with Scott's history. It was here that he lived, from a very child to his marriage. Here passed all that happy boyhood and 462 SCOTT. youth which are described with so much beautiful detail in his Life, both from his own autobiogi-aphy and from added materials collected by Lockhart. These show in his case how truly and entirely " The child -was father of the man ; " or, as Milton had it long before, " The childhood shows the man, As moming shows the day." Paradise Regained, Book IV. p. 63. Here it was that he passed his happy boyhood, in the midst of that beautiful family hfe, which he has so attractively described : the grave, careful, but kind father ; the sweet, sensible, ladylike, and religious mother ; the three brothers, various in their fortunes as in their dispositions ; and that one unfortunate sister, Anne Scott, whom he terms from her cradle the butt for mischance to shoot arrows at. She who had her hand caught by the iron gate leading into the area of the square in a high wind, and nearly crushed to pieces ; who next fell into a pond, and narrowly escaped drowning ; and was finally, at six years of age, so burnt by her cap taking fire, that she soon after died. Here, as schoolboy, college student, and law student, he made his early friendships, often to continue for life, with John Irvine ; George Abercrombie, son of the famous general, and now Lord Abercrombie ; William Clerk, afterwards of Eldin, son of Sir John Clerk, of Pennycuick house ; Adam Fergusson, the son of the celebrated Professor Fergusson ; the present Earl of Selkirk, David Boyle, present Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Jeffrey, Mr. Claude Eussell, Sir William Eae, David Monypenny, afterwards Lord Pitmilly ; Sir Archibald Campbell of Succoth, Bart. ; the Earl of Dalhousie, George Cranstoun (Lord Corehouse), John James Edmonstone, of Newton ; Patrick Murray, of Simprim ; Sir Patrick Murray, of Ochtertyre ; David Douglas (Lord Preston) ; Thomas Thomson, the celebrated legal antiquary ; William Erskine (Lord Kinedder), Alexander Frazer Tytler (Lord Woodhouselee), and other celebrated men, with many of whom he was connected in a hterary club. Here it was that, with one intimate or another, and sometimes in a jovial troop, he set out on those country excursions which were to render him so aflfluent in knowledge of life and varied character ; commencing with their almost daily strolls about Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Craig, repeating poetry and ballads ; then to Prestonpans, Pennycuick, and so extending their rambles to Koslyn, Lasswade, the Pentlands, down into Roxburghshire, into Fife, to Flodden, Chevy Chase, Otterburn, and many another scene of Border renown, Liddesdale being, as we have stated, one of the most fascinating ; and finally away into the Highlands, where, as the attorney's clerk, his business led him amongst those old Highland chiefs who had been out in the '15 and '45, and where the veteran Invernahyle set him on fire with his stories of Rob Roy, Mar, and Prince Charlie ; and whero the Baron of Bradwardine and Tullyveolan, and aU the SCOTT. 463 scenes of Waverley, and others of his Scotch romances, were im- pressed on his soul for ever. Here it was, too, that he had for tutor that good-hearted but formal clergyman, Mr. Mitchell, who was afterwards so startled when Sir Walter, calling on him at his manse in Montrose, told him he was " collecting stories of fairies, witches, and ghosts :" " intelligence," said the pious old presbyterian minister, " which proved to me an electric shock ; " adding, that moreover, " these ideal beings, the subjects of his inquiry," were not objects on which he had himself wasted his time. And here, finally, it was that, in the ballads he read, — as in that of Cumnor Hall, the germ of Kenilworth, of which he used as a boy to be continually repeating the first verse, — " The dews of summer night did fall — The moon, sweet regent of the sky, Silvered the walls of Cumnor hall, And many an oak that grew thereby ; " — in the lays of Tasso, Ariosto, &c., he laid up so much of the food of future romance, and where Edie Ochiltrees and Dugald Dalgetties were crossing his every-day path. It was here that occurred that singular scene, in which his mother bringing in a cup of coffee to a gentleman who was transacting business with her husband, when the stranger was gone, Mr. Scott told his wife that this man was Murray of Broughton, who had been a traitor to Prince Charles Stuart ; and saying that his hp should never touch the cup which a traitor had drank out of, flung it out of the window. The saucer, however, being preserved, was secured by Scott, and became a conspicuous object in his juvenile museum. Such to Scott was No. 25, George's-square. Probably it was the secret charm of these old and precious associations which led his old and most intimate friend, Sir Adam Fergusson, afterwards to take a house in this square, and within, I beheve, one door of Scott's old residence. We may dismiss in a few words No. 19, South Castle-street, the house where he occupied a flat immediately on his marriage, and the Parliament house, where he sat, as a clerk of session, and the Outer house, where he might, in his earlier career, be seen often making his acquaintance merry over his stories ; — these places will always be viewed with interest by strangers : but it is his house, 39, North Ca.stle-street, around which gather the most lively associations con- nected with his mature life in Edinburgh. Here it was that he lived when in town, from soon after his marriage till the gi-eat break-up of his affliirs in 1826. Here a great portion of the best of his life was passed. Here he lived, enjoyed, worked, saw his friends, and felt, in the midst of his happy family, the seuse of the great name and affection that he had won amongst his fellow-men. It is evident, from what he says in his journal, when it had to be sold, that he was gi'catly attached to it. It was his pride very often when he took strangers home with him, to stop at the crossing of George-street, and point out to them the beauty and airiness of the situation. In one direction was St, George's 464 SCOTT. church, in another the whole length of George-street, with the monuments of Pitt and Dundas. In one direction, the castle on its commanding rock, in the other the Frith of Forth, and the shores of Fife beyond. It was in this house that " the vision of the hand " was seen from a neighbouring one in George-street, which is related in Lockhart's Life. A party was met in this house, which was situated near to, and at right angles with, George-street. " It was a party," says the relator, " of very young persons, most of them, like Menzies and myself, destined for the bar of Scotland. The weather being hot, we adjourned to a library, which had one large window looking northwards. After carousing here an hour or more, I observed that a shade had come over the aspect of my friend, who happened to be placed immediately opposite to myself, and said something that intimated a fear of his being unwell. ' No,' said he, ' I shall be well enough presently, if you will only let me sit where you are, and take my chair ; for there is a confounded hand in sight of me here, which has often bothered me before, and now it won't let me fill my glass with a goodwill.' I rose to change places with him accordingly, and he pointed out to me this hand, which, like the writing on Belshazzar's wall, disturbed his hour of hilarity. ' Since we sat down,' said he, ' I have been watching it — it fascinates my eye — it never stops — page after page is finished and thrown on that heap of manuscript, and still it goes on unwearied, and so it will be till candles are brought in, and God knows how long after that. It is the same every night — I can't stand a sight of it when I am not at my books.' ' Some stupid, dogged, engrossing clerk, probably,' exclaimed myself, or some other giddy youth of our society. *No, boys,' said our host, ' I well know what hand it is — 'tis Sir Walter Scott's.' This was the hand that, in the evenings of three summer weeks, wrote the two last volumes of Waverley." I went with Mr. Robert Chambers into this house, to get a sight of this window, but some back wall or other had been built up and had shut out the view. In the next house, occupied, I think, by a tailor, we, however, obtained the desired sight of this window on the second story at the back of Scott's house, and could very well have seen any hand at work in the same situation. The house was then inhabited by Professor Napier, editor at that time of the Edinburgh Review. The houses and places of business of the Ballantynes and Constable are not devoid of interest, as connected with Scott. In all these he was frequently for business or dining. The place of business of Constable, was at one time that which is now the Crown hotel, at the east end of Princes-street. That which is now the commercial I'oom, or the first floor, was Constable's book depot, and where he sat a good deal ; and a door near the window, looking out towards the Register Office, entered a lesser room, now altered, where Scott ised to go and write occasionally. The private residence of Constable vvas at Palton, six or seven miles from Edinburgh. James Ballantyne's was in St. John-street, a row of good, old-fashioned, and spacious houses, adjoining the Cauongate and Holyrood, and at no great dis SCOTT. 466 tance from his printing establishment. John Ballantyne's auction rooms were in Hanover-street, and his country house, styled by him Harmony-hall, was near the Frith of Forth by Trinity. Of both the private and convivial entertainments at these places, we have full accounts given by Lockhart. Sometimes, he says, Scott was there alone with only two or three intimate friends ; at others, there were great and jovial dinners, and that all guests with whom Scott did not wish to be burdened were feasted here by John Ballantyne, in splendid style; and many were the scenes of uproarious merriment amid his " perfumed conversations," and over the Parisian dehcacies of the repast. But, in fact, the buildings and sites in and around Edinburgh, with which associations of Scott are connected, are innumerable, almost universal. His Marmion, his Heart of Mid-Lothian, his Tales of the Canongate, have peopled almost every part of the city and neighbourhood with the vivid characters of his creation. The Canon- gate, the Cowgate, the Nether and West Bows, the Grass-market, the site of the old Tolbooth, Holyrood, the Park, Muschat's cairn, Salisbury Craig, Davie Dean's cottage, Liberton, the abode of Dominie Butler, Craigniillar Castle, and a thousand other places, are all alive with them. We are astonished, on visiting Edinburgh, to find how much more inten.se is the interest cast over different spots by his genius than by ordinary history. A superb monument to his memory, a lofty and peculiarly beau- tiful Gothic cross, now stands in Princes-street, within which stands his statue. The first place in the country which Scott resided at, is the scene of a sojourn at a very early age, and of subsequent visits — Sandy- knowe, near Kelso. In his autobiography he gives a most pic- turesque account of his life here. He says that it was here that he came soon after the commencement of his lameness, which was attributed to a fever, consequent on severe teething, when he was about eighteen months old. He dates his first consciousness of life from this place. He came here to be strengthened by country air, and was suffered to scramble about amongst the crags to his heart's content. His father, Walter Scott, was the first of his family who entered on a town life. His grandfather, Robert Scott, then very old, was living at this Saudy-knowe. The place is some five or six miles from Kelso. The spot lies high, and is still very wild, but in the time of Scott's childhood would be far wilder. It was then sur- rounded, far and wide, with brown moorlands. Tliese are now, for the most jiart, reclaimed by the plough ; but the countiy is open, naked, and solitary. The old tower of Smailliolm, which stands on the spot, is .seen afar off as a tall, square, and stern old Border keep. In his preface to the Eve of St. John, Scott says, " The circuit of the outer court being defended on three sides by a precipice and a morass, is accessible only from the west by a steep and rocky path. The apartments, as usual in a Border keep or fortress, are placed one above another, and communicate by a narrow stair. On tnc roof are two bartizans, or platforms, for defence or plcaauio. The inner door H H 466 SCOTT. of the tower is wood, the outer an iron grate ; the distance between them being nine feet, the thickness, namely, of the walls. Among the crags by which it is surrounded, one more eminent is called the Watchfold; and is said to have been the station of a beacon in the times of war with England." Stern and steadfast as is this old tower, being, as Scott himself says, nine feet thick in the wall, each room arched with stone, and the roof an arch of stone, with other stones piled into a steep ridge upon it, and being built of the iron-like whinstone of the rocks around, it seems as if it were a solid and time-proof portion of the crag on which it stands. The windows are small holes, and the feel- ing of grim strength which it gives you is intense. Since Scott's day, the inner door and the outer iron grate are gone. The place is open, and the cattle and the winds make it their resort. All around the black crags start out of the ground ; it is an iron wilderness. A few Ifiborious cotters live just below it ; and not far off is the spot where stood the old house of Scott's grandfather, a good modern farm-house and its buildings. This savage and sohtary monument of the ages of feud and bloodshed stands no longer part of a waste, where " The bittern clamoured from the moss, The wind blew loud and shrill ; " biit in the midst of a well-cultivated corn farm, where the farmer looks with a jealous eye on visitors, wondering what they can want with the naked old keep, and complaining that they leave his gates open. He had been thus venting his chagrin to the driver of my chaise, and wishing the tower were down — a stiff business to accom- plish — but withdrew into his houBe at my approach. Sterile and bare as is this wild scene, Scott dates from it, and no doubt correctly, his deep love of nature, and ballad romance. In the introduction to the third canto of Marmion, he thus refers to it : — " It was a barren scene and wild, Where naked clifFs were rudely piled ; But ever and anon between Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green; And well the lonely infant knew Recesses where the wall-flower grew, And honeysuckle loved to crawl Up the low crag and ruined wall. I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade The sun in all its round surveyed ; And still I thought that shattered tower The mightiest work of human power: And marvelled as the aged hind With some strange tale bewitched my mind — Of forayers who, with headlong force, Down from that strength had spurred their horse, Their southern rapine to renew, Far in the distant Cheviots blue; And home returning, filled the hall With revel, wassail-rout, and hrawl. Methouu'ht that still with trump and clang The gateway's broken arches ran?; Methought grim features, seamed with scars, Glared through the window's rusty baa-s. And ever, by the winter hearth Old tales I heard of woe or mirth, SCOTT. 467 Of lovers' slights, of ladies charms ; Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms ; Of patriot battles won of old By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold; Of later fields of feud and fight, When, pouring from their Highland height, The Scottish clans in headlong sway, Had swept the scarlet ranks aviay. While stretched at length upon the floor, Again I fought each combat o'er; Pebbles and shells in order laid, The mimic ranks of war displayed; And onward still the Scottish lion bore, And still the scattered southron fled before." Here we have the elements of Waverley at work in the child of four or five years old. In fact, the years that he spent here were crowded with the impressions of romance, and the excitement of the imagination. He was surrounded by singular and picture squecha- racters. The recluse old clergyman; old Mac Dougal, of Makerstoun, in his little laced cocked hat, embroidered scarlet waistcoat, light- coloured coat, and white hair tied military fashion, kneeling on the carpet before the child, and drawing his watch along to induce him to follow it. Old Ormistoun, the herdsman, that used to carry him out into the moorlands, telling him all sorts of stories, and blew his whistle when the nurse was to fetch him home. The nurse herself, who went mad, and to escape from this solitude, confessed that she had carried the child \ip among the crags, under a temptation of the devil, to cut his throat with her scissors, and bury him in the moss ; and was therefore dismissed at once, but found to be a maniac. These things were certain of sinking deep into the child's mind, amid the solitude and wildness of the place ; but all this time too he was fed daily with every sort of Border and other ballad : Watt of Harden, Wight Willie of Aikwood, Jamie Telfer of the fair Dod- head, Hardyknute, and the like ; and the stories of the cruelties practised on the rebels at CarUsle, and in the Highlands, after the battle of Culloden, related to him by a farmer of Yethyn who had witnessed them — "tragic tales which," said Scott, " made so great an impression upon me." In fact, here again were future materials of Waverley. Before quitting the stern old tower of Smailholm, and Sandy-knowe, — why so called, and why not rather Whinstone-knowe, it were difficult to say, — we may, in the eloquent words of Mr. Lock- hart, point out the celebrated scenes which lie in view from it. " Nearly in fiont of it, across the Tweed, Lessudden, the compara- tively small, but still venerable and stately, abode of the lairds of Raeburn; and the hoary abbey of Dryburgh, surrounded with yew- trees as ancient as itself, seem to lie almost at the feet of the spectator. Opposite him rise the purple pcalcs of Eildon, the tradi- tional scene of Thomas the Rhymer's interview with the Queen of Faerie ; behind are the blasted peel which the seer of Erceltlouu himself inhabited, 'The Broom of the Cowdenknowes,' the pastoral valley of the Leader, and the bleak wilderness of Lammermoor. To the eastward, the desolate grandeur of Hume castle breaks the horizon, as the eye travels towards the range of the Cheviot. A few H H 2 468 BCOTT. miles westwai'd, Melrose, 'like some tall rock with lichens grey,' appears clasped amidst the windings of the Tweed ; and the distance presents the serrated mountains of the Gala, the Ettrick, and the Yarrow, all famous in song. Such were the objects that had painted the earliest images on the eye of the last and greatest of the Border minstrels." The next place which became a haunt of the boyhood of Scott was Kelso. Here he had an uncle, Captain Robert Scott, and an aunt, Miss Janet Scott, under whose care he had spent the latter part of his time at Sandy-knowe. Scott, as I have observed, was one of the most fortunate men that ever lived in the circumstance of his early life, in which every possible event which could prejjare him for the ofi&ce of a great and original novelist concurred, as if by appoint- ment of Providence. He was led to visit and explore all the most beautiful scenes of his country — the Borders, the Highlands, those around Edinburgh ; and in every place at that time existed multi- tudes of singular characters, many of them still retaining the quaint garb and habits of a former day. We have seen that his school and college fellows comprised almost all the afterwards distinguished men of their age, no trivial advantage to him in his own progress. At Sandy-knowe, besides the characters we have referred to, his old grandfather and grandmother, and their quiet hfe — " Old Mrs. Scott sitting with her spinning-wheel at one side of the fu-e, in a dean, clean parlour ; the grandfather, a good deal failed, in his elbow- chair opposite; and the little boy lying on the carpet at the old man's feet, Hsteuing to the Bible, or whatever good book Miss Jenny was reading to them." He was away sometimes at Prestoniians, and there, as fortune would have it, for he must be em-iched with aU such treasure, he saw in George Constable the original of Monkbarns, and also the original Dalgetty. Kelso now added to the number of his original characters, and scenes for future painting. Miss Janet Scott lived, he tells us, in a small house in a large garden to the eastward of the churchyard of Kelso, which extended down to the Tweed. This grand old garden of seven or eight acres, had winding walks, mounds, and a banqueting-house. It was laid out in the old style with high pleached hornbeam hedges, and had a superb plane- tree. In many parts of the garden were fine yews and other trees, and there was also a goodly old orchard. Here, as in a very paradise, he used to read and devour heaps of poetry: Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, Percy's Reliques, and the works of Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Mackenzie, and other of the great novelists. The features of this garden remained deeply imprinted in his mind, and have been reproduced in different descriptions of works. Like the garden of Eden itself, this charming old garden has now vanished. Indeed, he himself relates with what chagrin he found, on revisiting the place many years afterwards, the good old plane-tree gone, the hedges pulled up, and the bearing trees felled ! I searched for some trace of it on my visit there in vain, though its locality is so well defined. There was, however, the old grammar-school not far off to which he used to go, and where he found, in Lancelot Whale, the prototype of SCOTT. 469 Dominie Sampson, and in two of the boys, his future printers, James and John Ballantyne. The neighbourhood of Kelso, the town itself quiet and old-fashioned, was well calculated to charm a boy of his dreaming and poetry-absorbing age. The Tweed here is a fine broad stream, the banks are steep and magnificently haing with splendid woods. The adjoining park and old castle, the ruins of the fine abbey in the town, and charming walks by the Tweed or the Teviot, which here imite, with their occasional broad sandy beach, and anglers wading in huge boots ; all made their delightful impressions upon him. He speaks with rapture of the long walks along the river with James BaUantyne, repeating poetry and telling stories. His uncle. Captain Robert Scott, Uved somewhat farther out on the same side as his'aunt, at a villa called Rosebank, which still stands unchanged amidst much fine lofty timber, and with its lawn running down to the Tweed. Kelso was the last country abode of the boyhood of Scott. Edin- burgh, with his occasional flights into the Highlands, and his raids into Liddesdale, kept him till his manhood. That found him with his blithe little wife in his cottage at Lasswade. Lasswade is a lovely neighbourhood. It is thrown up into lofty ridges all finely wooded. The country there is rich ; and the noble woods, the fine views down into the fertile valleys, and the Esk coming sounding along its channel from Rosslyn and Hawthornden, make it very charming. It is in the immediate neighbourhood not only of Rosslyn, with its beautiful chapel, and the classic clift's and woods of Hawthornden, but of Dalkeith ; and Lord Melville's park is at Lasswade itself. The cottage of Scott is still called Lasswade Cottage. Every one still knows the house as the one where he lived. A miller near said, "He minded him weel. He was an advocate then, and his wife a little dark Frenchwoman." The house was, at the time of my visit, occupied as a ladies' school, kept by two Miss Mutters. It looked somewhat neglected, and wanted painting and keeping in more perfect order ; but it is itself a very sweet secluded place. It is before you come to the village of Lasswade, about halfway down the hill, from an ordinary hamlet called Loanhead. It stands about fifty yards from the roadside ; and, in fact, the road divides at the projecting corner of its higher paddock ; the main highway descend- ing to the left to Lasswade, and the other to the right proceeding past several pleasant villas to the Esk. There are two roads leading from the highway up to the house ; one being the carriage-drive up to the front, and the other to the back, past some labourers' cottages. It is a somewhat singular-looking house, having one end tall, and thatched m a remarkably steep manner ; and then a long, low range, running away from it. The whole is thatched, wliitewashed, and covered with Ayrshire roses, evergreen plants, and masses of ivy. When you get round to the front, for it turns its back on the road, you find the lofty part projecting much beyond the low range, and having a sort of circular front. A gravel walk or drive goes quite round to this side, and is divided from a paddock by laurels. There 470 SCOTT. are three paddocks ; one opposite to the tall end, and extending down to the road, one in front, and one behind the house, in which tands, near the house, in a still smaller enclosure, a remarkably large sycamore-tree. The paddocks are all surrounded by tall, full- grown trees, and they shut in the place to perfect retirement. At the end of the low range lies a capital large kitchen-garden, with plenty of fruit-trees ; and this extends to the back lane, proceeding towards the vaUey of the Esk. The neighbourhood is full of the houses of people of wealth and taste. Here for many years lived Henry Mackenzie, the Man of Feeling. Here, at this cottage, how- ever secluded, Scott found plenty of literaiy society. He was busy with his German translations of Lenore, Gotz von Berlichingen, &c., and his Border Minstrelsy. Here Mat. Lewis, and Hsber, the collector of rare books, visited him ; as well as the crabbed Ritson, whom the rough and impatient Leyden put to flight. Then came Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, from a tour in the Highlands ; and Scott set off with them on a I'amble down to Melrose and Teviotdale. He had here partly written the Lay of the Last Minstrel, and edited and published Sir Tristram. These facts are enough to give a lasting interest to the cottage of Lasswade. The duties of his sheriffdom now called him frequently to the forest of Ettrick, and he fixed his abode at the lovely but solitary Ashestiel. Ashestiel occupied as an abode a marked and joyous period of Scott "s hfe. He was now a hapjjy husband, the happy father of a lovely young family. Fortune was smiling on him. He held an honourable, and to him delightful office, that of the sheriff of the county of Selkirk ; which bound him up with almost all that Border baUad country, in which he revelled as in a perfect faii-y land. He was fast rising into fame, and in writing out the visions of poetry which were now warmly and rapidly opening upon his mind, he was located in a spot most auspicious to their development. The solitude of Ashestiel was only felt by him as a refreshing calm, for his spirit was teeming with life and action, and his rides over hill and dale, his coursing with his favourite dogs and friends, along the hihs of Yair, " his burning of the water," in the deep and dark Tweed, which rolled sounding on beneath the forest banks below his house — that is, spearing salmon by torchlight : these were all but healthy and joyous set-offs to the bustle of inward life in the com- position of the Lay of the Last ]\Iinstrel, Marmion, the Lady of the Lake, the Lord of the Isles, of Waverley, and the active labom-s on Dryden, and a host of other literary undertakings. I believe Scott resided about seven years at Ashestiel ; and it is amazing what a mass of new and beautiful compositions he worked off there. It was here that his poetic fame grew to its full height ; and he was acknowledged, though Southey, Wordsworth, Campbell, and Cole- ridge were now pouring out their finest productions, to be the most original and popular writer of the day. There was to be one fresh and higher flight even by him, that of " The Great Unknown," and this was reserved for Abbotsford. There the fame of his romances began, there grew into its fuh-blown greatness ; but here the sun of SCOTT. 471 his poetic reputation ascended to its zenith. In particular, the poem of Marmion will for ever reoal the memory and the scenery of Ashestiel. The introductions to the different cantos, than which there are no poems in the English language more beautiful of their kind, are all imbued with the spirit of the place. They breathe at once the solitary beauty of the hills, the lovely charm of river, wood, and heath, and the genial blaze of the domestic hearth ; on which love, and friendship, and gladsome spirits of childhood, and the admiration of eager visitors to the secluded abode of " The Last Minstrel," had made an earthly paradise. The summer rambles up the Ettrick or Yarrow, by Newark tower, St. Mary's Loch, or into the wilds of MoflFatdale, when " The laverock whistled from the cloud : The stream was lively, but not loud ; From the white-thorn the May-flower shed Its dewy fragrance round our head : Not Ariel lived more merrily Under the blossomed bough than we." Then how the time flew by in the brighter season of the year, by dale and stream, in wood and wold, till the approach of winter and the Edinburgh session called them to town ! How vividly are these days of storm and cloud depicted ! — " Wlien dark December glooms the day, And takes our autumn joys away : When short and scant the sunbeam throws Upon the -seary waste of snows, A cold and profitless regard, Like patron on a needy bard — When sylvan occupation's done, And o'er the chimney rests the gun, And hang, in idle trophy near, The game-piiuch, fishing-rod, and spear: When wiry terrier, rough and grim, And greyhound with his length of limb, And pointer, now employed no more. Cumber our parlour's narrow floor : When in his stall the impatient steed Is long condemned to rest and feed : When from our snow-encircled liome Scarce cares the hardiest step to roam, Since path is none, save that to bring The needful water from the spring : When wrinkled news-page, thrice conned o'er, Beguiles the dreary hour no more, And darkling politician, crossed, Inveighs against the lingering post, And answering housewife sore complains Of carriers' snow-impeded wains: When such the country cheer, I come, Well pleased to seek our city home ; For converse, and for books, to change The forest's melancholy range ; And welcome, with renewed delight, The busy day and social night." — Introduction to Canto V. It was on a fine, fresh morning, after much rain, that, with a smart lad as driver, I sped in a gig from Galashiels up the valley on the way to Ashestiel. The sweet stream of the Gala water ran on our left, murmuring deliciously, and noble woods right and left, amongst them the classic mansion of Torwoodlee, and wood-crowned 472 SCOTT. banks, made the way beautiful. Anon we came out to the open country, bare but pleasant hills, and small light streams careering along the valleys, and shepherds, with their dogs at their heels, setting out on their long rounds for the day. There was an in- spiriting life and freshness in everything — air, earth, and sky. The way is about six miles in length, from Galashiels to Ashestiel. About three parts of this was passed, when we came to Clovenfoot, a few houses amongst the green hills, where Scott used often to lodge for days and weeks at the little inn, before he got to Ashestiel. The country about Ashestiel consists of moorland hills, stiU show- ing the darkness of the heather upon them. It is wilder, and has axL air of greater loneliness than the pastoral mountains of Ettrick and MoflFatdale ; and the pleasant surprise is the more hvely, when at once, in the midst of this brown and treeless region, after going on wondering where this Ashestiel can have hidden itself, not a house or a trace of existence being visible, but bare hill beyond hill, you suddenly see before you, down in a deep valley, a mass of beautiful woodlands emerging into view ; the Tweed displays its broad and rapid stream at the foot of this richly-wooded scene, and a tasteful house on the elevated bank beyond the river shows its long front and gables over the tree tops. This is Ashestiel, the residence of Scott, where he wrote Marmion, and commenced Waverley. We descended to the Tweed, where there is no bridge, but a ford, called by Scott " none of the best," " that ugly ford," which after long rains is sometimes carried away, and instead of a ford becomes a gulf. I remembered the incident of Scott himself being once pushed into it, when his horse found no bottom, and had to swim across ; and of a cart bringiug the new kitchen-range being upset, and leaving the much-desired fireplace at the bottom. The river was now much swollen, but my stout-hearted lad said he did not fear it, he often went there ; and so we passed boldly through the powerful stream, and up the woodland bank to the house. The proprietor and occupant, Major-General Sir James Eussell, a relative of Sir "Walter's, was just about to mount his horse to go out, but very kindly turned back and introduced me to Lady Russell, an elegant and very agreeable woman, the sister of Sir James and Captain Basil HaU. They showed me the house with the gi-eatest pleasure, and pressed me to stay luncheon. The house. Sir James said, was in Scott's time much less than at present. It was a farm- house, made out of an old Border tower by his father ; and in the room looking down the Tweed, a beautiful view, Scott wrote Mar- mion, and the first part of "Waverley, as well as the conclusion of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, and the whole of the Lady of the Lake. That room is now the centre sitting-room, and Sir Walter's little drawing-room is Sir James's bed-room. Sir James has greatly enlarged and improved the house. He has built a wing at each end, running at right angles with the old front, and his dining-room DOW enjoys the view which Scott's sitting-room had before. The house is very elegantly fui'nished, as well as beautifully situated. The busts of Sir Walter Scott and Captain Basil Hall occupy con- SCOTT. 473 spicuous places in the dining-room, and recal the associations of the past and the present. The grounds which face the front that is turned from the river and looks up the hill, are very charming ; and at the distance of a field is the mound in the wood called " The Shirra's knowe," because Scott was fond of sitting there. Its views are now obstructed by the growth of the trees, but if they were opened again would be wildly woodland, looking down on the Tweed, and on a brook which rushes down a deep glen close by, called the Stiel burn. The knowe has all the character of a cairn or baiTow, and I should think there is little doubt that it is one. It does not, however, stand on Sir James's property, and therefore it is not kept in order. Above the knowe, and Sir James's gardens, stretch away the uplands, and on the distant hiU lies the mound and trench called Wallace's trench. One would have thought that Scott was sufficiently withdrawn from the world at Ashestiel ; but the world poured in upon him even here ; and besides the visits of Southey, Heber, John Murray, and other of his distant friends, the fashionable and far-wandering tribes found him out. " In this little drawing-room of his," said Sir James Eussell, " he entertained three duchesses at once ; " add- ing, " Happy had it been for him had he been contented to remain here, and had left unbuilt the castle of Abbotsford, so much more in the highway of the tourist, and oflering so much more accommoda- tion." That is too true. The present house is good enough for a lord, and yet not too good for a private gentleman ; while its situ- ation is, in some respects, more beautiful than that of Abbotsford. The site of the house is more elevated, standing amid its fine woods, and yet commanding the course of the bold river deep beneath it, with its one bank dark with hanging forests, and that beyond open to the bare and moorland hills. But Scott would go to Abbotsford, and so must we. I have, somewhere else, expressed how greatly the innkeepers of Scotland are indebted to Scott. It is to him that thousands of them owe not merely subsistence, but ample fortunes. In every part of the country, where he has touched the earth with his magic wand, roads have run. along the heretofore impassable morass, rocks have given way to men, and houses have sprung up full of the necessary " entertainment for man and horse." Steamers convey troops of summer tourists to the farthest west and north of the Scottish coast; and every lake and mountain swarms with them. On arriving at Melrose, I was greatly struck with the growth of this traffic of picturesque and romantic travel. It was twenty years since I was in that village before, — Scott was then living at Abbotsford, and drew up to the inn-door to take post-horses on to Kelso. AVhile these were got out, we had a full and fair view of him as he sat, without his hat, in the carriage reading, as we ourselves were break- fasting near the window of a room just opposite. Then, there was one small inn in the place, and very few people in it ; now, there were two or three ; and these, besides lodging-houses, all crammed full of guests. The inn-yards stood full of travelling carriages, and 474 SCOTT. {servants in livery were lounging about in motley throngs. The ruins of the abbey were like a fair for people, and the intelligent and very obliging woman who shows them said that every year the numbers increased, and that every year foreigners seemed to arrive from more and more distant regions. At Abbotsford it was the same. It must be recollected that there had been a summer of incessant rain ; yet, both at the inn and at the abbey, the people said that it had appeared to make no difi'erence — they had been constantly full. As I drove up towards Abbotsford it was getting towards evening, and I feared I might be almost too late to be allowed to see through the house ; but I met three or four equipages returning thence, and as many fresh ones ai-rived whilst I was there. Some of these were obliged to wait a long time, as the housekeeper would not admit above a dozen persons or so at once ; and carriages stood about the court as though it were some great visiting day. That visiting day endures the whole summer through, and the money received for inspection alone must be a handsome income. If the housekeeper gets it all, as she receives it all, she will eventually match the old housekeeper of the Duke of Devonshire, at Chatsworth, who is said to have died a few years ago, worth 120,000/. ! and was still most anxious to secure the reversion of the post for her niece, but in vain ; the Duke probably, and very justly, thinking that there should be turn about even in the office of such liberal door-keeping. Abbotsford, after twenty years' interval, and having then been seen under the doubly exaggerating influence of youth and the recent influence of Scott's poetry, in some degree disappointed me. I had imagined the house itself larger, its towers more lofty, its whole exterior more imposing. The plantations are a good deal grown, and almost bury the house from the distant view ; but they still preserve all their formality of outline, as seen from the Gala- shiels road. Every field has a thick, black belt of fir-trees, which run about, forming on the long hill-side the most fantas*^^ic figures. The house is, however, a very interesting house. At first you come to the front next to the road, which you do by a steep descent down the plantation. You are struck, having a great castle in your imagination, with the smallness of the place. It is neither large nor lofty. Your ideal Gothic castle shrinks into a miniature. The house is quite hidden till you are at it, and then you find yourself at a small castellated gateway, with crosses cut into the stone pillars on each side, and the little window over it, as for the warden to look out at you. Then comes the view of this side of the house, with its portico, its bay windows with painted glass, its tail, battlemented gables, and turrets with their lantern terminations ; the armorial escutcheon over the door, and the corbels ; and then another escutcheon, aloft on the wall, of stars and crescents. All these have a good effect ; and not less so the light screen of freestone, finely worked and carved, with its elliptic arches and iron lattice-work, through which the garden is seen, with its espaher trees, high brick walls, and greenhouse, with a doorway at the end leading into a SCOTT. 475 second garden of the same sort. The house has a dark look, being built of the native whinstoue, or grau-wacke, as the Germans call it, relieved by the quoins and projections of the windows and turrets in freestone. All looks classic, and not too large for the poet and antiquarian builder. The dog Maida hes in stone on the right-hand of the door in the court, with the well-known inscrijition. The house can neither be said to be Gothic nor castellated. It is a com- bination of the poet's, drawn from many som-ces, but all united by good taste, and forming a unique style, more approaching to the Elizabethan than any other. Round the court, of which the open- work screen just mentioned is the farther boundary, runs a covered walk — that is, along the two sides not occupied by the house and the screen ; and in the wall beneath the arcade thus formed, are numerous niches, containing a medley of old figures brought from various places. There are Indian gods, old figures out of churches, and heads of Roman emperors. In the corner of the court, on the opposite side of the portico to the dog Maida, is a fountain, with some similar relics reared on the stone-work round it. The other front gives you a much greater idea of the size. It has a more continuous range of fajade. Here at one end is Scott's square tower, ascended by outside steps, and a round or octagon tower, at the other ; — you cannot teU, certainly, which shape it is, as it is covered with ivy. On this the flag-staff stands. At the end next to the square tower, i.e. at the right-hand end as you face it, you pass into the outer court, whicli allows you to go round the end of the house from one front to the other, by the old gateway, which once belonged to the Tolbooth of Edinburgh. Along the whole of this front runs a gallery, in which the piper used to stalk to and fro while they were at dinner. This man still came about the place, though he had been long discharged. He was a great vagabond. Such is the exterior of Abbotsford. The interior is far more interesting. The porch, copied from that of the old palace of Lin- lithgow, is finely groined, and there are stags' horns nailed up in it. When the door opens, you find yourselves in the entrance-hall, which is, in fact, a complete museum of antiquities and other matters. It is, as described in Lockhart's Life of Scott, wainscoted with old wainscot from the kirk of Dunfermline, and the pidpit of John Knox is cut in two, and placed as chifFonniers between the windows. The whole walls are covered with suits of armour, and arms, horns of moose deer, the head of a Musk bull, &c. At yom- left hand, and close to the door, are two cuirasses, some standards, eagles, &c., collected at Waterloo. At the opposite end of the room are two full suits of armour, one Italian, and one English of the time of Henry V, the latter holding in its hands a stupendous two-handed sword, I suppo.se six feet long, and said to have been found on Bos- worth field. Opposite to the door is the fireplace of freestone, imitated from an arch in the cloister at Melrose, with a peculiarly graceful spandrel. In it stands the iron grate of Archbishop Sharpe, who was murdered by the Covenanters ; and before it stands a most tnassive Roman camp-kettle. On the roof, at the centre of the 476 SCOTT. pointed arclies, runs a row of escutcheons of Scott's family, two or three at one end being empty, the poet not being able to trace the maternal lineage so high as the paternal. These were painted accordingly, in niibibus, with the motto, — Nox alta velat. Eound the door at one end are emblazoned the shields of his most intimate friends, as Erskine, Moritt, Rose, &c., and all round the cornice ran the emblazoned shields of the old chieftains of the Border, with this motto, in old English letters : — " These be the Coat Armouries OP the Clannis and Chief Men op name who keepit the Marchys op Scotland in the aulde tyme of the King. Trewe weare they in their tyme, and in their defence, God them dependit." The chairs are from Scone Palace. On the wall hangs the chain shirt of Cromwell ; and on a table at the window where visitors sign their names, lies the huge tawny lion skin, sent by Thomas Pringle from South Africa. A passage leading from the entrance-hall to the breakfast-room has a fine groined ceihng, copied from Melrose ; and the open space at the end, two small full-length paintings of Miss Scott and Miss Anne Scott. In the breakfast-room, where Scott often used to read, there is a table, constructed something like a pyramid, which turns round. On each side of this he laid books of reference, and turned the table as he wanted one or the other. Here is also a small oak table, at which he breakfasted. His daughter Anne used generally to join him at it ; but if she did not come, he made breakfast himself, and went to work again without waiting. In this room — a charming httle room, with the most cheerful views up the valley — there is such a collection of books as might serve for casual reading, or to refresh the mind when weary of writing, consisting chiefly of poetry and general litera- ture : besides a fine oil-painting over the fireplace of the Wolf's Craig, in Lammermoor, i. e. Fast Castle, by Thomson, and numbers of sweet water-colour pictures ; also a bust of Mackenzie, the Iklan of Feeling, in a niche. Then there is the library, a noble room, with a fine cedar ceiling, with beautiful compartments, and most lovely carved pendants, where you see bunches of gi'apes, human figures, leaves, &c. It is copied from Rosslyn or Melrose. There are three busts in this room ; the first, one of Sir Walter, by Chantrey ; one of Wordsworth ; and in the great bay window, on a table, a cast of that of Shakspeare, from Stratford. There is a full-length painting of the poet's son, the second Sir Walter, in his hussar uniform, with his horse. The work-table in the space of the bay window, and the fine carved ceiling in this part of the room, as well as the brass hanging lamp brought from Herculaneum, are particularly worthy of notice. There is a pair of most splendidly carved boxwood chairs, brought from Italy, and once belonging to some cardinal. The other chairs are of ebony, presented by George IV. There is a tall silver urn, standing on a porphyry table, filled with bones from the Pirasus, and inscribed as the gift of Lord Byron. The books in this room, many of which are SCOTT. 477 secured from hurt by wire-work doors, are said to amount to twenty thousand. Many, of course, are very valuable, having been collected with great care by Scott, for the purpose of enabling him to write his different works. Then, there is a large collection of both printed and MS. matter, relative to the rebellions of '15 and '45; and others connected with magic and demonology. Altogether, the books, many of which are presentation copies, from authors, not only of this but various other countries, make a goodly show, and the room is a noble one. In the drawing-room, the wood also is of cedar ; and here hangs the large painting by Raeburn, containing the full-length portrait of Sir Walter, as he sits under a wall, with his two dogs. This, one often sees engraved. It is said to be most hke him, and is certainly very like Chautrey's bust when you examine them together. There is a portrait of Lady Scott, too. Oh ! such a round-faced little blackamoor of a woman ! One instantly asks — where was Sir Walter's taste 1 Where was the judgment which guided him in describing Di Vernon, Flora Maclvor, or Rebecca 1 " But," said the housekeeper, " she was a very brilliant little woman ; " and this is also said by those who knew her. How greatly, then, must the artist have sinned against her ! The portrait of Miss Anne Scott is lovely, and you see a strong likeness to her father. Scott's mother is a very good, amiable, motherly-looking woman, in an old-fashioned lady's cap. Besides these articles, there is a table of verd antique, presented by Lord Byron. This is placed between the front windows, and bears a vase of what resembles purple glass, but in reality a transparent marble, inlaid beautifully with gold. There is also a black ebony cabinet, which was presented by George IV. with the chairs now in the hbrary. The armoury is a most remarkable room ; it is the collection of the author of Waverley ; and to enumerate all the articles which are here assembled, would require a volume. Take a few particulars. The old wooden lock of the Tolbooth of Selkirk ; Queen Mary's ofFei'ing-box, a small iron ark or coffer, with a circular lid, found in Holy rood House. Then Hofer's rifle— a short, stout gun, given him by Sir Humphrey Davy, or rather cy Hofei-'s widow to Sir Humphrey for Sir Walter. The housekeeper said, that Sir Humphrey had done some service for the widow of Hofer, and in her gratitude she offered him this precious relic, which he accepted for Sir Walter, and delighted the poor woman with the certainty that it would be pre- served to posterity in such a place as Abbotsford. There is an old white hat, worn by the burgesses of Stowe when installed. Rob Roy's purse and his gun ; a very long one, with the initials R. M. C, Robert Macgregor Campbell, round the touch-hole. A rich sword in a silver .sheath, presented to Sir Walter by the people of Edin- burgh, for the pains he took when George IV. was there. The sword of Charles I, afterwards belonging to the Marquis of ^lontrose. A collection of claymores, and of the swords of German executioners, of the very kind stiU used in that semi-barbarous, though soi-disanl philosophical country ; a country of private trials without juries, of 478 SCOTT. torture in prison, and of the bloodiest mode of execution possible. There the criminal, if not — as was a poor tailor of Konigsberg, in 1841 — broken on the wheel inch by inch for killing a bishop, is seated in a chair on the platform, with his head against a post, which the executioner strikes off. The head falls, the blood spouts like fountains from the struggling trunk, and falls in a crimson shower all over the figure, — a horrible spectacle ! On the blades of one of these swords is an inscription thus trans- lated by Scott himself, — " Dust, when I strike, to dust ; from sleepless grave, Sweet Jesu, stoop a sin-stained soul to save." The hunting-bottle of James I ; the thumbikins with which tne Covenanters were tortured ; the iron crown of the martyr Wishart ; Buonaparte's pistols, found in his carriage at Waterloo ; the pistols of Claverhouse, all of steel, according to the fashion of that time, and inlaid with silver ; two great keys of the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, found after the doors were burnt by the mob who seized and hanged Captain Porteus ; and innumerable other objects of the like kind. In the dining-room, the most curious thing is the painting of the head of Mary Queen of Scots, immediately after decapitation. Of this, it is said. Sir Walter took great pains to establish the authen- ticity. It is by Amias Cawood, and, to my fancy, strange as it may seem, gives a better notion of the beauty of Mary than any of her living portraits. But the hair is still black, not grey, or rather white, as stated by the historians. There is a considerable number of good portraits in this room. A fine one of Nell Gwynn, also much handsomer than we generally see her ; it is a fellow to the one in Glammis Castle. An equestrian portrait of Lord Essex, the par- liament general. Thomson, the poet, who must likewise have been handsome, if like this. John Dryden. Oliver Cromwell when young. The Duke of Monmouth. The marriage of Scott of Harden, to Muckle-mouthed Meg, who is making the widest mouth possible, with a very arch expression, as much as to say, " As you will be obliged to have me, I will, for this once, have the pleasure of giving you a fright." Charles XII. of Sweden. Walter Raleigh, in a broad hat, very different to any other portrait I have seen of him — more common looking. Small full-lengths of Henrietta, queen of Charles I, and of Ann Hyde, queen of James II. Prior and Gay, by Jervas. Hogarth, by himself Old Beardie, Scott's great grandfather. Lucy Walters, first mistress of Charles II, and mother of the Duke of Monmouth ; with the Duchess of Buccleuch, Monmouth's wife. Lastly, and on our way back to the entrance-hall, we enter the writing-room of Sir Walter, which is surrounded by book-shelves, and a gallery, by which Scott not only could get at his books, but by which he could get to and from his bed-room, and so be at work when his visitors thought him in bed. He had only to lock his door, and he was safe. Here are his easy leathern chair and desk, at which he used to work, and, in a little closet, is the last suit that he ever wore — a bottle-green coat, plaid waistcoat, of small pattern, grey plaid trousers, and white hat. Near these hang his walking-stick, SCOTT. 479 and his boots and walking shoes. Here are also his tools, with which he used to prune his trees in the plantations, and his yeoman-cavalry accoutrements. On the chimney-piece stands a German light-machine, where he used to get a light, and light his own fire. There is a chair made of the wood of the house at Eobroyston, in which WiUiam Wallace was betrayed ; having a brass plate in the back, stating that it is from this house, where " Wallace was done to death by Traitors." The writing-room is connected with the hbrary, and this little closet had a door issuing into the garden ; so that Scott had all his books at immediate command, and coidd not only work early and late without anybody's knowledge, but, at will, slip away to wood and field, if he pleased, unobserved. In his writing-room, there is a full- length portrait of Rob Roy, and a head of Claverhouse. The writing- room is the only sitting-room facing the south. It ranges with the entrance-hall, and between them lies a little soi-t of armoury, where stand two figures, one presenting a specimen of chain armour, and the other, one of wadded armour — that is, silk stuffed with cotton. Here, then, is a tolerable account of the interior of Abbotsford. I perceive that Mr. Lockhart, in his recent People's Edition of his Life of Scott, has given an account said to have been furnished by Scott himself to an annual. If it were correct at the time it was written, there must have been a general re-arrangement of paintings and other articles. Mr. Lockhart says he suspects its inaccuracy ; but what makes me doubt that Scott drew up the account is, that some of the most ornamental ceilings, which can not have been changed, are stated to be of dark oak, whereas they are of pencil cedar. I again walked up the mile-long plantation, running along the hill- side from the house up the vaUey, and found it again merely a walk through a plantation — nothing more. It is true that, as you get a good way up, you arrive at some high ground, and can look out up the valley towards Selkirk, and get some views of the Tweed, coming down between its moorland hills, which are very sweet. But the fault of Abbotsford is, that it is not laid out to the advantage that it might be. The ground in front of the house, highly capable of being laid out in beautiful lawn and shrubbery, is cut up with trees that shut out the noblest feature of the scene — the river. One side of the house is elbowed up with square brick garden walls, which ought to be at a distance, and concealed ; the other with an unsightly laundry-yard, with its posts and lines. Just down before the house, where the sweet and rich verdure of lawn should be, is set the farm-yard; and then comes the long, monotonous wood. This, in some degree, might be altered, and probably sometime wilL At present, the fault of the whole estate is stiffness and formality. The plantations of fir have, necessarily, a stiff, formal look ; but this, too, will mend with time. They are now felling out the fir timber ; and then what is called the hard-wood, that is, the de- ciduous trees, will, in course of time, present a softer and more agreeable look. I ranged all through these plantations, from the house to the foot 480 SCOTT. of the Eildou Hills, down by the Rhymer's glen and Huntley bum, It is amazing what a large stretch of poor land Sir Walter had got together. It is not particularly romantic, except for the fine back- ground of the Eildon HiUs ; but Sir Walter saw the scene with the eyes of poetic tradition. He saw things which had been done there, and sung of ; and all was beautiful to him : and in time, when the trees are better grown, and have a more varied aspect, and the plantations are more broken up, it will be beautiful. The views from the higher grounds are not so now. Down at the house the trees have so grown and closed up the prospect, that you can scarcely get a single glimpse of the river ; but when you ascend the woods, and come to an opening on the hills, you see up and down the valley, far and wide. Near a mount in the plantations, on which an old carved stone is reared, and held upright by iron stays, probably marking the scene of some border skirmish, there are seats of turf, from which you have fine views. You see below Abbotsford, where the Gala water comes sweeping into the Tweed, and where Galashiels lies smoking beyond, all compact, hke a busy little town as it is. And in another direction, the towers and town of Melrose are discerned at the foot of the bare but airy Eildon Hills ; and, still further, the black summit of the Cowdenknowes. Something beyond this spot, after issuing out of the first mass of Plantations, and ascending a narrow lane, I came to a farm-house, asked a boy in the yard what the farm was called ; and a thrill went through me when he answered — Kaeside. It was the farm of William Laidlaw, the steward and the friend of Sir Walter. We have seen how, in his earlier, joyous days. Sir Walter fell in with Laidlaw, Hogg, and Leyden. The expeditions into Ettrick and Yarrow, in quest of old border ballads, brought Scott into contact with the two former. He found, not only poetry, but actual living poets, amongst the shepherds and sheep farmers of the hills. I know of nothing more beautiful than the relation of these circumstances in Lockhart's Life of Scott. In Chambers' Edinburgh Journal of July and August, 1845, there is also a very interesting account of Laidlaw, and especi- ally of the coming of Scott and Leyden to Blackhouse farm, in Yarrow, Laidlaw's farm, and of their strolling over all the classic ground of the neighbourhood ; to St. Mary's Loch, to the thorn of Whitehope, Dryhope tower, the former abode of "the Flower of Yarrow," Yarrow church, and the Seven Stones, which mark the graves of the Seven Brothers, slain in " The Douglas Tragedy." How Laidlaw produced the famous baUad of " Auld Maitland," and how Leyden walked about in the highest excitement while Scott read it aloud. Then follows the equally interesting account of the visit of Scott and Laidlaw to Hogg, in Ettrick. These were golden days. Laidlaw and Hogg were relatives, and old friends. Hogg had been shepherd at Blackhouse, with Laidlaw's father. The young men had grown poets, from the inspiration of the scenes they hved amongst, and their mutual conversation. Then comes the great minstrel of the time, seeking up the scattered and unedited treasures of anti- quity, and finds these rustic poets of the hills, and they become SCOTT. 481 friends for life. It is a romance. Laidlaw was of an old and famous but decayed family. The line had been cursed by a maternal ancestress, and they believed that the curse took effect: they all became lawless men. But Laidlaw went to live at Abbotsford, as the factor or steward of Scott ; and in him Scott found one of the most faithful, intelligent, and sympathizing friends, ready either to plant his trees or write down his novels at his dictation, when his evil days came upon him. In our day-dreams we imagine such things as these. We lay out estates, and settle on them our friends and faithful adherents, and make about us a paradise of affection, truth, and intellect ; but it was the fortune of Scott only to do this actually. Here, at his little farm of Kaeside, lived Laidlaw, and after Scott's death went to superintend estates in Eosshire; and his health at length giving way, he retired to the farm of his brother, a sheep-fiirmer of Contin ; and there, in as beautiful scenery as Scotland or almost any country has to show, the true poet of nature, this true-hearted man, breathed his last on the 18th of May, 1845. Those who wander through the woods of Abbotsford, and find their senses regaled by the rich odour of swcetbriar and woodbines, with shrubs oftener found in gardens, as I did with some degree of surprise, will read with interest the following direction of Scott to Laidlaw, in which he explains the mystery : — " George mu.st stick in a few wild roses, honeysuckles, and sweetbriars in suitable places, so as to produce the luxuriance we see in the woods which Nature plants herself We injure the effects of our plantings, so far as beauty is concerned, very much by neglecting underwood." In the woods of Abbotsford, the memory of Laidlaw will be often recalled by the sight and odour of these fragrant plants. Descending into a valley beyond Kaeside, I came to the fin-ester's lodge, on the edge of a little solitary loch. Was this cottage formerly the abode of another worthy, Tom Purdie, whom Scott has, on his gravestone in Melrose abbey-yard, styled " Wood-forester of Abbots- ford " ? — a double epithet which may be accounted for by foresters being often now-a-days keepers of forests where there is no wood, as in Ettrick, &c. Whether, however, this was Tom Purdie's abode or not, I found it inhabited by a very obliging and intelligent fellow, as porter there. The little loch here I understood him to be called Abbotsford loch, in contradiction to Cauldshiels loch, which is still further up the hills. This Cauldshiels loch was a favourite resort of Scott's at first. It had its traditions, and he had a boat upon it ; but finding that it did not belong to his estate, as he supposed, by one of his purchases, he would never go upon it again, though requested to use it at his pleasure by the proprietor. By the direc- tion of the forester, I now steered my way onward from wood to wood, towards the Eildon hills, in quest of the glen of Thomas the Rhymer. The evening was drawing on, and there was a deep solitude and solemnity over the dark pine woods through which I passed. The trees which Scott had planted were in active process of being thinned out, and piles of them lay here and there by the cart tracks I I 482 sooTT through the woods, and heaps of the peeled bark of the larch for sale. I thought with what pleasure would Scott have now surveyed these operations, and the beginning of the marketable profit of the woods of his own planting. But that day was past. I went on over fields embosomed in the black forest, where the grazing herds gazed wildly at mc, as if a stranger were not often seen there ; crossed the deep glen, where the little stream roared on, lost in the thick growth of now lofty trees ; and then passed onward, down the Rhymer's glen, to Huntly burn — every step bearing fresh evidence of the vanished romance of Abbotsford. How long was it since Miss Edge- ^vorth sate by the little waterfall in the Rhymer's glen, and gave her name to the stone on which she was seated ? The house at Huntly burn, which Scott had purchased to locate his old friend Sir Adam Fergusson near him, was now the house of the wood-factor ; and piles of timber, and sawn boards on all sides, marked its present use. Lockhart was gone from the lovely cottage just by at Chiefs wood ; and Scott himself, after his glory and his troubles, slept soundly at Dryburgh. The darkness that had now closed thickly on my way, seemed to my excited imagination to have fallen on the world. What a day of broad hearts and broad intellects was that which had just passed ! How the spirit of power, and of creative beauty, had been poured abroad amongst men, and especially in our own country, as with a measureless opening of the Divine hand ; and how rapidly and extensively had then the favoured ministers of this intellectual diffusion been withdrawn from the darkened earth ! Scott, and almost all his family who had rejoiced with him — Abbotsford was an empty abode — the very woods had yielded up their faithful spirits — Laidlaw and Purdie were in the earth — Hogg, the shepherd-poet, had disappeared from the hills. And of the great lights from England, how many were put out ! — Crabbe, Southey, Coleridge, Byron, Shel- ley, Keats, Campbell, Mrs. Hemans, Miss Landon, Hood, and Lamb ; many of them bidding farewell to earth amid clouds and melancholy, intense as was the contrasting brightness of their noonday fame. " Sic transit gloria mundi." The thought passed through me ; but a second followed it, saying, " Not so — they by whom the glory is created are yet travelling onward in the track of their eternal destiny. ' Won is the glory, and the grief is past.' " The next morning I took my way to Dryburgh, the closing scene of the present paper. Dryburgh Abbey lies on the Tweed, about four miles from Melrose. You turn off — when you have left the Eildon hills on your right, and have seen on your left, in the course of the river, the Cowdenknowes, Bemerside, and other classic spots — down a steep and woody lane, and suddenly come out at a wide bend of the river, where, on your side, the gravel brought down by the floods spreads a considerable strand, and the lofty banks all round on the other are finely wooded. Eew are the rivers which can show more beautiful scenery in their course than the Tweed. But what strikes you strangely are the ruins of a chain bridge, which some SCOTT. 483 time ago was carried away by the wind. There stand aloft the tall white frames of wood to which the bridge was attached at each end, like great skeletons ; and the two main chains stretch across, and fragments of others dangle in the air — iron rags of ruin. It has a most desolate and singular look. This, I suppose, was put up by the late whimsical Earl of Buchan, to whom Dryburgh belonged, as now to his nephew. At the opposite end of the bridge peeps out of the trees the top of a little temple. It is a temple of the Muses, where the nine sisters are represented consecrating Thomson the poet. Aloft, at some distance in a wood, you descry a gigantic figure of stone ; and this, on inquiry, you find to be William Wallace, who, I beUeve, was never here, any more than Thomson. It was in- tended for Bums ; but as the block was got out of the quarry on the opposite side of the river, close to where you land from the ferry- boat, the fantastic old fellow took it into his head that, as it was so large a block, it should be Wallace. As you ascend a lane from the ferry to go to the Abbey, you find a few cottages, and a great gate built in the style of an old castle gateway, with round stone pillars with lantern summits, and the cross displayed on each — a sort of poor parody on the gateway at Abbotsford. This castle gateway is the entrance, however, to no castle, but to a large orchard ; and over the gate is inscribed — " Hoc Pomarium sua manus satmn Parentibus suis optimis sac : D. S. Buchan iae Comes." That is, " This orchard, sow?i by his own hands, the Earl of Buchan dedicates to his best of parents." The whole is worthy of the man. If there be any sense in it, the orchard was sown by this silly old lord, not the trees ; and these were merely sown by him, and not planted. And why dedicate an orchard to his deceased parents ? Were they so excessively fond of apples ? Why not satisfy himself with some rational monument ? But then he must have been rational himself ; and it must be recollected that this was the man who, when Scott was once very Ul, forced himself into the house, in order to get at the invahd, and arrange with him in his last moments the honours of a great heraldic funeral pro- cession, — the same man that Scott afterwards congratulated himself was dead first, lest he should have made some foohsh extravagance of the sort over his remains. But to return to the orchard gateway — it is droll enough, imme- diately under the pious and tender inscription to his parents, in Latin, to see standing this sentence in plain English — " Man-traps AND SPRING-GUNS PLACED IN THIS ORCHARD." Query ? Are they too dedicated to his best of parents, or only to his poor brethi'en of mankind ? Dryburgh is a sweet old monastic seclusion. Here, lying deep below the surrounding country, the river sweeps on between high, rocky banks, overhung with that fine growth of trees which no river presents in more beauty, abundance, and luxuriance. A hush pre- vails over the spot, which tells you that some ancient sanctity is there. You feel that there is some hidden glory of rehgious art and piety somewhere about, though you do not see it. As vou advance, Il2 484 8C0TT. it is up a lane overhung with old ashes. There are primitive-looking cottages, also overshadowed by great trees. There are crofts, with thick tall hedges, and cattle lying in them with a sybaritic luxury of indolence. You are still, as you proceed, surrounded by an ocean of foliage and ancient stems ; and a dream-like feeling of past ages seems to pervade not only the air but the ground. I do not know how it is, but I think it must be by a mesmeric influence that the monks and the holy dreamers of old have left on the spots which they inhabited their peculiar character. You could not construct such a place now, taking the most favourable materials for it. Take a low, sequestered spot, full of old timber and cottages, and old grey walls ; and employ all the art that you could, to give it a monastic character — it would be in vain. You would feel it at once ; the mind would not admit it to be genuine. No, the old monastic spots are full of the old monastic spirit. The very ground, and the rich old turf are saturated with it. Dig up the soil, it has a monastery look. It is fat, and black, and crumbling. The trees are actual monks themselves. They stand and dream of the Middle Ages. With the present age and doings they have no feelings, no sym- pathies. They keep a perpetual vigil, and the sound of anthems has entered into their very substance. They are solemn piles of the condensed silence of ages, of cloistered musings ; and the very whisperings of their leaves seemed to be muttered aves and ora pro nobises. This feeling lies all over Dryburgh like a living trance ; and the arrangements of these odd Buclians for admitting you to the tomb of Scott, enable you to see the most of it. You perceive a guide-post, and this tells you to go on to the house where the keys are kept. You descend a long lane amid these old trees and crofts, and arrive at a gate and lodge, which seem the entrance to some gentleman's grounds. Here prol>ably you see too a gentleman's carriage waiting, and present yourself to go in. But you are told that, though this is the place, you must not enter there. You must go on still farther to the house where the keys are kept. At length you find yourself at the bottom of another stretch of lane, and here you stop for the simple reason that you can go no further — you have arrived at the bank of the river. Necessarily then looking about you, you see on one side a gate in a tall wall, which looks into an orchard, and on the other a cottage in a garden. On this cottage there is a board bearing this long-sought inscription — " The Abbey keys kept here." You knock, aud ask if you can see the Abbey ; and a very careless " Yes," assures you that you can. The people appointed to show the ruins and Scott's grave are become notorious for their lumpish, uncivil behaviour. It would seem as if the owner of the place had ordered them to make it as unpleasant to visitors as possible ; a thing very impolitic in them, for they are making a fortune by it. Indeed Scott is the grand benefactor of all the neighbourhood, Dryburgh, Melrose, and Abbotsford. At Abbotsford and Melrose ' they are civil, at Dryburgh the very reverse. They seem as though they would make you feel that it was a favour to be admitted to the grounds of Lord SCOTT. 485 Buchan ; and you are pointed away at the gate of exit with a manner which seems to say, " There ! — begone ! " The woman of the cottage was already showing a party ; and her sister, just as sulky, ungracious a sort of body as you could meet with, was my guide. The gate in the wall was thrown open, and she said, " You must go across the grass there." I saw a track across the grass, and obediently pursued it ; but it was some time before I could see anything but a very large orchard of young trees, and I began to suppose this another Pomarium dedicated by old Lord Buchan to his parents, and to wish him and his Pomaria undei the care of a certain old gentleman ; but anon ! — the ruins of the Abbey began to tower magnificently above the trees, and I forgot the planter of orchards and his gracious guides. The ruins are certainly very fine, and finely relieved by the tall, rich trees which have sprung up in and around them. The interior of the church is now greensward, and two rows of cedars grow where formerly stood the pillars of the aisles. The cloisters and south transept are more entire, and display much fine workmanship. There is a window aloft, I think in the south transept, peculiarly lovely. It is formed of, I believe, five stars cut in stone, so that the open centre within them forms a rose. The light seen through this window gives it a beautiful effect. There is the old chapter-house also entire, with an earthen floor, and a circle drawn in the centre, where the bodies of the founder and his lady are said to lie. But even here the old lord has been with his absurdities ; and at one end, by the window, stands a fantastic statue of Locke, reading in an open book, and pointing to his own forehead with his finger. The damp of the place has blackened and mildewed this figm-e, and it is to be hoped will speedily eat it quite up. What has Locke to do in the chapter- house of a set of ancient friars ? The grave of Scott — for a tomb he had not yet got — was a beau- tiful fragment of the ruined pile, the lady aisle. The square from one pillar of the aisle to the next, which in many churches, as in Melrose, formed a confessional, forms here a burial-place. It is that of the Scotts of Haliburton, from whom Scott was descended ; and that was probably one reason why he chose this place, though its monastic beauty and associations were, no doubt, the main causes. The frag- ment consists of two arches' length, and the adjoining one is the family burial-place of the Erskines. The whole, with its tier of small Norman sectional arches above, forms, in fact, a glorious tomb, much resembling one of the chapel tombs in Winchester ; and the trees about it are dispersed by nature and art so as to give it the utmost Toicturesque effect. It is a mausoleum well befitting the author of the Lay of the Last Minstrel ; and, though many wonder that he should have chosen to be interred in another man's ground and property, yet, independent of all such considerations, we must say that it would be difficult to select a spot more in keeping with Scott's character, genius, and feelings. But that which surprised every one, was the neglect in which the grave itself remained. After thirteen years, it was still a mere dusty and slovenly heap of earth. 48|6 SCOTT. His mother lay on his right hand, and his wife on his left. His mother had a stone laid on her grave, but neither Scott nor his wife had anything but the earth which covered them ; and lying imder the arched ruin, nature herself was not allowed, as she otherwise would, to fling over the poet the verdant mantle with which she shrouds the grave of the lowliest of her children. The contrast was the stranger since so splendid a monument had been raised to his honour in Edinburgh ; and that both Glasgow and Selkirk had their statue-crowned column to the author of Waverley. The answer to inquiries was, that his son had been out of the coimtry ; but a plain slab, bearing the name, and the date of his death, would have conferred a neatness and an air of respectful attention on the spot, which woidd have accorded far more grate- fully with the feelings of its thousands and tens of thousands of visitors than its then condition. Since that time an oblong tomb has been placed over Sir Walter's grave, with this simple and all-suflBcient inscription, — "Sir Walter Scott, Baronet, died September 21st, 1832." \^ii ^'"i THOMAS CAMPBELL. Thomas Campbell was born in Glasgow on the 27th of July, 1777. His father was a resident of that city, a re.spectable merchant, and descended from an ancient Highland family, on which the poet evi- dently prided himself, though undoubtedly he was the greatest man his family ever produced. His ancestors ti-aced their descent from Gilespic-le-Camile, the lirst Norman earl of Lochawe ; and the Scotch still pronounce the name Camel, or more broadly, Caumel. The old family residence was at Kirnan, in the vale of Glassary, on the southern frontier of the Western Highlands. So proud were the poet's parents of this, that they always styled themselves Camp- bells of Kirnan ; and the poet's mother, after he had risen to fame, would, when requesting articles to be sent home from shops, say, " Send them to Mrs. Campbell's of Kirnan ; " and when that did not seem to produce a very profound impression of respect, would add, " the mother of the author of The Pleasures of Hope." Campbell's gi-andfather was the last laird of Kirnan. He died in Edinburgh, and Campbell's father went to America, where, falling in with a Daniel Campbell, a clansman, but no way related, they agreed to return to Glasgow, and set up as Virginia merchants. They were 488 CAMPBELL. successful, and Campbell's father, then forty-five, married the daughter of his partner, who was only twenty. They had no less than eleven children, who had various fortunes, and all of whom the poet outlived. Three of them were daughters, none of whom married, but had, as governesses, or teachers of schools, acquired a small comjietency, which was increased by an allowance of 100/. a-year for many years by the poet. Campbell's father acquired a handsome fortune, but this was, for the most part, swept away by the breaking out of the American war in 1775, two years before the poet's birth. His father was then in his sixty-fifth year ; but though he had so large a family, he had not the elasticity left to continue his trade, and retired upon the meagre remnant of his property. Two years later, his youngest son, Thomas, was born, that is, in his father's sixty-seventh year, at which age it is remarkable that the poet died. Thomas Campbell was born in the house where his parents had resided since their marriage. This was in the High-street, but has now been long swept away by the progress of modern improvement, Campbell's father was a man of sujDerior ability and education. He was an intimate friend of Adam Smith, and of Dr. Thomas Reid, author of the " Inquiry into the Human Mind," and Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow. By Dr. Reid the infant poet was baptized, and named after himself. Campbell's mother was a woman of a firm and somewhat acerb character, but clever and active, which was rendered the more necessary by the easy and indolent temperament of the father. Campbell, who is described as a handsome boy, was first sent to the grammar-school, then under the management of Mr. Allison, who soon perceived the talents of his pupil. The discovery was hailed with delight by Campbell's parents, and his father devoted himself assiduously to his assistance in preparing his tasks, a proof that the old gentleman was a good scholar. Campbell was soon at the head of the school, but not without feehng the effects of too close application; and his father was obliged, on one occasion, to send him for six weeks to a cottage on the banks of the Cart, a few miles out of town. This country residence is said to have left such vivid imagery on his mind, that the effect was constantly appearing in the poetry of his mature years. During his grammar-school life, he began writing poetry at the age of ten, specimens of which Dr. Beattie has preserved in his veiy interesting life of the poet. But his greatest passion was for the classical authors, and his progress in Latin and Greek was extraordinary. In his twelfth year he made very respectable translations from Anacreon,aud acquired the ambi- tion of being a Greek scholar, which never left him, and which, to the last, predominated over his ambition as a poet. In his fourteenth year he entered the college of Glasgow, and con- tinued there till 1795, or till his eighteenth year. His course at college was one continuous triumph, especially in classical attain- ment. He carried off most of the chief prizes, and at the same time produced compositions both in prose and verse perfectly astonishing CAMPBELL. 489 in a boy of his age. These may be seen in his published works, or in his Life and Letters, by Dr. Beattie. In translations from the Greek he excelled all his fellow-students, so that they were afraid to enter the lists with him. In his translations from Homer, Aristo- phanes, ..Eschylus, and others, he entered into the spirit of the ancients, with a wonderful ardour, and a beauty of expression which astonished the professors. In his fourth session he carried off two prizes : one of these was the first prize for the best translation of the Clouds of Aristophanes ; and Professor Young, in awarding the honours, declared that this was the best performance which had ever been given in by any student at the University. But the pro- duction which won him still higher celebrity was that which gained his second prize. This was an Essay on the Origin of Evil, which was expected to be prose, but which was in poetry. It was the chef-d''(pm:re of the Moral Philosophy class, and gave him at once a local celebrity as a poet. In the fifth session he carried off" three prizes. One of these was for the Choephoroe of J^schylus ; one for a translation of a chorus from the Medea ; and a third, the translation of Claudian's " Epitha- lamium on the Marriage of the Emperor Honorius and Maria." During this period he was not less zealously engaged in studying the works of the English poets, especially Milton's Paradise Lost, and the writings of Pope, Thomson, Gray, and Goldsmith. The influ- ence of Pope and Goldsmith is sufficiently obvious in his future style. A writer in Hogg's "Weekly Instructor, who knew Campbell well, says, " At this period Campbell was a fair and beautiful boy, with winning manners, with a mild and cheerful disposition ; he was not only the wit of the school, but was greatly desirous to see himself in print. Having got one of his juvenile poems printed, to defray the expense of this, to him, then bold adventure, it is related that he had recourse to the singular expedient of selling copies to the students at a penny each. This anecdote has been told by one who remembers seeing the beautiful boy standing at the college gate with the slips in his hand." The story was one which Camp- bell was not fond of hearing told in his later years. The verses began, — " Loud shrieked afar the angry sprite That rode upon the storm of night, And loud the waves were heard to roar That lashed on Morven's rocky shore. " These he afterwards remodelled into his beautiful ballad of Lord Ullin's Daughter. The same writer describes the electric effect of his recitation of his favourite passages from the Gi'cek poets, as he often heard him give them in after years. During his life at college, his great companions were James Thom- son, a youth from Lancashire, with whom he ever after maintained the warmest friendship, and who had two busts of the poet exe- cuted by Baily, one of which he presented to the University at which they had studied together. The other was Gregory Watt, the 490 CAMPBELL. youngest son of the celebrated engineer, who, after displaying great talents, died at the early age of twenty-seven. But no circumstance had so decided an influence on the mind of Campbell during his college years as the trial of Muir, Gerald. Skirving, Margarot, and Palmer, for high treason. It was the time when the outbreak of the French Revolution had stirred the spirit of all Europe. The lovers of liberty were active in diffusing their opinions, and no government was more alarmed and more severe in its endeavours to repress them than that of England. These men would not now even attract attention by advancing the notions for which they were then condemned to transportation to Botany Bay, where they were treated with such rigour, that few or none of them lived to return. Campbell's mind was all aglow with the flame of liberty, imbibed from his favourite Greek authors. He conceived an ardent desire to witness the trials of these patriots. His mother furnished him with five shilhngs for his expenses on the way, and he was to lodge at his aunt's house in Edinburgh. He walked there, a distance of forty-two miles, and back. He witnessed the trial of Gerald, the most gentlemanly and eloquent of all these ill-used men. Gerald had been a student at the University, and a great favourite with the professors. Campbell relates the effect the trial had upon him : " Hitherto I had never known what public eloquence was ; and I am sure the judiciary Scotch lords did not help me to a conception of it ; speaking, as they did, bad arguments in broad Scotch Gerald's speech annihilated the remembrance of all the eloquence that had ever been heard within the walls of that house. He quieted the judges, in spite of their indecent interruptions of him, and pro- duced a silence in which you might have heard a pin fall to the ground. At the close of his address, I turned to a stranger beside me, exclaiming — ' By heavens, Sir, that is a great man ! ' ' Yes, Sir,' he answered, ' and he makes every other man feel great who listens to him.' " Campbell returned to Glasgow so deeply impressed by what he had seen and heard, and by the insight which this had given him, young as he was, into the great questions before the world, and the arbitrary and unjust spirit in the government, that all his wit and gaiety had fled. He went about brooding in deep abstraction on all that he had seen and heard ; and, no doubt, the ardent advocacy of liberty, the burning and never-quenched championship of the op- pressed, which came forth in his Pleasures of Hope, dated from that day. That fire was kindled within him which broke forth in his vehement episodes on the wrongs of Poland, the massacre of Warsaw, the iniquity of the slave-trade, the oppressions of India, and the melancholy fate of individual patriots. But a more immediate vent was found for his indignant feelings in the debating-club which the students established, and where Campbell took a cUstinguished rank amongst the embryo orators. But all this time the res angustce domi were pressing upon the minds of his anxious parents what profession the young scholar should or could embrace. His only inclination was for the Church., CAMPBELL. 491 but his family tad no patronage. He had witnessed some surgical operations, and his mind revolted from medicine. His chance of a legal career was small, from his want of the necessary finances ; and in the state of anxious uncertainty in which he was, he accepted a tutorship in the solitary Isle of Mull, in the Hebrides. His engage- ment was only for a few months, to give lessons in the classics to the children of Mrs. Campbell, of Sunipol, on the Point of Callioch. This lies on the northern shore of Mull, and the house of Sunipol is conspicuous on the voyage from Tobermory, in Mull, to StaiFa. The session of the University being closed in May, 1795, he set off with a young fellow-collegian, Joseph Fiulayson, who also was going on a like destination into the Highlands. They rambled along on foot, each with a change of linen tied up in a bundle, and slung over his shoulder on a stick. Thus they went on. " All the world," said Campbell, " did not contain two merrier boys." They sang and recited poetry through the wild Highland glens, surrounded by roaring streams, yellow primroses, and chanting cuckoos, heathy mountains, and chmbing goats. The young poet declared that he felt a soul in every muscle of his body. At Inverary, the two friends parted, and Campbell went on alone across Loch-awe to Oban, whence he sailed to Mull. In one day he walked across the island, and reached Sunipol at twilight. Nothing can be conceived more likely to excite and impress the mind of a juvenile poet than five months' residence in such a place. The Point of Callioch commanded a magnificent view of thirteen isles of the Hebrides, prominent amongst them Staffa and lona. Here he was in the profoundest solitude, amid wild rocks, gloomy heaths, and stormy seas. The wild deer bounded across the melan- choly landscape ; the eagle soared above, or sat watching on some craggy peak ; the distant isles, studding the rude ocean, loomed mistily and strange ; and the sound of the mountain torrent, the dashing surf, or the distant roar of the Coryvreckan, or the cries of the curlew or the seagull, fell alone on his ear. He visited Staffa and lona with a lonely enthusiasm, and filled his mind with the imagery of Reullura, of " Aodh, the dark-attired Culdee," and many a wild strain that now lives familiarly in his poetry. Nor did he lack a subject of more cheerful in.spiration. A young lady of the name of Caroline , in all the sweetness of seventeen, and of remarkable beauty, was on a visit at Sunipol, and soon was hymned in strains of affectionate admiration, which she retained as precious relics through a long life. Returning to Glasgow, he passed his last session at the University with his usual eddl; but he was in a depressed mood, and in failing health. This was attributed to his over-exertion in his duties as tutor, and in anxiously polishing up his prize poems from the Greek ; but it is far more probable that the anxieties of a first love, which gave no hope of success in the dark prospects of his life, was the real cause. Only eighteen, and overflowing with feeling and imagina- tion, the poetic vision of the brilliant Caroline had produced its natural effect. At the end of the session he again went out as 492 CAMPBELL. tutor. This time it was to educate the present Sir Williain Napier of MilUken, at Downie in Argyleshire. The great attraction of this engagement was, that Downie was not far from Inverary, the abode of the beloved Caroline. Here also he was visited by some of his college friends, — Hamilton Paul, and Douglas, and Mackenzie. Here, amid the most magnificent scenery of mountains, heaths, lakes, and ocean shores, Campbell spent a year, roaming about, when not oc- cupied with his easy duties, and storing his mind with imagery, imaginations, and feelings, which enriched his poetry all his life afterwards. On a point of a lovely bay stands the House of Downie ; and at another point, near a farm-house, is a beautiful green hill, still called " The Poet's Hill," where he nsed to sit for hours, reciting passages from the Medea, and gazing out over the Sound of Jura, over stormy seas, wild ci'aggy shores, the Isle of Jura, and hoary mountains, which could not fail to raise the sublimest and most enduring sensations in such a mind. At the House of Downie there is still shown the poet's room, in a small wing called the " Bachelor," — the one room with one window, which was his school-room, his study, and sleeping-room. Downie is also near Lochgilphead, at the entrance of the Criuan Canal, through which such troops of tourists pass every summer to the Western Isles, their steamer gliding along the very scenes where Campbell used to wander, wonder, and recite. He there wrote many parts of the Pleasures of Hope ; and the scenery of the same neigh- bourhood is copiously reproduced in the poems of Glencoe, Gertrude of Wyoming, and many others. Here he indulged the dreams of that same sweet first love, and often fed its flame by the vicinity to the charming Caroline. It was on recalling these days that he wrote •- " In joyous youth what soul hath never known Thought, I'eeliiig, taste, harmonious to its own? Who hatii not paused while beauty's pensive eye Asked from his heart the homage of a sigh ? Who hath not owned, with rapture-smitten frame, The power of grace, the magic of a name ?" It was here that be wrote, as if inspired by the tenderness of love, and the sublimiby of the mountain-land around him, in that sonorous and high-toned style which distinguishes the Pleasures of Hope from all other poems, not only those of other writers, but his own. It was no longer the echo of Goldsmith, Eogers, and Pope, but it had something of the gorgeous resonance of Darwin, and yet something different too, and peculiar to the young poet. It was a music sounding in his own soul, vocal with the wild swell of seas and mountain winds — a new grand organ of entranced spirit, touched by the hand of feeling, to which his whole being was tuned. The first specimen of this style was in his Memory of Miss Broderick, who shot her faithless lover ; lines which he afterwards called Love and Madness. This poem has all the characteristics of the larger one. You recognise the clarion notes of the music, the passion, and the tones at the first line, — " Say then, did pitying Heaven condemn the deed, When vengeance bade thee, faithless lover, bleed t CAMPBaLi. 493 Long had I Tvatched thy dark forehoding brow, What time thy bosom scorned tliy dearest vow ! Sad. though I wept tlie friend, tlie lover cl'.anged, Still thy cold look was scornful and estranged, Till, from thy pity, love, and shelter thrown, I wandered hopeless, friendless, and alone." It is singular that as none of Campbell's previous poems displayed this beautiful but luxuriant diction, so none after the Pleasures of Hope retained it. It appeared to spring out of the rich juvenescence of life which was then in its fulness, and after that subsided into the quiet beauty of the Gertrude, and finally faded into the cold baldness of Theodoric. The poem, however, into which he seems to me to have most thoroughly infused the spirit of the wild and romantically desolate scenery of the Western Isles and Highlands, is Reullura, one of the most exquisite poems of any language. Without any apparent attempt at description, either of scenery or individual character, as in the Lines on visiting a Scene in Argyleshire, in Lochiel's Warning, or Lord Ulhn's Daughter, both stand forth in strong and clear distinct- ness. Aodh, the far-famed preacher of the v.-ord in Jura ; and Reullura, " beauty's star," with her calm, clear eye, to which visions of the future were often revealed ; and those desolate, treeless islands, the savage shores of which, riven by primeval earthquakes, will be lashed by the waves of a wild, stormy sea to the end of time. The church of Jura again stands aloft, the Gael listens to the preaching of the word, and the heathen sea-kings come from Denmark for plunder and massacre. This poem it is, above all others, into which the wild music of the Coryvreckan entered, which he says in calm weather, when the adjacent sea was silent, was like the sound of innumerable chariots. The family at Downie were greatly attached to Campbell, and have ever since cherished the memory of the time he spent there, as one of the proudest reminiscenses of the house. Colonel Napier and some other friends exerted themselves to secure a fund which should enable him to study for the bar, but they did not succeed ; and, at the end of the term for which he had engaged, he returned to Glas- gow. He was a first-rate scholar ; he had displayed at the debating- club all the elements of a great orator, and was likfly to make a great figure at the bar, if he could only get there. But the Uni- versity, to which he did so much honour, could give him no aid in that pursuit ; and his father was now poorer than ever, and in the clutches of the law. When he heard some of the boys dis- puting about the enduring qualities of a projected suit of clothes, he said, " Boys, boys, get a suit like mine — a Chancery suit ; that will wear, I warrant." The only opening which occurred to the dispirited youth was to go to Edinburgh. His aunt was living there, with whom he took up his quarters, and got some occupation as a copying clerk ; but he very soon grew tired of that drudgery, and flung it up, declaring that he saw enough into the business of an attorney to pronounce it " the most accursed of all professions ! Such mean- 494 CAMPBELL. ness, such toil, such contemptible modes of peculation, were never moulded into one profession." There was nothing, therefore, but literature left for him ; and he made the acquaintance of Dr. Anderson, the author of the Lives of the British Poets, who at once conceived the highest idea of his talents. He procured some job-work from Mundell, a publisher, and returned awhile to Glasgow. He then returned to Edinburgh, where he lived in Alison-square or court, in the Old Town, and made a poor living by literary hack-work. There, however, he made ac- quaintance with several of the rising literati of that extraordinary Tjriod, — Grahame, author of The Sabbath ; Dugald Stewart, and Brown, the Professor of Moral Philosophy ; Jeffrey ; Brougham, then only about twenty, but already famous for his mathematical theorems, chiefly Porisms, which had appeared in the Transactions of the Royal Society ; Alison, Leyden, Walter Scott, and others. Here, also, he became acquainted with Mr. Richardson, a writer to the signet, who remained one of his most attached friends through life. After hoping to go over to America, to join his brothers there, but disappointed even in that, he brought out his Pleasures of Hope, which at once astonished the reading world on both sides of the Tweed, and placed him at one spring in the rank of first-rate poets. This beautiful production was published in April, 1799, when the poet was only twenty-two, about the same age that Shelley pub- lished his Revolt of Islam, Keats his Lamia and Hyperion, and Byron his two first cantos of Childe Harold. The public heart, refreshed and purified by the writings of Cowper, was in a fit state to receive with the deepest love and the warmest admiration a poem like the Pleasures of Hope. The copyright of this splendid work was sold out and out to Mundell for sixty pounds ; but the publisher, on its success, much to his credit, volunteered the author fifty pounds on every new edition, and afterwards allowed him to publish a large quarto edition by subscription, entirely for his own benefit. The immediate effect of its success was to increase his friendships, — adding to his former ones those of Sj'dney Smith, Professor Playfair, Henry Mackenzie, and Telford, the celebrated engineer. At the time of its publication he was occupying gloomy lodgings in Rose-street ; but he speedily emerged into more agreeable ones, and into the most intellectual circles of the whole city. We have seen, of late, frequent attempts to depreciate the Pleasures of Hope ; and in Moore's Life and Letters we have the Holland House clique (Moore, Sydney Smith, and others) professing to find nothing in it but sounding language. They were particularly witty on the bombast and fustian of the lines — " Where Andes, giant of the western star, With meteor-standard to the winds unfurl'd, Looks from his throne of clouds o'er half the -world !" "Meteor-standard ! " they asked, — " what does it mean ?" And they came to the conclusion that it meant nothing. Did these great men never hear of the volcano of Chimborazo in the Andes ? Could they CAMPBELL. 495 not conceive the flames of the great volcano glaring over the hills hke a meteor-standard ? If they could not, they were much to be pitied. But had the poem nothing else in it, but this passage ? Could they not see those noble outpourings of the spirit of liberty which bring all the wrongs of humanity before us 1 The wrongs of Poland, of India, of Afi-ica, and of Switzei-land ? Did they not feel " The spirits of the mighty dead ! They who at Marathon and Leuctra bled ! " and the spirits of Tell, of Kosciusko, of Hampden, breathe along every line I Could they not feel the exquisite beauty of the domestic scenes, the bower of youthful love, the mother leaning over the cradle of her first-born, the sage and the naturahst pursuing their happy researches in the hamlet, " far from the world," in the summer fields, and amid the hum of lively bees 1 Could they not feel the sublimity of those hopes which are raised on the broken ties of earthly afibction, on the death-bed of the just ? In all the poetry of Moore, or the witticisms of Sydney Smith, where do we find a pas- sage as truly great, as transcendent in its moral and intellectual value, as inspiringly beautiful as this 1 — " Oh! deep-enchanting prelude to repose, The dawn of bliss, the twilight of our woes I Yet half I hear the parting spirit sigh, It is a dread and awful thing to die ! Mysterious worlds, iintravelled by the sun, Where Time's far-wandering tide has never run, From your unfathomed shades, and viewless spheres, A warning comes, unheard by other ears. 'Tis heaven's commanding trumpet, long and loud, Like Sinai's thunder, pealing from the cloud ! While Nature hears, in terror-mingled trust, The shock thai hurls her fabric to the dust ; And like the trembling Hebrew, when he trod The roaring waves, and called upon his God, W'ith mortal terrors clouds immortal bliss. And shrieks and hovers o'er the dread abyss ! Daughter of Faith, awake, arise, illume The diead unknown, the chaos of the tomb; Melt and dispel, ye spectre-doubts, that roll Cimmerian darkness o'er the parting soul ! Fly, like the moon-eyed herald of dismay. Chased on his night-steed by tlie star of day ! The strife is o'er — the pangs of Nature close. And life's last rapture triumphs o'er her woes. Hark ! as the spirit eyes, with eagle gaze, The noon of heaven, undazzled by the blaze. On heavenly winds that waft lier to the sky, Float the sweet tones of star-born melody; Wild as that hallowed anthem sent to hail Bethlehem's shepherds in the lonely vale. When Jordan hushed his waves, and midnight still Watch'd on the holy towers of Zion hill ! Soul of the just ! companion of the dead I Where is thy home, and whither art thou fledf Back to its heavenly source thy being goes, Swift as the comet wheels to whence he rose : Doomed on his airy path awhile to burn. And doomed, like thee, to travel and return. — Hark ! from the world's exploding centre driven. With sounds that shook the tirniament of heaveu. Careers the fiery giant, fait and far. On bickering wheels and adamantine car ; 496 CAMPBELL. From planet whirl'd to planet more remote, He visits realms beyond tlie reach of tliought ; But wheeling homeward, when his course is run, Curbs the red yiike, and mingles with the sun ! So hath the traveller of earth unfurl'd Her trembling wings, emerging from the world; And o'er the path by mortal never trod, Sprung to her source, the bosom of her God! " After this, it is as rational to compare anything of Moore's to it, as to compare a cock-boat to a man-of-war. It is worth remark, that it was only three years after the death of Burns that Campbell thus rose into sudden glory in the same field. Abundance of work was now poured in upon him ; and he was en- gaged by Mundell to write a great Scoto-national poem, to be called the Queen of the North, but which never throve. In his now familiar intercourse with the most accomplished men of Edinburgh, Campbell felt an advantage which they had over him in their ac- quaintance with other countries. He believed that travel gave great wealth of mind and imagery, and he determined to command this. Sir Walter Scott was bringing German literature into notice,and Camp- bell resolved to visit Germany. He hoped to have had the company of his friend Richardson, who, however, could not go, and with his brother Daniel he passed over to Hamburg in June, of 1800. It was a hazardous time to visit Germany. War was raging there. The French had conquered a great part of Bavaria, and Austria was already invaded. The valley of the Danube was menaced with all the horrors of invasion. Campbell's brother found that his hopes of mercantile advantage in Germany were at an end, and returned. The young poet, after a short stay in Hamburg, where he visited the venerable Klop.stock, proceeded to Ratisbon in the very face of the French, and within three days of his reaching that city, it was taken by them. Nay, during the very first night that he slept there, their distant cannonading could be heard. Count Klenau was driven over the Danube, and the French entered. Before Campbell reached Ratisbon, he had to pass over a country desolated by the war, and travelled on amid fields trodden down by armies, and deserted villages lying in ashes, and men and horses lying in their blood, many of them still alive. It was in the very rear of the Austrian army that he travelled. Five thousand Austrians passed in a broad line the carriage in which he travelled ; and the Pandours and Red- cloaks — " The whiskered Pandours, and the fierce Hussars — " of the Pleasures of Hope, presented strange and picturesque groups, as they camped and lay down to sleep on the bare ground. But it was from the walls of Ratisbon, near the Scotch College of St. Jakob's, that he witnessed the terrors of actual battle. " Never," he says in his letters, " shall time efface that hour of astonishment and suspended breath, as I stood with the good monks to witness a charge of Klenau's cavalry upon the French, under Grenier. We saw the fire given and returned, and heard distinctly the French ]pas-de-charge, collecting the lines to attack in close column." For CAMPBELL. 497 three hours the battle raged beneath the poet's eye. " This," he wrote, " formed the most important ei^och in my life in point of impressions ; bnt these impressions at seeing numbers of men strewn dead on the field, or — what was worse — seeing them in the act of dying, are so horrible to my memory, that I study to banish them. At times, when I have been fevered and ill, I have awoke from nightmare dreams about these dreadful images." This was the amount of actual warfare which he saw. It is erroneous to suppose that he described the battle of Hohenlindeii fi'om really seeing it, for it was not fought till the 3d of December, 1800, while he had quitted Bavaria in the previous October. But his vivid imagery of the battle was probably derived from the battle of Eatisbon, and the view of the burning ruins of Ingolstadt, which he went out of Ratisbon to see. The French ofl&cers in Ratisbon were very polite and kind to him ; and so soon as the armistice was signed betwixt Austria and France, he made an excursion to Munich on " the Iser, rulling rapidly." He was planning extensive tours into the South and into Hungary, when war recommenced with such fury, that he thought it safest to retire to Hamburg ; on his journey taking Nuremberg, Bamberg, Weimai', Jena, Leipsic, Brunswick, Halle, Hanover, and Lunenburg, in his way. He arrived at Hamburg in October ; so that this journey does not allow of that picturesque account of his traveUiug which he used to relate, but not of himself. It was this : Driving near a place where a skirmish of cavalry had occurred, the German postilion suddenly stopped, ahghted, and disappeared, without uttering a word, leaving the traveller in the carriage for a long time in the cold, the ground being covered with snow. On his return, it was discovered by the traveller that the provident German had been cutting off the long tails of the slain horses, which he deliberately placed in the vehicle beside him, and, without a word, pursued his journey. Campbell had studied hard in Germany, both at the acquisition of the language and at Greek literature, under Professor Heyne. From Hamburg he removed to Altona, where he spent the winter. There he feU in with some refugee Irishmen, who had been in the rebellion of 1798. The chief of these was Anthony M'Cann. "It was," says Campbell, " in consequence of meeting him one evening on the banks of the Elbe, lonely and pensive at the thoughts of his situation, that I wrote the Exiles of Erin ; and it was first sung, in their evening meetings, by him and his fellow-exiles." Campbell enjoyed his winter at Altona, reading Schiller, Wielaud, and Biirger ; but finding that the British fleet was on its way to seize that of Denmark, to prevent its falling into the hands of France, he did not deem Ham- burg, or its neighbourhood, desirable under such circumstances, and embarked on board of the lioj/al Geo^c/r, a small Scotch trading-vessel, for Leith. They sailed out of the Elbe, under the very guns of the Danish batteries of Gliickstadt ; and these circumstances inspired him with the iilca of his splendid lyric. The Battle of the Baltic. Being chased by a Danish privateer, they put into iTarmouth j and K C 498 CAMPBELL. Campbell made his first visit to London, arriving there without money or a single introduction. But his name was botli introduction and money. Perry, of the Morning Chronicle, received him with o]jea arms and as open purse ; and he found himself a warmly-welcomed guest of Lord Holland, and sitting face to face with Rogers, Sir James Mackintosh, Horace and James Smith, Sydney Smith, Tierney, the Kembles, the Siddons, Mrs. Barbauld, Mrs. Inchbald, Dr. Burney, and numbers of other celebrities. In one of his letters, published by Washington Irving, he describes his impressions of a sort of literary social club, to which he had been introduced by Sir James Mackintosh, in the following terms: — " Mackintosh, the Vindiciae Gallic?e, was particularly attentive to me, and took me with him to his convivial parties at the King of Clubs, — a place dedicated to the meetings of the reigning wits of London, and, in fact, a lineal descendant of the Johnson, Burke, and Gold- smith society, constituted for literary conversations. The dining- table of these knights of literature was an arena of very keen conversational rivalship, maintained, to be sure, with perfect good- nature, bixt in which the gladiators contended as hardly as ever the French and Austrians, in the scenes I had just witnessed. Much, however, as the wit and erudition of these men please an auditor at the first or second visit, this trial of minds becomes at last fatiguing, because it is unnatural and unsatisfactory. Every one of these brilliants goes there to shine ; for conversational powers are so much the rage in London, that no reputation is higher than his who ex- hibits them. Where every one tries to instruct, there is, in fact, but little instruction ; wit, paradox, eccentricity, even absurdity, if delivered rapidly and facetiously, take priority, in these societies, of sound reasoning and delicate taste. I have watched sometimes the devious tide of conversation, guided by accidental associations, turning from topic to topic, and satisfactory upon none. What has one learned ? has been my general question. The mind, it is true, is electrified and quickened, and the spirits finely exhilarated ; but one grand fault pervades the whole institution ; their inquiries are desultory, and all improvements to be reaped must be accidental." Campbell's own conversational powers were of the highest order, and he showed singular discrimination in the choice of subjects of an interesting and instructive nature. Mere talk for display on the part of others must, therefore, have been exceedingly disagreeable to him. After a short sojourn in London, the poet received the news of his father's death, and returned to Edinbm-gh; where, strange to say, he was subjected to a jirivate examination by the authori- ties as a suspected spy, from his having been in the society, while on the Continent, of some of the Irish refugees. He easily satis- tied the civic guardians of his unshaken loyalty, and continued to reside for about a year in Edinburgh, during which time he wrote his Lochiel's Warning, Hohenhnden, and others of his well- known ballads and minor poems. It is related, as an instance of the wonderful powers of memory of Sir Walter Scott, that, on Lochiel's CAMPBELL. 499 Warning being read to him in manuscript, he requested to be allowed to peruse it for himself, and then astonished the author by repeating it from memory from beginning to end. The circumstances of his mother and sisters at this time demanded great exertions from the young poet. To effect this he not only worked hard, but borrowed money at enormous interest, which long weighed upon him. Camp- bell now determined upon removing to London, as the best field for literary exertion. Accordingly, early in 1803, he repaired to the metropolis ; and on his arrival resided for some time in the house of Lord Minto, who had made his acquaintance in Scotland, and showed great attachment to him. He also lived a good while xnth. his friend Telford, the celebrated engineer. He returned to Scotland with Lord Minto, spent some time at Minto Castle and Edinburgh, and then back to London, where he again took up his quarter.s with Telford at Charing Cross. In the autumn of 1803 he married his cousin, Miss Matilda Sinclair, of Greenock, a lady of considerable personal beauty ; and after living some time at 52, Upper Eaton- street, Pimlico, he fixed his residence in the beautiful village of Sydenham, in Kent, about seven miles from London. At the time of Campbell's marriage it appears that hope, and reliance on his own exertions, formed by for the largest portion of his worldly fortune ; for, on his friend Telfoi'd remonstrating with him on the inexpediency of marrying so early, he replied, " When shall I be better ofi"? I have fifty pounds, and six months' work at the Encyclopoedia." The Encyclopedia here mentioned was Brewster's Edinburgh Encyclopajdia, to which he contributed several papers. CampbeE resided at Sydenham till 1821, seventeen years. His house was on Peak-hill, and had a quiet and sweet view towards Forest-hill. The house is one of two tenements under the same roof, consisting of only one room in width, which, London fashion, being divided by folding-doors, formed, as was needed, two. The front looked out upou the prospect already mentioned. To the left was a fine mass of trees, amid which showed itself a large house, which during part of the time was occupied by Lady Chai-lotte Campbell. The back looked out upon a small neat garden, enclosed from the field by jiales ; and beyond it, on a mass of fine wood, at the foot of which ran a canal, and now along its bed, the railway from London to Croydon. The house is small, and modest; but its situation is very pleasant indeed, standing on a green and quiet swell, at a distance from the wood, and catching pleasant glimjises of the houses in Sydenham, and of the country round. In the little back parlour he used to sit and write ; and to prevent the passage of sound, he had the door which opened into the hall covered witli green baize, which still remains. This at once defended him from the noise of the passing, and operations of the housemaid, as the door was near the stairs, and also from any one so plainly hearing him, when, in poet-fashion, he sounded out sonorously his verses as he composed them. The next door to Campbell livtd his landlord, a Mr. Onis, who was stiU living there at the time of my visit, an old man of ninety, KK 2 500 CAMPBELL. having every one of his windows in front, filled with strong jalousies, painted green, which gave a singular and dismal air to the house, as the dwelling of one who wished to shut out the sight of the living world and the sun at the same time. To prevent too familiar inspection from his neighbour's premises, Campbell ran up a sort of buttress between the houses at the back, and planted trees there, so that no one could get a sight of him as he sat in his little parlour writing. In the village was still living Miss Mayhew, a lady after- wards alluded to, and then, of course, very aged. Here Campbell lost a son, of about eleven or twelve years of age, who is buried at Lewisham. His wife was ill at the time he left in 1821, and he had much trouble about that time. He went to reside in Loudon in 1821, on account of his literary engagements. Here he wrote Gertrude of Wyoming. The country, which was then so fresh and retired, is now cut up with railroads ; and new buildings, especially since the erection of the Crystal Palace, are seen rising like crowdiug appari- tions on every side. Soon after his settlement at Sydenham he published, anonymously, a compiled work, in three volumes 8vo, entitled, Annals of Great Britain, from the Accession of George UI. to the Peace of Amiens, intended, probably, as a continuation of Hume and Smollett's histories. This was the first of his commissions from a London publisher. He now devoted himself to writing and compiling for the booksellers, and furnishing occasional articles to the daily press and other jjeriodical publications. He wrote for the Philosophical Magazine and the Star newspaper. His conversational powers, as we have already stated, were very great ; and these, with his other qualities, acquired for him an extensive circle of friends. In the social parties and convivial meetings of Sydenham and its neigh- bourhood, his cornpany was at all times eagerly courted ; and among the kindred spirits with whom he was in the habit of associating there, were the brothers James and Horace Smith, Theodore Hook, and others who afterwards distinguished themselves in literature. Through the influence of Charles James Fox, he obtained in 1805, shortly before that statesman's death, a pension fi'om Government of 200/., which, after deduction of duties, left him clear 168/. per annum. Campbell was at this period, and for many years afterwards, a working authoi', the better portion of his days being spent in literary drudgery and task-work. His gains from the booksellers were not always, however, in proportion to the merit of the matter supplied to them ; and an anecdote is recorded which strongly illustrates his feelings in regard to them. Having been invited to a booksellers' dinner, soon after Pam, of Nuremberg, one of the trade, had been executed by command of Napoleon, he was asked for a toast, and with much earnestness as well as gravity of manner he proposed to drink the health of Buonaparte. The company were amazed at such a toast, and asked for an explanation of it. " Gentle- men," said Campbell, with sly humour, " I give you Napoleon, — he was a fine fellow, — he shot a bookseller ! " CAMPBELL. 501 In the beginning of 1809 he published his second vohime of poems, containing Gertrude of Wyoming, a simple Indian tale, in tlie Spen • serian stanza, the scene of which is laid among the woods of Penn- sylvania ; Glenara, the Battle of the Baltic, Lochiel, and Lord Ullin's Daughter. A subsequent edition contained also the touching ballad of O'Connor's Child. This volume added greatly to his popularity ; and the high reputation which he had now acquired must have been very gratifying to his feehngs. Indeed, even in the meridian of his living renown, the native simplicity and goodness of his heart ren- dered him pecuharly pleased with any attention of a complimentary nature which was shown to him. Of this many instances might be given, but the following, related by himself, may be quoted here : — In writing to a friend in 1840, resi3ecting the launch of a man-of-war at Chatham, at which he was present, he mentioned that none of the compliments paid to him on that occasion affected him so deejaly as the circumstance of the band of two regiments striking up " The Campbells are coming," as he entered the dockyard. Campbell himself preferred Gertrude of Wyoming to the Pleasures of Hope. It is said that one cause of this preference was, that from hearing himself so exclusively called the author of the Pleasures of Hope, it became so hackneyed, that he felt towards it as the Athenian did who was tired of hearing Aristides called the Just. In 1812 Campbell commenced the delivery of a course of lectures on Poetry, at the Royal Institution, which had such success, that they were afterwards enlarged, and re-delivered, some years after, at Liverpool and Binningham. "His mode of life at Sydenham," says Mr. Cyrus Eedding, in a memoir of the poet published in the New ]\Ionthly ]\Iagazine, " was almost uniformly that which he afterwards followed in London, when he made it a constant residence. He rose not very early, break- fasted, studied for an hour or two, dined at two or three o'clock, and then made a call or two in the village, often remaining for an hour or more at the house of a maiden lady, of whose conversation he was remarkably fond. He would return home to tea, and then retire early to his study, remaining there to a late hour, sometimes even to an early one. His life was strictly domestic. He gave a dinner party now and then ; and at some of them Thomas Moore, Rogers, Crabbe, and other literary friends from town, were present. His table was plain, hospitable, and cheered by a hearty welcome. While he hved at Sydenham," continues Mr. Eedding. " or at least during a portion of the time, there resided in that village the well-known Thomas Hill, who was a sort of walking chronicle. Ho knew the business and afiairs of every literary man, and coidd relate a vast deal more about tbem than they had ever known themselves. There was no new.spaper office into which he did not find liis way ; no third-rate scribbler of whom he did not know his business at the time. But his knowledge was not confined to litci-ary men ; he knew almost all the world of any note. It was said of him, that he could stand at Charing Cross at noon-day, and tell the name and busine.'ss of everybody that passed Northumberland House. Ho died of 502 CAMPBELL. apoplexy in the Adelphi, four or five years ago, nearly at tlie age of eighty, few supposing him more than sixty. " At the table of this singular personage at Sydenham, there used to meet occasionally a number of literary men and choice spirits of the age. There was to be found Theodore Hook, giving full swing to his jests, at the expense of everything held cheap or dear in social life, or under conventional rule. There too came the authors of the Rejected Addresses, whose humour was only the lowest among their better qualities. The poet living hai'd by could not, in the common course of things, miss being among those who congregated at Hill's. Repartee and pun passed about in a mode vainly to be looked for in these degenerate days at the most convivial tables. Some jiractical jokes were played off there, which for a long time afterwards formed the burden of after-dinner conversations. Campbell was behind none of the party in spirits. He entered with full zest into the pleasantries of the hour. Some of the party leaving Sydenham, to return home by Dulwich, to which they were obliged to walk upon one occasion, for want of a conveyance, those who remained behind in Sydenham escorted their friends to the top of the hill to take leave, in doing which the poet's residence had to be passed. But he scorned to leave his party. All went on to the parting place on the hill summit, exchanging jokes, or manufacturing indifferent puns. When they separated, it was with hats off and three boisterous cheers." During Campbell's residence at Sydenham, he made two visits to the Continent ; one to France, in 1814, and the other to Germany, in 1820. Both these added greatly to his knowledge of literature and life. In Paris he met with Schlegel, Humboldt, Denon, Cuvier, &c. In Germany he made a far wider tour than his former one. He had his wife and son with him, and saw on his way many Dutch towns. In Germany he saw Arndt, visited his old sojourn at Ratisbon, saw Vienna, and sailed down the Danube. In 1820 Campbell undertook the editorship of the New Monthly Magazine ; and in this magazine appeared some of his most beautiful minor poems. For some time he had lodgings at 62, Margaret street, Cavendish-square, and then took a house, 10, Seymour-street West. In 1824 he published Theodoric, a poem, by no means equal to his former productions. " To Mr. Campbell," says his anonymous biographer, " belongs the merit of originating the London University, in which project Lord Brougham was an active coadjutor. This Campbell always regarded as the most important action of his life. During the struggle for independence in which Greece was engaged, and in which she was ultimately successful, he took a strong interest in the cause of that country, as he subsequently, and indeed all his life, did in that of Poland." In November, 1826, he was chosen Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. It was with the utmost enthusiasm, as might well be supposed, that this election took place ; it was a triumphal return to the scenes of his early life ; and among the numerous incidents which might be given in evidence of the enthu- CAMPBELL. 503 siasm felt by all classes towards their illustrious townsman may be mentioned, the notice which was taken of a very beautiful rainbow, which was seen on the day he entered his native city, and which fond admirers of his genius regarded as a token that Heaven was smiling on the event. Still more, he was re-elected with the same enthusiasm twice more in preference to Canning, and Sir Walter Scott. In 1825, he made another tour in Germany, to collect infor- mation regarding the constitution and management of universities. Everywhere he was received with great honour, and was entertained at a public dinner in Hamburg. These agreeable events, however, were dashed by the death of his wife, who expii-ed on the 10th of May, 1828. The poet, after the death of his wife, and suffering from an accumulation of domestic calamities, the death of one of his two sons, and the hopeless insanity of the other, gave up the editorship of the Xew Monthly Magazine. He quitted his house in Seymour- street West, and took one in Middle Scotland Yard. Some years afterwards he removed into chambers, where he resided for some years in a state of comparative loneliness at No. 61, Lincoln's-inu- fields. His chambers were on the second floor, where he had a large well-furnished sitting-room, adjoining which was his bedroom. One side of his principal room was arranged with shelves, hke a library, which were fuU of books. In that room has the writer of this sketch passed many a pleasant and profitable hour with him, and he never shall forget the active benevolence and genuiue kindliness of heart displayed by the poet on one occasion when he called upon him. On entering the room one forenoon, in the year 1839, he found Mr. Campbell busy looking over his books, while, near the fireplace, was seated an elderly gentlewoman in widow's weeds. He was desired to take a chair for a few minutes. Presently the poet disapj^eared into his bedroom, and returned with an armful of books, which he placed among a heap of others that he had collected together on the floor. " There now," he said, addressing the widow, " these will help you a little, and I shall see what more I can do for you by the time you call again. I shall get them sent to you in the course of the day." The widow thanked him with tears in her eyes, and shaking her cordially by the hand, he wished her a good morning. On her departure, the poet said, with great feeling, " That lady whom you saw just now is the widow of an eai'ly friend of mine ; and as she is now in somewhat reduced circumstances, she Avishes to open a little book and stationery shop, and I have been busy looking out all the books for which I have no use, to add to her stock. She has taken a small shop in the neighbourhood of town, and I shall do all I can to serve her, and forward her prospects, as far as ray assistance and influence extend. Old times should not be forgotten." He men- tioned the name of the place, and asked if the writer had any acquaintances in the vicinity to who.se notice he might recommend the widow, but was answered in the negative. The abstraction of the volumes he thus so generously bestowed on the poor widow made a sensible alteration in the appearance of his library. On 504 CAMPBELL. another occasion, soon after this, when the writer introduced to hira a friend of his of the name of Sinclair, he said, wliile he shook him by the hand, " I am glad to see you. Sir, your name recommends you to me ;" adding, with much tenderness, "my wife's name was Sinclair." "The years 1831 and 1832 he spent chiefly at St. Leonard's. In 1832, the interest excited by the French conquest and coloni- zation of Algiers induced him to pay it a visit. On his way the Poles gave him a public dinner in Paris, Pi-ince Czartoryski in the chair ; and on his return he furnished an account of his journey to the New Monthly Magazine, which he afterwards published under the name of Letters from the South, in two volumes. He did not confine himself to Algiers, but made an excursion into the interior of the country as far as Mascara ; and his work, with a great deal of light gossipping matter, contains much interesting information respecting Algiers and the various races inhabiting that part of Barbary. The same year, in conjunction with the Polish poet Niemcewiez, Prince Czartoryski, and others, he founded the society styled the Literary Association of the Friends of Poland. He had rooms at the office of the Association, Duke-street, St. James's- square, where he wrote a great deal, and where a tablet, in comme- moration of his connexion with the Association, is now affixed to the wall of what he called his attic. At this time he ixirchased a share of the Metropolitan Magazine. Rogers lent him 500/. for the purpose ; but he soon relinquished all iJroprietorship to Captains Chamier and Marryat, and merely wrote for it. He also origmated the Clarence club, where he occasionally dined. In 1834 he pub- lished his Life of Mrs. Siddons. On the death, that year, of his friend Mr. Telford, the engineer, after whom he had named his surviving son, he, as well as Mr. Southey, was left a legacy of 500/. ; which, added to the gains from his works, and succession to some property in Scotland, placed him in very comfortable circumstances so far as money was concerned. In 18^7 he published a splendid edition of his poems, illustrated by Timms. He also edited the Scenic Annual. Soon after the Queen's coronation, she made Campbell a present of her portrait. It was highly prized by him, and is especially men- tioned in his will, together with the silver bowl given to him by the students of Glasgow ; which two articles, says the said will, were con- sidered by him the two jewels of his property. With regard to this picture, which always filled him with ecstasy and admiration, I cannot do better than again quote the biographical sketch to which I am already so much indebted. " It was, or rather is, a large full-length engraving, enclosed in a splendid frame, and was hung up in his sitting-room in Lincoln's- inn-fields, on the same side as the fireplace, but nearer the window. The writer of this called upon him a day or two after he received it, and the explanation he then gave of the way in which it was pre- sented to him agrees so with what has already ajipeai-ed regarding it, that it may be given here in nearly the same words. Indeed, he CAMPBELL. 505 was so much flattered by the unexpected compliment of a present of her poi'trait from his sovereign, that he must have spoken of it in a somewhat similar manner to every one on terms of intimacy with him, who about that time hapi^ened to come into his company. * I was at her Majesty's coronation in Westminster Abbey,' said Campbell, 'and she conducted herself so well, during the long and fatiguing ceremony, that I shed tears many times. On returning home, I resolved, out of pure esteem and veneration, to send her a copy of all my works. AccorcUngly, I had them bound up, and went personally with them to Sir Henry Wheateley, who, when he imder- stood n\~ errand, told me that her Majesty made it a rule to decline presents of this kind, as it placed her under obligations which were unpleasant to her. Say to her Majesty, Sir Henry, I replied, that there is not a single thing the Queen can touch with her sceptre in any of her dominions which 1 covet; and I therefore entreat you, in your office, to present them with my devotions as a subject. Sir Henry then promised to comply with my request; but next day they were returned. I hesitated,' continued Campbell, ' to open the parcel, but, on doing so, I found, to my inexpressible joy, a note enclosed, desiring my autograjjh upon them. Having complied with the wish, I again transmitted the books to her IMajesty, and in the course of a day or two received in return this elegant engraving, with her Majesty's autograph, as you see below.' He then directed particular attention to the royal signature, which was in her Majesty's usual bold and beautifid handwriting. "In 1833, he had lodgings in Highgate, and traversed the old haunts of Coleridge, Keats, and Leigh Hunt, greatly to the reno- vation of his health. He spent also much time at Kosc Villa, Hamp- stead, the abode of his physician. Dr. Beattie, whence he made many agreeable visits to Joanna Baillie. "In 1842, his Pilgrim of Glencoe, and other poems, appeared, dedicated to his friend and i^hysician. Dr. William Beattie, whom he also named one of his executors ; Mr. William Moxon, of the Middle Temple, brother of Mr. Edward Moxon, his pubhsher, being the other. He also wrote a life of Petrarch, and a year or two before his death he edited the Life of Frederick the Great, published by Colburn. In this year, that is, in ] 842, ho again visited Germany. On one occasion, in the writer's presence, he expressed a strong desire to go to Greece ; but he never carried that intention into efiect, pro- bably from the want of a companion. Previous to going to Germany, that i.s, in 1841, he took a house at No. 8, Victoria-square, Pimlico, and devoted his time to the education of his niece. Miss Mary Camp- bell, a Glasgow young lady, whom he took to live with him. But his health, which had long been in a declining state, began to give way rapidly. He was no longer the man he had been ; the energy of his body and mind was gone; and in the summer of 1843 he retired to Bou- logne, where at first he derived benetit from the change of air and scene ; but this cUd not continue long. He had taken lodgings in the upper part of the town, at 5, Rue St. Jean, where the situation was much too exposed for him. The cold subdued his failing vita.1 606 CAMPBELL. powers, and lie gradually grew feebler. He seldom went into society, and for some months before his death he coiTesponded but little with his friends in this country. A week before his decease Dr. Beattie was sent for from London, and on his arrival at Boulogne he found him much worse than he had anticipated. The hour was approaching when the spirit of the poet of Hope was to quit this transitory scene, and return to God who gave it. On Saturday afternoon, the 15th June, 1844, he breathed his last, in tlie presence of his niece, his friend Dr. Beattie, and his medical attendants. His last hours were marked by calmness and resignation. The Rev. Mr. Hassell, an English clergyman, was also with Mr. Campbell at the time of his death. " Campbell's funeral," continues this able writer, " was worthy of his fame. He was buried in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey, on Wednesday, July 3, 1844. The funeral was attended by a large body of noblemen and gentlemen, and by several of the most eminent authors of the day. Mr. Alexander Campbell and Mr. Wiss, two nephews of the deceased poet, with his executors, were the chief mourners ; and the pall was borne by Sir Robert Peel, the Earl of Aberdeen, the Duke of Argyle, Lord Morjieth, Lord Brougham, Lord Campbell, Lord Dudley Coutts Stuart, and Lord Leigh. The corpse was followed by a large number of members of parliament and other distinguished gentlemen. " ' There was one part of the ceremony,' says an American writer, ' especially impressive. A deputation from the Polish Association was present, in addition to the Poles who attended as mourners ; and when the officiating clergyman arrived at that jDortion of the ceremony in which dust is consigned to dust, one of the number (Colonel Szyrma) took a handful of dust, brought for the occasion from the tomb of Kosciusko, and scattered it upon the coffin. It was a worthy tribute to the memory of him who has done so much to immortaUze the man and the cause ; and not the less impressive because so perfectly simple. At the conclusion of the service the solemn peals of the organ again reverberated for some minutes through the aisles of the Abbey, and the procession retired as it came. " ' The barrier with iron spikes, which protected the mourners fi'om the jostling of the crowd, was then removed, and there was a rush to get a sight of the coffin. After waiting a little while, I succeeded in looking into the grave, and read the inscription on the large gilt plate : — THOMAS CAMPBELL, LL.D. AUTHOR OP THE PLEASURES OF HOPE, Died June 15, 1S44, Aged 67. " ' On visiting the Abbey the next day, I found the stone over the grave so cai-efully replaced, that a stranger would never suspect there had been a recent interment. To those who may hereafter visit this spot, it may be interesting to know that it is situated CAMPBELL. 507 between tbe monument of Addison and the opposite pillar, not far from that of Goldsmith, and closely adjoining that of Sheridan. His most Christian wish was accomplished. He lies in the Poet's Cornei-, surrounded by the tombs and monuments of kings, statesmen, war- riors, and scholars, in the massy building guarded with religious care, and visited from all parts of the land with religious veneration.' " A statue of the poet has been placed in the Abbey, executed by Mr. Calder Marshall, for which the gifted artist, according to all that has appeared in the public journals on the subject, has been veiy indiflferently remunerated. ■HH,ELI-.C L-" »^^-^<^» ^" ^Ji-*^ ^i''^ *^^''_.. *,\ ROBERT SOUTHEY. SouTHET was boi-Q in Bristol, on the 12th of August, 1774. His father was a draper ; his shop was in Wine-street. Southey, in his Autobiography tells us that his father, as a boy, was very fond of coursing, and that he took as his sign a hare ; that this hare was painted on a pane in the window, on each side of the door, and was engraved on his shop bills. Since then it has been known as the sign of the Golden Key ; and there the shop still remains, in the very same trade, and with the golden key yet hanging in front. Robert was the second of a family of seven or eight children, two only of whom, besides himself, appear to have grown up, — one, an officer in the army, and the other a physician in London. He tells us that he could trace his ancestors as far back as 1696, that is, about a century and a half. They were yeomen, or farmers ; biit he thinks they must have been of gentle blood, for they had arms, and he even traces a connexion with Lord Somerville. Southey appears inclined to the pride of ancestry, when he had so much better things to be proud of; for no ancestry can compare with a man's own genius, which comes direct from heaven. Who cares what a man's physical origin was, so that his career wa-s honourable 1 Who thinks, because Shakspeare was the son of a woolcomber ; because Ben Johnson was apprenticed to a bricklayer ; because Milton was a schoolmaster ; SOUTHET. 509 because Moore was the son of a grocer and spirit-dealer, and Chat- terton was a charity-boy, that they are one whit less genuine nobles of the land ? We are quite as well satisfied with Robert Southey that his great-great-great-grandfather was a great clothier at Wel- lington, and his father a retail draper as if they had been dukes or princes. He had a trace of the olood of Locke, or of the same family as Locke, but at that he sneers, calling him " the philosopher, so- called, who is still held in more estimation than he deserves." His mother's maiden name was Hill, and she had a half-sister, a Miss Tyler, with whom Southey was a good deal in his boyhood. He has left us a very minute account of his connexions and his early days. He was sent as a mere child to a Mrs. Powell, in Bristol, to a day-school. He was then taken to his aunt, Miss Tyler, at Bath. This Miss Tyler was rich and handsome, and lived in a large old-fashioned house, surroimded by old-fashioned gardens, in Walcot-parade, and at that time quite in the country. There he was chieliy, from the age of two to six. At that age he returned to Bristol, and was sent to a day-school on the top of Mill Hill, kept by a !Mr. Foot, a dissenting minister. There, both from master and boys, he suffered great tyranny. Once, he says, the master cruelly caned him, the only time that any master ever laid a hand on him. Lucky fellow ! He was thence removed to a boarding-school at Corston, a village about nine miles from Bristol, and three from Bath. This was the school of which he speaks in his Hymn to tlio Penates, and describes in the Retrospect. His parting there with his father is admirably expressive of a child's fu-st school ex- perience : — " Ulethinks e'en now the interview I see, The mistress's glad smile, the master's glee : Much of my future happiness they said, Much of the easy life the scholars led ; Of spacious play-grounds and of wholesome air, The best instruction and the tenderest care; And when I followed to the garden door My father, till, through tears, I saw no more,— How civilly they sooihed my parting pain. And never did they speak so civilly again." The school-house was an old country mansion, surrounded by gardens, orchards, paddocks, with high walls, summer-houses, gate- pillars, with great stone baUs, but everything in dilapidation. The school was a very indifferent one ; the boys washed themselves at a little stream which ran through the grounds, and so neglected was their general cleanliness, that when at the end of the year which ho spent there his head was examined, it was found so populous that his mother wept at the sight of it. He was next sent to his grandmother's, at Bedminstcr, till a new school could be pitched upon, and he always recollected with delight the days which he spent there in its garden, orchards, and fields. His grandmother dying, he was sent as a day-boarder to a school kept by William Williams, a Welshman, in a jiart of Bristol called the Fort. He was then about eight years old, and there he con- tinued four or five years, much to his contentment. His aunt Tyler 610 SOUTHEY. took a house in Terril-street, Bristol, and he passed much time with her. He was removed from Williams's school for a year, and sent again as day-boarder to a Mr. Lewis, a clergyman ; and in February of 1788, when he consequently was fourteen, he was placed at West- minster school. At this school he formed two friendships, which continued through life ; those of Mr. C W. W. Wynu, of Sir Watkins Wyun's family, and Mr. Grosvenor Charles Bedford, late of the Exchequer. They continued to the last the most prominent of his correspondents ; and Mr. Bedford, in particular, seems to have been all that a man could wish for in a friend — a man of great talent, fine education, and excellent heart. Here, when he had been about four years, and had reached the upper classes, he was expelled for publishing a periodical called the Flagellant, in con- junction with his friend Bedford and some others. It reached nine numbers, when it became so satirically severe on the flogging which went on in that establishment, that it roused the wrath of the master. Dr. Vincent. The consequences of this expulsion followed him to Oxford. It was intended that he should enter at Christ Church ; but Cyril Jackson, the dean, refused to admit the leading author of the Flagellant, and he matriculated at Balliol College. He was scarcely settled there when his father died. He had failed in business, as his son says, through the treachery of relatives ; and his brother, who was worth 100,000/., but a regular muck-worm, had surlily refused to give him the slightest assistance to recover his position. These misfortunes killed the old man ; and Miss Tyler and his uncle, the Eev. Her- bert Hill, now became Southey's main stays ; Miss Tyler giving him a home, and his uncle his education. Whilst he was a student at Oxfox'd, and about nineteen, he wrote his Joan of Arc. The whole of this poem, except about three hun- dred hues, he wrote at Brixton Causeway, at a then pleasant country house, the residence of his friend Grosvenor Bedford. During his abode at Oxford he was a red-hot republican, and deeply inflated with the absurd views of Rousseau respecting social life. He rejected the idea of entering the Church, commenced medical studies, and then abandoned them, hoping to obtain a clerkship under government. But his friend Bedford soon put all hopes of that kind to flight, by reminding him that inquiries at Oxford as to his avowed opinions would eftectually preclude his success with govern- ment. In 1794 he became acquainted with Coleridge, who was then an undergraduate of Jesus College, Cambridge. Here Coleridge quickly inoculated him with his famous scheme of Pantisocracy — the equal government of all ! The idea was to collect as many of hke faith with themselves as they could, and emigrate to America, where, on the banks of the Susquehannah, they were to purchase a settlement. There " this band of brothers in the wilderness were all to labour with their hands, each according to the task assigned him. They were all to be married, and the ladies were to cook and perform all the domestic ofiices. They had plans drawn for the buildings am' SOUTHET. 511 lands of tlie settlement, and were to embark in March, 1795. Twelve men were easily to clear oOO acres in four or live months, and 600/. were to purchase 1,000 acres, and build houses upon them ! The chief actors in this notable scheme were Robert Lovell, the son of a wealthy quaker ; George Burnett, a fellow-coUegian ; Robert Allen, of Corpus Christi College ; Edmund Seward, also a fellow-collegian, but who -soon declared oft' ; and a poor servant boy, called Shadrach Weeks, was deemed such an acquisition, that Coleridge almost went out of his mind at the idea of his company, and in his letters wrote in huge characters — " Shad goes with us ! HE IS MY BROTHER ! ! " The ladies who figured in the foreground of the Pantisocratic enterprise were the three Miss Frickers. Their father, like Southey's, had been unfortunate in his trade of a sugar-baker, and they had honom-ably supported themselves in business. Lovell had married one, and Coleridge and Southey married the two others. But the scheme began to look rather hopeless from want of the necessary money ; and, at length, coming to the ears of Miss Tyler, from whom it had been carefully kept, it was blown up at once by the fierce outbreak of her indignation. Southey was turned out of her com- fortable house on College-green, and poor Shadrach, her servant-boy, was left to endure the full force of her wrath. Nothing could ever turn her heart again towards Southey. Houseless and friendless, Southey and Coleridge now planned lectures and magazines for a livelihood ; and then quarrelled because Southey abandoned the idea of the Pantisocracy. He married Miss Fricker, however, in Septem- ber, ] 795 ; and immediately afterwards accompanied his maternal uncle, Hill, who was chaplain to the Factory at Lisbon. He was absent six months, and returned to find his friend Lovell dead, and his widow and one child left destitute. Though miserably poor him- self, and not knowing how to live, Southey, with that generosity of character which always distinguished him, at once took Mrs. Lovell home to him, and she continued a regular inmate of his house while he lived ; as did Mrs. Coleridge and her daughter, till the daughter's marriage. From this time to 1801, Southey resided at various places. For some time ho was at Bristol, where Cottle, the publisher and poet, published his Joan of Arc, for which he gave him one hundred guineas ; as he also boldly risked the publication of the earliest poems of Coleridge and Wordsworth. Southey now resolved to study the law, being enabled to do this by an allowance of 160/. a-year by his generous old schoolfellow, Wynn. But his head was running more on literature than law. He was actually teeming with literary projects — tragedies, suggested by his Portuguese studies — of Sebastian ; of Inez de Castro ; of the Revenge of Don Pedro ; a poem on Madoc, in twenty books ; a novel of Ednuuid Oliver ; a Romance ; a Norwegian Tale ; an Oriental poem ; the Destruction of the Dom Daniel. In fact, ho had conceived the idea of various woiks, which he afterwards completed, and others which he never conunenced. He was also pubhahing his Letters from Spain and Portug;ii. 512 SOUTHET. During the time that he occasionally visited London, in pursuit of his legal studies, hia home was successively at Burton, near Christ- church, Hampshire ; at Bath ; and at Westbury, about two miles from Bristol, where he resided a year ; and then again at Christ- church, where he made the acquaintance of one of his best friends, John Rickman. Southey's health failing, and the study of the law having disgusted him, he went again to Lisbon, taking his wife with him, and passed a very delightful year at Cintra. On his return, Coleridge induced him to go down to Keswick, which, however, at that time did not please him, appealing cold after his southern sojourn. On 1801, Southey obtained the appointment of secretary to the Right Hon. Isaac Corry, Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ireland. On retiring from office with his patron, our author, after returning a while to Bristol, and planning a settlement in Wales, went to reside at Keswick, where also dwelt, under the same roof, the widow of his friend Lovell, and the wife of Mr. Coleridge. Such were the move- ments of Southey till he settled down at Keswick, and there, busy as a bee in its hive, worked out the forty years of his then remaining life. The mere list of his works attests a wonderful industry : — Poems by Southey and Cottle, 1 vol, 1794. Joan of Arc, 1 vol, quarto, 1795. Letters from Spain and Portugal, 1 vol, 1797. Minor Poems, 2 vols, 1797 and 1799. Annual Anthology, 2 vols, 1799-1800. Thalaba, 2 vols, 1801. Chatterton's works, edited, 1802. Amadis of Gaul, 4 vols, 1803. Metrical Tales, 1805. Madoc, 1 vol, quarto, 1807. Espriella's Letters, 1807. Specimens of later Poets, 3 vols, 1807. Remains of H. K. White, 2 vols, 1807. Chronicle of the Cid, 1 vol, 1808. Curse of Kehama, 1810. Omniaua, 2 vols, 1812. Life of Nelson, 2 vols, 1813. Roderick, the Last of the Goths, 1 vol, 1814. Carmen Triumphale, &c., 1814. Lay of the Laureate, 1 vol, 1816. Pilgrimage to Waterloo, 1 vol, 1816. Morte d' Arthur, 2 vols, 1817. Histoiy of Brazil, 3 vols, quarto, 1810 to 1819. Life of Wesley, 2 vols, 1820. Expedition of Orsua, 1 vol, 1821. A Vision of Judg- ment, 1 vol, 1821. Book of the Church, 2 vols, 1824. Tale of Paraguay, 1 vol, 1825. Vindicias Ecclesice Anglicanse, 1 vol, 1826. History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols, 1822 to 1832. Lives of Un- educated Poets, 1 vol, 18ii9. All for Love, or a Sinner Well Saved, 1 vol, 1829. Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, 1829. Life of Bunyan, 1830. Select Works of British Poets, from Chaucer to Johnson, with Biographical Notices, 1 vol, 1831. Naval History of England, 4 vols, 1833-40. The Doctor, 7 vols, 1834 to 1847. Life and Works of Cowper, 15 vols, 1835-1837. Common-Place Book, 4 vols. Oliver Newman, &c., 1 vol, 1845. This is a striking list of the works of one man, though he took nearly fifty years of almost unexampled health and industry to com- plete it. But this does not include the large amount of his contri- butions to the Quarterly and other periodicals ; nor does the mere bulk of the work thrown off convey any idea of the bulk of work gone through. The immense and patient research necessary for his histories was scarcely less than that which he bestowed on the SOUTHET. 513 subject-matter and illustrative notes of his poems. The whole of his writings abound with evidences of learning and laborious reading that have been rarely equalled. But the variety of talents and humour displayed in his different wi-itings is equally extraordinary. The love of fun, and the keenness of satire, which distinguished his smaller poems, are enough to make a very brilliant reputation. The Devil's Walk, so long attributed to Porson, but, as testified by them- selves, conceived and written by South. ey, with some touches and additions from the hand of Coleridge ; the Old Woman of Berkeley ; The Surgeon's Warning ; The Pig ; Gooseberry Pie ; Roprecht the Robber ; The Cataract of Lodore ; Bishop Hatto ; The Pious Painter ; St. Antidius, the Pope, and the Devil ; The March to Moscow ; — these and others of the like kind would make a volume, that might be attributed to a man who had lived onlj' for joke and quiz. Then the wild and wandering imagination of Thalaba and Kehama ; the grave beauty of Madoc ; the fine youthful glow of liberty and love in Joan of Arc ; and the vivid fire and vigour of Roderick the last of the Goths — are little less in contrast to the jocose productions just mentioned, than they are to the grave judgment displayed in his histories, or the keenness with which he enters, in his Book of the Church, the Colloquies, and his critiques, into the questions and interests of the day, and puts forth all the acumen and often the acidity of the partizan. With all our admiration of the genivxs and varied powers of Southey, and with all our esteem for his many virtues, and the peculiar amiability of his domestic life, we cannot, however, read him without a feeling of deep melancholy. The contrast between the beginning and the end of his career, the glorious and high path entered upon, and so soon and suddenly quitted for the pay of the placeman and the bitterness of the bigot, cling to his memory with a lamentable effect. Deploring this grand error of Southcy's life — for we bear no resentment to the dead — more especially as England has gone on advancing and liberalizing, spite of his slavish dogmas, and thus rendered his most zealous advocacy of narrow notions perfectly in- noxious, — we would ask, whether this peculiar change of his original opinions may not have had a peculiar effect on his poetry ? Much and beautifully as he has written, yet, if I may be allowed the expres- sion, he never seems to be at home in his poetry, any more than in the country which, with his nsw opinions, he adopted. We can read once, especially in our youth, his poems, even the longest — but it is rarely more than once. We are charmed, sometimes a little wearied, but we never v/ish to recur to them again. There are a few of his smaller poems, as the Penates, the Bee, Blenheim, and a few otliers, which are exceptions, with some exquisite passages, as that often- quoted one on love in Kehama. But, on the whole, we are quite satisfied with one reading. There is a want, somehow, of the spiritual in his writing. Beautiful fancy, and tender feeling, and sometimes deep devotion, there are ; l)ut still there lacks that spirit, that es.=ience of the soul, which makes Wordsworth and many of the pocma LL 514 SOUTHET. of Lord Byron a never-satiating aliment and refreshment, — a divine substance on whicli you live and grow, and by its influence seem to draw nearer to the world of mind and of eternity. Southey's poetiy seems a beautiful manufacture, not a part of himself. He carries you in it, as in an enchanted cloud, to Arabia, India, or America ; to the celestial IMeru, to the dolorous depths of Padalon, or to the Domdaniel caves under the roots of the ocean ; but he does not seem to entertain you at home; to take you down into himself. He does not seem to be at rest there, or to have there " his abiding city.'; ^ It is exactly the same in regard to the country in which he lived. He seemed to live there as a stranger and a sojourner. That he loved the lakes and mountains around, there can be no question ; but has he hnked his poetry with them ? Has he, like Wordsworth, woven his verse into almost every crevice of every rock ? Cast the spell of his enchantment upon every stream ? Made the hills, the waters, the hamlets, and the peo]3le, pari, and parcel of his life and his fame ? We seek in vain for any such amalgamation. With the exception of the cataract of Lodore, there is scarcely a line of his poetry which localizes itself in the fairy region where he Uved forty years. When Wordsworth died, he left on the mountains, and in all the vales of Cumberland, an everlasting people of his creation. The Wanderer, and the Clergyman of the Excursion, Michael, and Matthew, and the Wagoner, and Peter Bell, Ruth, and many a picturesque vagrant, wiU linger there for ever. The Shepherd Lord will haunt his ancient hills and castles, and the White Doe will stiU cross Rylston Fells. A thousand associations will start up in the mind of many a future generation, as they hear the names of Hel- vellyn, Blencathra, or Langdale Pikes. But when you seek for evidences of the poetic existence of Southey in Cumberland, you are carried at once to Greta hall, at Keswick, and there you remain. I suppose the phrenologists would say it was owing to his idiosyn- crasy — that he had much imitativeness, but very little locality. It is most singular, that look over the contents of his voluminous poems, and you find them connected with almost every region of the world, and every quarter of these kingdoms, except with the neigh- bourhood of his abode. He would seem like a man flying from the face of the world, and brushing out all traces of his retreat as he goes. In Spain, France, America, India, Arabia, Africa, the West Indies, in Ireland, Wales, England, and Scotland, you perceive his poetical habitations and resting-jjlaces ; but not in Cumberland. He has commemorated Pultowa, Jerusalem, Alentejo, Oxford, Blenheim, Dreux, Moscow, the Rhine. He has epitaphs and inscriptions for numbers of places in England, Spain, and Portxigal. In his Madoc, Wales ; in his Roderick, Spain ; in his Joan of Arc, France, find abundance of their localities celebrated. In his Pilgrimage to Waterloo, Flanders has its commemorations ; but Cumberland — no ! You would think it was some district not glorious with mountain, lake and legend, but some fenny flat on which a poetic spirit could not dwell. SOUTHEY. 515 Almost the only clues that we get are to be found in the Col- loquies and his ])rivate letters. Here we learn that the poet and his family did sometimes walk to Skiddaw, Causey Pike, and Watenlath. At page 119 of vol. i., where these names occur, we find the poet proposing an excursion to Walla Crag, on the borders of the Derwentwater. " I, who perhaps would more ■nillinglj'^ have sat at home, was yet in a mood to sufler violence, and making a sort of compromise between their exuberant activity and my own incli- nation for the chair and the fii-eside, fixed on Walla Crag." Besides this mention, you have in Colloquy XII. pages 59 to 69, a preface to a long history of the Clifford family, in which you are introduced to Threlkeld farm and village. This peep into the mountains makes you wonder that Southey did not give you more of them ; but no, that is aU. It is evident that his heart was, as he hinted just above, " at home in the chair by the fireside." It was in his library that he really lived ; and there is little question that when his children did get him out, on the plea that it was necessary for his health, his mind was otherwise occupied. To Keswick we must then betake ourselves as the main haunt of Kobert Southey. Here he settled down in the autumn of 1803, and instantly commenced that hfe of incessant labour which we have described, and which never ceased till his intellectual constitution gave way under it. The poet tried to secure an abode in Wales, in the Vale of Neath, but had been disappointed, and next was on the point of fixing his residence at Richmond, and was about to commence a gigantic work called Bibliotheca Britannica. But Richmond and the Bibliotheca both drifted away, and 1803 saw him hard at work on his Madoc. Incessant literary labour, buying and arranging fresh books, with an occasional trip to London or elsewhere, and a daily walk, con- stituted the life of Robert Southey from that time to his death. To the very latest years he was constantly conceiving new and enormous labours, many of which he never completed, many were commenced, and he was generally working on four or five at the same time, every day being divided into sections, each of which was api)ropriated to one particular work. The works which he intended to write were nearly as numerous, and would have been laborious as those he really executed — A History of Monachism ; the Age of George III., being a History of Modern Revolutions ; a Book of the State, ou the prin- ciple of his. Book of the Church ; a Life of George Fox ; a continua- tion of Warton's History of English Poetry, &c. &c. Of his daily work he gives this account himself in a letter to a friend. " I get out of bed as the clock strikes six, and shut the house-door after me as the clock strikes seven. After two hours with Davies, (arranging Dr. Bell's papers,) home to breakfast, after which Cuthbert (his son) engages me till about half-past ten ; and when the post brings me letters that either interest or trouble me, for of the latter I have many, by eleven I have done with the news- paper, and can then set about what is i)roperly the business of the day. But I can scarcely command two or tliree vnibroken hours at the desk. At two I tfekc my daily walk, bo the weather what it LL2 516 SOUTHET. may, and when the weather permits, with a book in my hand ; dinner at four, work about half an hour, then take the sofa with a different book, and after a few pages get my soundest sleep, till summoned to tea at six. My best time during the winter is by candlehght ; and in the season of company I can never count upon an evening's work. Supj^er at half-past nine, after which I work an hour, and then to bed ; the greatest part of my miscellaneous work is done in the odds and ends of time." — Life and Correspondence, vol. vi. p. 238. His chief relaxations from this incessant labour were, as I have said, his daily walk and occasional excursions with his family to the summits of Saddleback, Skiddaw, and HelveUyu, or amongst the lakes and tarns which lay on all sides. Sometimes he and his family met Wordsworth and his family and friends, at Leatheswater or Thirlmere, half-way between their residences, where sometimes as many as fifty persons have assembled, and made grand rural festivities. Sometimes, but more rarely, he oast aside his books, and made a considerable tour. In the autumn of 1805 he made an excursion into Scotland, and visited Walter Scott at Ashestiel. In 1817 he made a journey to the Continent, visiting the Netherlands, the Ehine, Switzerland, and the north of Italy. On this tour he saw Pestalozzi at Yverdun, and Fellenberg at Hofwyl. In 1819 he made a tour to the Highlands, with his friends Hickman and Telford, the engineer. In 1825 he went to Holland, with his friends Mr. Henry Taylor, author of Philip van Artevelde, Mr. Neville White, and Arthur Malet, where he was laid up some time at the house of the celebrated Bilderdijk, w^hose wife had translated his Roderick into Dutch, and formed a warm friendship with these interesting people ; and so much was he pleased, that he paid them another visit the following year. While at Brussels, he learned to his sur- prise that he had been elected a member of Parliament, which honour he declined, as he afterwards did that of a baronetcy. In 1 836 he made a sort of farewell visit, with his only son Cuthbert Southey, down into the West of England. The aged poet went over all the scenes of his boyhood at Bristol, and in tliat neighbourhood, with the feeling that it was for the last time. There he saw Joseph Cottle, one of his earhest and most generous friends, and Walter Savage Landor, at Clifton. In 1838, again with his son and several of his friends, he made an autumnal tour in France, chiefly in Normandy and Brittany. Such were the home labours and the brief wandei'ings of Robert Southey. In his domestic life no one ever showed more amiably and beautifully, and the spirit which he communicated to his children is felt in the kindly and affectionate tone in which his Life is written by his son. Another most interesting trait in Southey's character was his ever-ready and cordial aid and encouragement to young or sti-uggling authors. One of his earliest acts of authorship was the editing of the Eemaina and Works of Chatterton, by which he was enabled to SODTHET. 517 hand over to the surviving sister and niece of the poet 30D/. ; thus at once relieving them from great necessity, and doing them justice on a nefarious Hterary knight, who had been entrusted with Chatter- ton's MSS., and had published them for his own use. His next Samaritan deed of the same kind was the editing the Eemains of Henry Kirke White ; and these acts inspired all young poets with so attractive a conception of the generosity of his character, that numbers flocked to submit to him their early compositions, and to solicit his advice. This was never refused ; and the publication of his letters demonstrates to what a number of young authors his knowledge and experience were made useful ; but how plainly, frankly, and yet kindly, his counsel was administered. Amongst the names of such young aspirants for his favouivable notice, we re- cognise those of Ebenezer Elliott ; Shelley, who went to Keswick in 1812 to consult with him; the unfortunate Dusantoy ; Bernard Barton, who sent to ask him the sagacious question — Barton being educated a quaker, and Southey being no quaker at all — whether he thought the Society of Friends would be displeased if he jaublished a volume of poems ? Herbert Kuowles, Chauncey Hare Towushcnd, Allan Cunningham, Henry Taylor, &c. With several of these gentlemen the correspondence thus formed grew into warm friend- ship. Besides this general encouragement to rising genius, he edited the writings of Maiy Collins and John Jones, two persons in very humble life. From a similar benevolent feeling he was a great advocate for Pro- testant Bequinages, or lay nunneries, in which women of education and position, but of small incomes, might live together, and devote their leisure to the soothing of sickness and distress in others, like the Bonne Sa3urs, or Sisters of Charity, on the Continent. All this time he was labouring with never-ceasing exertion for the maintenance of his own family. With a pension of 2001., reduced by deductions to 160/., with 90/. per annum, the clear balance of his laureateship, with 400/. per annum from the Quarterly for many years, besides the general profit of his work.s, it might have been sup- posed that, living in a cheap part of the country, and a house, with gardens and paddocks, at only 50/. rental, the lil'e of Southey had passed in tolerable ease and absence of anxiety. On tlie contrary, we are assured by his son, in his biography of his father, that he was constantly on tlie stretch to make his income meet his daily ex- penses. This was the great eating canker of his life, as was the case with Moore, and with lar too many literary men. Having no inde- pendent property, the very uncertainty of their gains hlleil them with a perpetual anxiety. Southey appears to have hail no expensive habits, except his great passion for book-buying, which must have drained him of very large sums. He had, moreover, insured his life for 4,000/. ; and he had always a number of relatives resident under his roof In this respect what a contrast he presented to Coleridge, who seemed to wander off from his home and domestic duties with as complete an indifference as an ostrich is said to abandon her eggs ! 518 SOUTHET. Iq one of his letters to Cottle, in 1814, Southey asks, "Can you tell me anything of Coleridge ? A few lines of introduction for a son of Mr. , of your city, are all that we have received since I saw him last September twelve months. The children being left entirely to chance, I have appHed to his brothers at Otley concern- ing them, and am in hopes, through their means and the aid of other friends, of sending Hartley to college. Lady Beaumont has promised 30/. a-year for this purpose ; Poole, 10/. I wrote to Cole- ridge three or fom" months ago, telling him that unless he took some steps in providing for this object, I must make the application, and required his answer within three weeks. He promised to answer the letter, but has never taken any further notice of it." — Life and Correspo?idence, vol. iv. p. 82. It is a melancholy reflection that Southey, with his gigantic labours, could never accumulate sufficient beforehand to ward off the killing effects of anxiety. This was at the bottom of a great portion of his immense periodical composition, of his continual projection of heavy works, and of his eager grasping at posts which frequently were wholly out of the range of his talents and habits. He applied for the stewardship of the Greenwich Hospital Estates, and his friend Bedford informed him, in reply, that the salary was 700/. a-year, but that the place of residence varied over a tract of country of about eighty miles ; that the steward must be a perfect agricultu- rist, surveyor, mineralogist, and the best lawyer that, competently with these other characteristics, coidd be foimd. The responsibility was that of a revenue of 40,000/. per annum. This was a dilemma. He was equally anxious for the post of historiographer to the Crown, as well as the laureateship, but this turned out to have no salary attached to it. Yet, with all his anxiety for place, he refused the editorship of The Times at 2,000/. a-year, because it implied a total renunciation of his own literary pursuits. As old age stole upon him, these constantly wearing cares and exhausting labours, with other sorrows incident to humanity, the loss of beloved children, began to undermine the great intellect which had so long seemed actually to revel in the immensity of its undertakings. But this did not take place before he had seen the mind of his wife vanish under the annihilating burden of anxiety. Cuthbert Southey distinctly ascribes the insanity of his mother to this cause, — " An almost life-long anxiety about the uncertainty and highly precarious nature of my father's income," acting on a naturally nervous constitution. How excellent a woman was thus sacrificed, we may judge from her husband's beautiful testimony — "During more than two-thirds of my life, she has been the chief object of my thoughts, and 1 of hers. No man ever had a truer helpmate ! no children a more careful mother! No family was ever more wisely ordered, no housekeeping ever conducted with greater pru- dence or greater comfort." My visit to Keswick in the summer of 1 845 was marked by a cir- cumstance which may show how well the fame of Dr. Southey, the laureate of Church and State, and the bard who sang the triumphs SOUTHEY. 519 of legitimacy on the occasion of the alHed sovereigns coming to England in 1814, is spread amongst the nations which are the strictest maintainers of his favourite doctrines ; a fettered press, a law church, and a government maintained by such statesmen as Castlereagh and Metternich. I was travelling at that time with four of the subjects of these allied sovereigns, whom our lameate had so highly lauded ; a Russian, a Cossack, an Austrian, and a Bohemian ; the Cossack no other than the nephew of the Hetman Platoff, and the Bohemian, Count Wratislaw, since taking a distinguished command as general in the Austrian army in the Italian campaign, under Radetzky, being, moreover, the present representative of that very ancient family of which the queen of our Richard the Second was one, " the good Queen Anne," who sent out Wycliffe's Bible to Huss, and was thus the mother of the Reformation on the Continent ; and, singu- larly also, still closely connected with oiu* royal family, his mother being sister to the Princess of Leiningen, wife to the half-brother of Queen Victoria. Austrian and Russian nobles are not famous for gi-eat reading, but every one of these was as familiar with Dr. Southey's name as most people the world over are with those of Scott and Byron. They not only went over the laureate's house with the greatest interest, but carried away sprigs of evergreen to preserve as memorials. Southey's house, which lies at a little distance from the town of Keswick, on the way to Bassenthwaite water, is a plain stuccoed tenement, looking as you approach it almost hke a chapel, from the apparent absence of chimneys. Standing upon the bridge over the Greta which crosses the high-road here, the view aU round of the mountains, those which lie at the back of Southey's house, and those which lie in front, girdling the lake of Derwentwater, is grand and complete. From this bridge the house lies at the distance of a croft, or of three or four hundred yards, on an agreeable swell. In front, that is, between you and the house, ascends towards it a set of homelike crofts, with their cut hedges and a few scattered trees. When Southey went there, and I suppose for twenty years after, these were occupied as a nursery ground, and injured the eftcct of the immediate environs of the house extremely. Nothing now can be more green and agreeable. On the brow of the hill, if it can be called so, stand two stuccoed houses ; the -one nearest to the town, and the largest, being Southey's. Both are well flanked by pleasant trees, and partly hidden by them, that of Southey being most so. The smaller house has the air of a good neighbour of lesser import- ance, who is proud of being a neighbour. It was at that time occu- pied by a Miss Denton, daughter of a former vicar of Crosthwaite, the place just below on the Bassenthwaite road, and where Southey lies buried. The situation of Southey's house, taking all into consideration, is exceeded by few in England. It is agreeably distant from the road and the little town, and stands in a iiiie open valley, surrounded by hills of the noblest and most diversified character. From your stand on Greta bridge, looking over the house, your eye falls on the group 620 SOUTHEY. of mountains behind it. The lofty hill of Latrig lifts its steep green back, with its larch plantations clothing one edge, and scattered in groups over the other. Stretching away to the left, rises the still loftier range and giant masses of Skiddaw, with its intervening deUs and ravines, and summits often lost in their canopy of shadowy clouds. Between the feet of Skiddaw and Greta bridge, lie pleasant knolls and fields with scattered villas and cottages, and Crosthwaite church. On your right hand is the town, and behind it green swelling fields again, and the more distant enclosing chain of hills. If you then turn your back on the house, and view the scene which is presented from it, you find yourself in the presence of the river, hurrying away towards the assemblage of beautifully varied mountains, which encompass magnificently the lake of Derwent- water. The vicinity to the lake itself .would make this spot as a residence most attractive. I think I like Derwentwater more than any other of the lakes. The mountains round are bold and diversified in form. You see them showing themselves one behind another, many tend- ing to the pyramidal form, and their hues as varied as their shapes. Some are of that peculiar tawny, or lion colour, which is so singu- lar in its efiect in the Scotch mountains of the south ; others softly and smoothly green ; others black and desolate. Some are beautifully wooded, others bare. When you look onwards to the end of the lake, the group of mountains and crags there, at the entrance of Borrowdale, is one of the most beautiful and pictorial things imaginable. If any artist would choose a scene for the entrance into fairyland, let him take that. When, again, you turn and look over the town, there soars aloft Skiddaw, in his giant grandeur, with all his slopes, ridges, dints, ravines, and summits, clear in the blue sky, or hung with the cloud curtains of heaven, full of magnificent my.stery. There is a perfect pyramid, broad and massy as those of Egypt, standing solemnly in one of its ascending vales, called Carrsledrum. Then, the beautifully wooded islands of Derwentwater, eight in number ; and the fine masses of wood that stretch away between the feet of the hills and the lake, with here and there a villa lighting up the scene, make it perfect. In all the changes of weather, the changes of aspect must be full of new beauty ; but, in bright and genial summer days, nothing can be more enchant- ing. At the moment of our visit, the deep black yet transparent shadow that lay on some of the huge piles of mountain, and the soft light that lay on others, were indescribably noble and poetical ; and the strangers exclaimed continually, — '■'■ Frdchtig ! '' '■•Wunderschonr'' and " Tres heau ! " When we ascend to the house, it is through a narrow sort of croft or a wide shrubbery, which you will. The carriage-road goes another way, and here you have only a single footpath, and on yoiu* right hand a grassy plot scattered with a few flower beds, and trees and shrubs, which brings you, by a considerable ascent, to the front of the house, which is screened almost wholly from view by tall trees, amongst which are some fine maples and red beeches. Here, on the SOUTHET. 521 left hand, a little side gate leads to Miss Denton's hoiLse, and on the other stretches out the lawn, screened by hedges of laiu'el and other evergreens. Behind this little lawn, on the right hand of the house, lie one or two kitchen gardens ; and passing through these, you come to a wood descending towards the river, which you again find here sweeping around the house. Down this wood or copse, which is half orchard and half of forest trees, you see traces of winding foot-paths, but all now grown over with grass. The house is deserted ; the spirits which animated the scene are fled, some one way, and some another ; and there is already a wildness and a deso- lation about it. The Greta, nishing over its weir beneath this wood, moans in melancholy sympathy with the rest of the scene. You see that great pleasure has some time been taken in this spot, in these gardens, in this shadowy and steeply descending wood ; and the river that runs on beneath, and the melancholy feeling of the dream-hke nature and vanity of human things, its fame and happiness included, seizes irresistibly upon you. A little foot-path which runs along the Greta side towards the town deejiens this feehng. Through the trees, and behind the river, lie deep and grassy meadows with masses of woodland, having a very Cuyp or Paul Potter look ; and, between the higher branches of the trees, you see the huge green bulk of Skiddaw, soaring up with fine and almost starthng effect. You may imagine Southey walking to and fro along the foot-path under the trees, in the fields leading to the town, by another route, and thinking over his topics, while he took the air, and had in view a scene of mountain magnificence, of the effect of which the poet was fully conscious. " The height and extent of the surrounding objects seem to produce a correspondent expansion and elevation of mind, and the silence and solitude con- tribute to tliis emotion. You feel as if in another region, almost in another world." * Here, too, you may imagine Coleridge lying and dreaming under the trees of the wood within sound of the river. He was here, at one time, a great while. To retui'n to the house, however. It is a capacious house enough, but not apparently very well built. The floors of the upper rooms shake under your tread ; and I have heard, that when Southey had these rooms crowded and piled with books, there waa a fear of their coming down. The house is one of those .«quare houses of which you may count the rooms without going into them, but at each end is a circular projection, making each a snug sort of ladies' room. The room on the right hand as we entered was said to be the sitting-room, and that on the left the library, while the room over it was Southey's writing-room ; and most of these rooms, as well as the entrance-hall, were all crowded with books. We wore told that, after several days' sale at home, where some books as well as the furniture were sold, foiuteen tons of books and similar ai'ticlcs were sent off for sale in London. If Southey has not told us much about his haunts in the moun- tains, he has, however, particularly described that where his heai^t » Colloquies, vol. ii. p. 61. 622 SOtlTHET. lay — liis library. To this he has given a whole chapter in hia Colloquies. This noble collection, of which their possessor might well be proud, which is said to have included by far the best collection of Spanish books in England, and the gathering of which together, through many researches, many inquiries, and many years, had, perhaps, given him almost as much pleasurable excitement as their perusal, is once moi-e dispersed into thousands of hands. The house, indeed, at the time we visited it, was in the act of being repaired, fresh painted and papered, ready for a new tenant ; and, of course, looked desolate enough. All the old paper had been torn off the walls, or scraped away ; and workmen, with piles of rolls of new paper, and buckets of paste, were beginning their work of revival. The whole house, outside and inside, had an air of dilapidation, such as houses in the country are often allowed to fall into ; but, no doubt, when all furnished and inhabited, would be comfortable and habitable enough. But death had been there, and the appraiser and auctioneer, and a crowd of eager sale-attenders after them ; and the history of the poet and the poet's family life was wound up and done. A populous dwelling it must have been when Southey and his wife and children, and Mrs. Coleridge and her daughter, and perhaps other friends, were all housed in it. And an active and pleasant house it nmet have been when great works were going on in it, a Thalaba, a Madoc, an article for the Quarterly, and news from London were coming in, and letters were expected of great interest, and papers were sending off by post to printers and publishers, and correspondents. All that is now passed over as a dream ; the whole busy hive is dispersed many ways, and the house and grounds were preparing to let at 551. a year, just as if no genius had set a greater value on them than on any other premises around. It is when we see these changes that we really feel the vanity of human life. But the beauty of the life of genius is, that though the scene of domestic action and sojourn can become as empty as any other, the home of the poet's mind becomes thenceforth that of the whole heart and mind of his nation, and often far beyond that. The Cossack and the Bohemian — did they not also carry away from it to their far-off lands tokens of their veneration ? Before quitting Southey's house for his tomb, I cannot resist referring to that little fact connected with his appointment to the laureateship already alluded to. It is well known that the post was first offered to Sir Walter Scott, who declined it, but recommended Southey, who was chosen. The letters on the whole transaction are given in Lockhart's Life of Scott (chap, xxvi.) Scott, who was then only plain "Walter Scott, who was not made Sir Walter for seven years after, who had published the greater number of his popular poetical romances, but had not yet published Waverley, felt, how- ever, quite terrified at the offer of the laui'eateship, and wrote off to the Duke of Buccleuch to ask his advice how he was to get decently out of the scrape without offending the Prince Regent. "I am," says ScotL " very much embarrassed by it. I am, on the one hand, SOUTHET. 523 very mucli afraid of giving oflfence, where no one would willingly offend, and perhaps losing the opportunity of smoothing the way to my youngsters through life ; on the other hand, the offer is a ridiculous one ; somehow or other, they and I should be well quizzed," &c. * * * " I feel much disposed to shake myself free of it. I should make but a bad courtier, and an ode-maker is described by Pope as a man out of his way, or out of his senses." Almost by return of post came the duke's answer. " As to the offer of his Royal Highness to appoint you laureate, I shall frankly say, that I should be mortified to see you hold a situation which by the general concurrence of the world is stamped ridiculous. There is no good reason why it should be so ; but it is so. Walter Scott, Poet Laureate, ceases to be Walter Scott of the Lay, !Marmion, &c. Any future poem of yours would not come forth with the same probability of a successful reception. The poet laureate would stick to you and your productions like a piece of court plaister. * * * Only think of being chaunted and recitativcd by a parcel of hoarse and squeaking choristers on a birthday, for the edification of the bishops, pages, maids of honour, and gentlemen pensioners ! Oh horrible ! thrice horrible ! " Scott replied, " J should certainly never have survived the recita- tive described by your Grace ; it is a part of the etiquette I was quite unprepared for, and should have sunk under it." On this, Scott at once declined the honour; and though he said he should make a bad courtier, assuredly no courtier could have done it in better style, professing that the office teas too distinf/uixhed for his merits; that he was hy no means adequate to it. Now Scott all tnis time had but an income of 1,000/. a-year, independent of literature ; we have the particulars calculated and cast up on the very same page, opposite to his letter to Buccleuch ; nay, he is in embarrass- ments, and in the very same letter requests the Duke to be guarantee for 4,000/. for him : and he thought the laureateship worth 300/. or 400/. a-year. These facts all testify to his thorough idea of the ignominy of the office. Nevertheless, he writes at once to Southey — tells him that he has had this offer, but that he has declined it because he has had already two pieces of preferment, and moreover, " my dear Southey, I had you in my eye." He adds — and now let any one who thinks himself flattered on any particular occasion, remember this — " I did not refuse it from any foolish prejudice ar/ainst the situation — otherwise hoio durst I offer it to you, my elder brother in the muse ? — but from a sort of internal hope that they would give it you, on whom it would be so much more wortliily confe'rrcd. For I am,not such an ass as not to know that you are my better in poetry, though I have had, probably but for a time, the tide of popu- larity in my favour. I have not tiUie to add the thousand other reasons, but I only wished to tell you how the matter was, and to beg you to think before you reject the offer which I flatter myself will be made to you. If I had not been, like Dogberry, a fellow with two gowns already, I should have jumped at it like a cock at a goose- berry. Ever yours, most truly, Walter Scott." 624 SOUTHEY. Southey accepted it, and Scott wrote him a letter of warmest congratulation on getting this piece of court plaister clapped on hia back, and putting himself in a position to be "well quizzed;" but was quite confounded to learn that the honorarium for the " hor- rible ! thrice horrible ! " was not 400/. a-year, but only 100/. and a butt of wine. Wordsworth, when he became the holder of this post, accepted it with a dignity worthy of his character and fame, declining it till it was stripped of all its disgusting duties. Thus qualified, Alfred Tennyson has been able to accept the same title with less re- pugnance ; but the next step, it is to be hoped, will be to abolish an office equally derogatory, under any circumstances, to monarch and subject. No poet of reputation should feel himself in a position which implies the most distant obligation to pay mercenary praise. No monarch of this country need purchase praise ; to a worthy occupier of the throne it will be freely accorded from the universal heart of the nation. Crosthwaite church, in the graveyard of which Eobert Southey's re- mains lie, is about a quarter of a mile from the house, on the Bassen- thwaite-water road. It is a very simple and lowly village church, with a low square tower, but stands finely in the wide, open valley, surrounded, at a considerable distance, by the scenery I have de- scribed. I suppose it is nearly a mile from the foot of Skiddaw. From Southey's house the walks to it, and again from it along the winding lanes, and over the quiet fields towards Skiddaw, are parti- cularly pleasant. Southey, in his Colloquies, speaks of the church and churchyard with much affection. He quotes the account of an old man who more than fifty years ago spoke of the oldest and finest yew trees in the country standing in this churchyard, and of having seen all the boys of the school-house near, forty in number, perched at once on the boughs of one of them. At the noi'th-west corner of the churchyard stands Southey's tomb. It is a plain altar-tomb of reddish freestone, covered with a slab of blue slate, with this inscription : — " Here lies the body of Robert Southey, LL.D. Poet Laureate ; Born August 12, 1774 ; Died March 26, 1843. Also of Edith his wife, born May 20, 1774 ; Died Nov. 16, 1837. I am the resvu-rection and the life, saith the Lord." Close in front of the tomb lies the grave of Mrs. Southey ; and behind, and close to the hedge, stands a stone bearing this inscrip- tion : — " The Lord gave, and the Lord taketh away ; blessed be the name of the Lord. Sacred to the memory of Emma Southey, who departed in May, 1809, aged 14 months. And of Herbert Southey, who departed April 17th, 1816, in the tenth year of his age. Also of George Fricker, their uncle, aged 26, 1814. Also Isabel Southey, their sister, who departed on the 16th of July, 1826, aged 13 years. Also of Edith Southey, their mother, who departed Nov. 1837, aged 63. Requiescat in pace." I recollected that there was something peci;liar connected with the death of the son, Herbert. The old clerk said that his disorder 20uld not be discovered till after his death ; but that on opening SOUTHEY. 625 him, a human hair was found fast round his heart ! It was, in fact, i disease of the heart. I wished to see the j^ew where the Southeys used to sit ; but I found the interior of the church, as well as of his house, undergoing the revolution of repair, or rather of renewal. It seemed as if people had only waited for Southey's death to begin and clear off all traces of his existence here. The church is fine and capacious within ; but all the old pews, all the old seats, pulpit, and everything belonging to them, have been cleared away, and the whole replaced by fittings in the ancient style. There are nothing but open benches, with one single exception. The benches are of solid oak, with heavy, hand- some carving, and have a very goodly and substantial lodk. The windows are also renewed with handsome painted glass ; and the tables of the Decalogue, &c., placed behind the altar, are all painted in the old missal style. The church will be very handsome, at the same time that it is a sign of the times. Of course, Southey's pew is gone. In the church is an ancient monument of the Eadcliffes, ancestors of the Earl of Derwentwater ; and two of the Brownrigs of Ormathwaite, immediate maternal relations of my wife. Since my visit, a beautiful monument, consisting of a recumbent figure in white marble, by Lough, has been placed in this church, bearing an epitaph by Wordsworth. The close of Southey's life was melancholy. His mind gave way, probably from having being overtasked, and he sank into imbecility. Shortly before this event he had married, as his second wife, his friend of many years' standing, Caroline Bowles, the author of Chapters on Churchyards, and one of the sweetest and most genuine poetesses of the age. She did not many years survive her husband. At his death she retired to Buckland, in the New Forest, where .she had spent the chief portion of her hfe, and where she used to attend Bouldre church, in which she was married, and where the venerable Gilpiuj the author of Forest Scenery, had once been the minister. JOANNA BAILLIE. The powerful dramatic writer, the graceful and witty lyrist, and the sweet and gentle woman, who for so many years, in her quiet retreat at Hampstead, let the world flow past her as if she had nothing to do with it, nor cared to be mentioned by it, was born in one of the most lovely and historical' districts of Scotland. She was born in a Scottish manse, in the upper dale of the Clyde, which has, for its mild character and lavish production of fruit, been termed " Fruitland." As you pass along the streets of Scotch towns, you see on fruit-stalls in the summer piles of plums, pears, and other fruits, labelled " Clydesdale Fruit." One of the finest specimens of the fruit of this luxm^iant and genial dale was Joanna Baillie, a name never pronounced by Scot or Briton of any part of the empire, but with the veneration due to the truest genius, and the affection which is the birthright of the ti'uest specimens of womanhood. The sister of the late amiable and excellent Dr. Baillie, the friend of Walter Scott, the woman whose masculine muse every great poet has for nearly half a century delighted to honour, Joanna Baillie wrote because she could not help pouring out the fulness of her heart and mind, and the natural consequence was fame ; otherwise, whoever saw that quiet, amiable, and unassuming lady, easy and cheerful as when she played beneath the fruit-laden boughs of her native garden, saw that, though not scorning the fair reputation of well exercised intellect, she was at home in the bosom of home, and let. no restless desire for mere fame disturb the pure happiness of a serene life, and the honour and love of those nearest and dearest to her. Had the lambent flame of genius not burned in the breast of Joanna Baillie, that of a pure piety and a spirit made to estimate the bless- ings of life, and to enjoy all the other blessings of peace and social good which it brings, would have still burned brightly in her bosom, and made her just as happy though not as great. The birthplace of Joanna Baillie was the pretty manse of Bothwell, in the immediate neighbourhood of Bothwell brig ; and, therefore, as will at once be seen, in the centre of ground where stirring deeds have been done, and where the author of Waverley has added the vivid colouring of romance to those of history. Bothwell manse, from JOANNA BAILLIE. 527 its elevated site, looks dii'cctly down upon the scene of the battle at Bothwell brig ; upon the park of Hamilton, where the Covenanters were encampud ; and upon Bothwellhaugh, the seat of Hamilton, who shot the Regent Murray. This is no mean spot in an historical point of view, and it is richly endowed by nature. Near it also, a little farther down the river, stands Bothwell Castle, on Bothwell bank, on which the charm of poetry has been conferred with an almost needless prodigality, for it is so delightful in its own natural beauty. The country as you proceed to Bothwell from Glasgow, from which it is distant about ten miles, though from the first rich and well- cultivated, is not so agreeable, from the quantity of coal that is found along the roads into Glasgow, and which seem to have given a blackness to everything. As you advance, however, it grows con- tinually more elevated, open, airy, and pleasant. About a mile before you reach Bothwell, its tall square church steeple, seen far before you, directs your course, and a pair of lodge gates on your right hand marks the entrance to the grounds of Bothwell Castle. By writing your name and address in a book kept by the gate-keeper, you are admitted, and can then pursue your way alone to the castle, and make your own survey without the nuisance of a guide. The castle lies about half a mile from the high-road. You first arrive at very beautifully kept pleasure grounds, in which stands a good modern mansion, the seat of the proprietor. Lord Douglas. Passing through these grounds, and close to the right of the house, you soon behold the ruins of the old castle. It is of a very red sandstone, extensive in its remains, and bearing evidence of having been much more extensive. Its tall red walls stand up amid fine trees and masses of ivy, and seem as if created by Time to beautify the modern scene with which they blend so well. The part remaining consists of a great oblong square, with two lofty and massy towers overlook- ing the river which lies to your left. There are also remains of an ample chapel. From the openings in the ruins, the river below, and its magnificent valley or glen, burst with startling effect upon you. The bank from the foot of the castle descends with considerable steepness to the river far below, but soft and green as possible ; and beyond the dark and hurrying river rise banks equally high, and as finely wooded and varied. Advancing beyond the castle you come again to the river, which sweeps round the ruins in a line curve. Here every charm of scenery, the great river in its channel, its lofty and well-wooded banks, the picturesque views of Blantyrc Priory opposite, the slopes and swells of mo.st luxurious green, and splendid lime-trees hanging their verdurous boughs to the ground, mingle the noble and the beautiful into an enchanting whole. A gravel- walk leads you down past the front of the castle, and presents you with a new and still more impressive view of it. Here it stands aloft on the precipice above you, a most stately remnant of the old times ; and Nature has not stinted her labours in ariaying it in tree, bush, and hanging plant, so as to give it the grace of life in its slow decay, making it in perfect harmony with herself. Few scenes are more 528 JOANNA BAILLIE. fascinating than this. Above you the towers of the castle, which once received as its victorious guest Edward I. of England ; which again sheltered the English chiefs fleeing from the disastrous field of Bannockburu ; which was the stronghold of Archibald the Grim, and the proud hall of the notorious Earl Bothwell. Below, slopes down in softest beauty the verdant bank ; and the stately Clyde, dark and deep, flows ou amid woods and rocks worthy of all their fame. The taste of the proprietor has seized on every circumstance to give a finish to a scene so lovely ; and it is impossible not to exclaim, in the words of the celebrated old ballad, — " Oh, Bothwell bank, thou bloomest fair." The village of Bothwell is, as I have said, a mile farther on the way towards Hamilton. The church and manse lie to the left hand as you enter it, and the latter is buried, as it were, in a perfect sea of fruit trees. You may pass through the churchyard to it, and then along a footpath between two high hedges, which leads you to the carriage-road from the village to its front. The house in which Miss Baillie was born, and where she lived till her fourth year, seems to stand on a sort of mount, on one side overlooking the valley of the Clyde, and on the other the churchyard and part of the village. The situation is at once airy and secluded. Between the manse and the churchyard lies the garden, full of fruit-trees ; and other gardens, or rather orchards, between that and the village, add to the mass of foliage in which it is immersed. Between the churchyard and the manse garden commences a glen, which runs down on the side of the manse most distant from the village, widening and deepening as it goes, to the great Clyde valley. This gives the house a picturesque- ness of situation peculiarly attractive. It has its own little secluded glen, its sloping crofts, finely shaded with trees, and beyond again other masses of trees shrouding cottages and farms. The church had been rebuilt within a few years, of the same rod stone as Bothwell Castle ; but the old chancel still remained standing, in a state of ruin. The churchyard is extensive, scattered with old-fashioned tombs, and forming a famous playground for the childi-en of the neighbouring village school, who were out leaping in the deep damp soil, and galloping among its rank hemlocks and mallows to their hearts' content. Having, by the courtesy of the minister. Dr. Matthew Gardner, seen the manse, and had a stroll in the garden, I a,gain wandered over the churchyard, watching the boys at their play, and reading the inscriptions on the tombs and headstones ; one of which I copied in evidence of the state of paro- chial education in Scotland, where it has existed as a national insti- tution, I believe, ever since the days of Knox : — " Erected by Margaret Scott, in memory of her husband, Robert Stobo, Late Smith and Farrier o' Gowkthrapple, who died Tth May 1S31, vn the 70tli year of his age. " My sledge and hammer lies declined, My bellows pipes have lost its wind ; My forge's extinct, my lires decayed, And in the dust my vice is laid. My coal is spent, my iron is gone. My nails are drove, my work is Done." JOANNA BAILLIE. 629 What struck me as not less curious was the following handbill, posted on the jamb of the church-door : — " Gooseberries for sale, by public roup. The gooseberries in the orchards of Bothwell manse, also at Captain Bogles Laroyet, and in, &c. &c. Sale to begin at Bothwell manse, at five o'clock p. m., 10th of July." This \vas, cer- tainly, characteristic of " Fi-uitland." Though Miss Baillie only spent the first four years of her life at this sweet and secluded parsonage, it is the place in her native country which she said she liked best to think of. And this we may well imagine ; it is just the place for a child's paradise, embosomed amid blossoming trees, with its garden lying like a little hidden yet sunny fairyland in the midst of them, with its flowers and its hum- ming bees, that old church and half wild churchyard alongside of it, and its hanging crofts, and little mnbrageous valley. To Bothwell brig you descend the excellent highway towards Hamilton, and coming at it in something less than a mile, are sur- prised to find what a rich and inviting scene it is. The brig, which you suppose, from being described as narrow, steep, and old- fashioned in the days of the Covenanters, to be something grey and quaint, reminding you of Claverhouse and the stin-dy Gospellers, is, really, a very respectable, modern-looking bridge. The gateway which used to stand in the centre of it has been removed, the breadth has been increased, an additional arch or arches have been added at each end, and the whole looks as much like a decent, every-day, well-to-do, and toll-taking bridge as bridge well can do. There is a modern toll-bar at the Bothwell end of it. There is a good house or two, with their gardens descending to the river. The river flows on full and clear, between banks well cultivated and well covered with plantations. Beyond the bridge and river the country again ascends with an easy slope towards Hamilton, with extensive plantations, and park walls belonging to the domain of the Duke of Hamilton. You have scarcely ascended a quarter of a mile, when on your left hand, a handsome gateway, bearing the ducal escutcheons, and with goodly lodges, opens a new carriage-way into the park. Everything has an air of the present time, of wealth, peace, and intellectual government, that make the days of the battle of Bothwell brig seem like a piece of the romance work of Scott, and not of real history. Scott himself tells us in his Border Minstrelsy, in his notes to the old Ballad of Botliwell Brig, that "the whole appearance of the ground as given in the picture of the battle at Hamilton Palace, even including a few old houses, is the same as the scene now pre- sents. The removal of the porch or gateway upon the bridge is the only perceptible diS'erence." There must have been nmch change here since Scott vLsited the spot. The old houses have given way to new houses. The old bridge is metamorphosed into something that might pass for a newLsh bridge. The banks of the river, and the lands of the park beyond, are so planted and wooded, that the pioneers would have much to do before a battle could be fought. All trace of moorland has vanished, aud modern enclosure and M M 530 JOANNA BAn.LIK. cultivation haa taken possession of the scene. When we bring back by force of imagination the old view of the place it is a far difi'erent one. " Where Bothwell's bridge connects the margin steep, And Clyde below runs silent, stronfj, and deep, The hardy peasant, by oppression driven To battle, deemed his cause the cause of Heaven. Unskilled in arras, with useless courage stood, While gentle Monmouth grieved to shed his blood ; But fierce Dundee, inflamed with deadly hate. In vengeance for the great Montrose's fate. Let loose the sword, and to the hero's shade A barbarous hecatomb of victories paid." — Wilson's Clyde. When we picture to ourselves the Duke of Monmouth ordering his brave foot-guards, under command of Lord Livingstone, to force the bridge, which was defended by Hackstone of Rathillet, and Claverhouse sitting on his white horse on the hill-side near Both- well, watching the progress of the fray, and ready to rush down with his cavalry, and fall on the infatuated Covenanters who were quarrelling amongst themselves on Hamilton haughs, we see a wild and correspondent landscape, rough as the Cameronian insurgents, and rude as their notions. The Bothwell brig of the present day has all the old aspect modernized out of it. Its smiling fields, and woods that speak of long peaceful times, and snug modern homes — oh ! how far oflf are they from the grand old melancholy tone of the old ballad : — " Now farewell, father, and farewell, mother, And fare ye weel, my sisters three; An' fare ye weel, my Earlstoun, For thee again I'll never see I " So they're away to Bothwell hill, An' waly they rode bonnily ! When the Duke of Monmouth saw them comin' He went to view their company. • • « • " Then he set up the flag o' red, A' set about wi' bonny blue ; ' Since ye'll no cease, and be at peace. See that ye stand by ither true.' " They stelled their cannons on the height. And showered their shot down in the howe; An' beat our Scots' lads even doun. Thick they lay slain on every knowe. ♦ • * • " Alang the brae, beyond the brig, Mony a brave man lies cauld and still; But lang we'll mind, and sair we'll rue. The bloody battle of Bothwell hill." To the left, looking over the haughs or meadows of Hamilton, from Bothwell brig, you discern the top of the present house of Bothwellhaugh over a mass of wood. Here another strange his- torical event connects itself with this scene. Here lived that Hamilton who shot in the streets of Linlithgow the Regent Murray, the half-brother of the queen of Scots. This outi'age had been instigated by another, which was calculated, especially in an age like JOANNA BAILLIE. 531 that ■when men took the redress of their wrongs into their own hands without much ceremony, to excite to madness a man of honour and strong feeling. The regent had given to one of his favourites Hamilton's estate of Bothwellhaugh, who proceeded to take pos- session with such brutality that he turned Hamilton's wife out naked, in a cold night, into the open fields, where before morning she became furiously mad. The spirit of vengeance took deep hold of Hamilton's mind, and was fanned to flame by his indignant kins- men. He followed the regent from place to place, seeking on oppor- tunity to kill him. This at length occurred by his having to pass through Linlithgow on his way from Stirling to Edinburgh. Hamilton placed himself in a wooden gallery, which had a window towards the street ; and as the regent slowly, on account of the pressure of the crowd, rode past, he shot him dead. Add to these scenes and histories that Hamilton Palace, in its beautiful park, lies within a mile of the Bothwell brig, and it must be admitted that no poetess could desire to be born in a more beautiful or classical region. Joanna Baillie's father was at the time of her birth minister of Bothwell. When she was four years old he quitted it, and was removed to different parishes, and finally, only three years before his death, was presented to the chair of divinity at Glasgow. After his death Miss Baillie spent with her family six or more years in the bare muirlands of Kilbride, a scenery not likely to have much attraction for a poetical mind, but made agreeable by the kindness and intelligence of two neighbouring families. She never saw Edinburgh till on her way to England when about twenty- two years of age. Before that period she had never been above ten or twelve miles from home, and, with the exception of Bothwell, never foi'med much attachment to places. After that, she only saw Scotland as a visitor, and at distant intervals. For many years Joanna Baillie resided at Hampstead, where she ■was visited by nearly all the great writers of the age. Scott, as may be seen in his letters to Joanna Baillie, delighted to make him- self her guest, and on her visit to Scotland, in 1806, she spent some weeks in his house at Edinburgh. From this time they were most intimate friends : she was one of the persons to whom his letters were most frequently addressed, and he planted, in testimony of his friendship for her, a bower of pinasters, the seeds of which she had furnished, at Abbotsford, and called it Joanna's bower. In 1810 her drama, The Family Legend, was, through his means, brought out at Edinburgh. It was the first new play brought out by Mr. Henry Siddons, and was very well received, a fortune which rarely attended her able tragedies, which are imagined to bo more suitable for the closet than the stage. There they will continue to charm, while vigour of conception, a clear and masterly stylo, and healthy nobihty of sentiment, retain their hold on the humnn mind. Joanna Baillie died February 23d, 1851, aged 89, and is interred in Hampstead churchyard, beside her mother, who had also reached the venerable age of 86. H u 2 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. William Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth on the 7th of April, 1770. His father was a solicitor and law-agent to Sir James Lowther, afterwards Earl of Lonsdale. By his mother's side he was related to the Cooksons and Crackenthorps, families of Cumberland and Westmorland. He was educated at Hawkshead school, where he began to write poetry ; he then went to St. John's College, Cam- bridge, of which his uucle, Dr. Cookson, had been a fellow. During the vacation of 1790, when, of course, he was twenty years of age, he went on a short tour in France and Switzerland, with a fellow-col- legian, Robert Jones, a Welshman, returning by the Rhine. They travelled on foot, with knapsacks on their backs and twenty pounds each in their pockets at stai'ting. On taking his degree, Woi'dsworth made a pedestrian tour in Wales with his friend Jones. In the autumn of 1791 he went again to France, and stayed rather more than a year. During his sojourn there the king was deposed, and the massacres of September took place while he was at Orleans. When he reached Paris the king, queen, and their children lay in prison, France was a republic, and the ai'my of the allies was hovering on the frontiers. Soon after his reaching home the king was executed. woRDSwoRTa. 533 At this period, Wordsworth was, like so many others, an ardent republican, and gave credit to all the fine sentimental theories of the revolutionists. The atrocities which they committed, and the sub- sequent career of Napoleon, cured him of all that. He became a decided advocate of monarchy, but he never ran into the extreme of despotism, like Southey ; and as he had not published, like him, in the effervescence of youth, any such violent etfusious as \V'at Tyler, and the Botany Bay Eclogues, he escaped the fierce resentment which fell upon Southey, from those who were more steadfast to their original liberalism. On his return to England, Wordsworth continued for some time in an unsettled state. He could not bring his mind to take orders, and his resources were insufficient for his subsistence without a profes- sion. He spent his time in rambling in the Isle of Wight, on Salisbury Plain, in Wales, and amongst his friends in the North. He thought of publishing a magazaine, and then of getting upon a London newspaper. At this juncture a young friend dying, left him 900/. About the same time he again regained the society of his sister Dorothy, who had been brought up by a relative. From this time the brother and sister were inseparable. Wordsworth and his sister took up their abode at Rouden, near Crewkerne, in Somersetshire, and there Coleridge, in 1795, paid them a visit. Coleridge had now become connected with Southey and Lovell, two Bristol men, and was in a great measure located there. The spirit of poetry had revived again after a long period of mere imitation ; and by these circumstances three of the chief leaders of literary reform were thus brought together. Southey was a Bristol man, Coleridge was a Devonshire man, Wordsworth a Cumberland man ; and Bristol for a time seemed as though it were to have the honour of becoming a sort of western Athens. But Bristol itself had no sympathy with any literary spirit. It is one of those places that have the singular fortune to produce great men, though it never cherishes them. It produced Chatterton, and let him perish ; it produced Southey, and let him go away to rear the fabric of his fame where he pleased. The spirit of trade, and that not in its most adventm'ous or liberal character, was and is the spirit of Bristol. By a wretched and penny-wise policy, even of trade, it has allowed Gloucester, at many miles' distance from the sea, to become a great port at its expense ; by the same spirit it has created Liverpool ; and whoever now sees its wretched docks coming up into the middle of the town, instead of stretching, business-like and compactly, along the banks of the Avon, ita dusty and unwatered streets, and altogether dingy and sluggish appearance, feels at once, that not even the poetry of trade can flourish there. Yet Bristol had the honour thrust upon it of issu- ing to the world the first productions of Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge. Joseph Cottle, tho author of Alfred, an epic poem, whom Byron so mercilessly handled, grafting upon him the name of his brother Amos, for tho sake of more ludicroua effect, — Joseph Cottle was a bookseller here, and became the 534 WORDSWORTH. patron of those three young, aspiring, but far from wealthy young men. Coleridge had made the acquaintance of Mr. Thomas Poole, of Nether Stowey, a gentleman of some property, and a magistrate. Mr. Poole was a friend of the two great brother potters, Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood, of Staffordshire ; he introcluced Coleridge to them, and eventually they settled on him an annuity of 150/. a-year ; the half of which, however, was afterwards withdrawn by Thomas Wedgwood, or his executors. Poole invited Coleridge to come down to Stowey to see him, and, after his marriage, prevailed on him to go and live in Stowey. The Wedgwoods were accustomed also to visit Mr. Poole ; and the same causes drew Wordsworth and Southey occasionally down there. Thus Bristol ceased to be the general rendezvous of this new literary coterie, and the solitudes of Somer- setshire received them. People have often wondered what induced this poetical brotherhood to select a scene so far out of the usual haunts of literary men, — so inferior to Wordsworth's own neighbour- hood, — as Stowey and its vicinity. These are the circumstances. It was Mr. Poole and cheapness which had a deal to do with it. Poole drew Coleridge ; Coleridge and the dreams of Pantisocracy drew most of the others. Wordsworth, I believe, never speculated on the exclusive happiness of following the plough on the banks of the Susquehannah ; but the whole of the corps had made the discovery that true poetry was based on nature, and that it was to be found only by looking into their own minds, and into the world of nature around them. They therefore sought, not cities, but solitude, where they could at once read, reflect, and store up that treasury of imagery, full of beauty and truth, which should be reproduced, woven into the living tissue of their own thought and passion, as poetry of a new, startling, and high order. To this life of country seclusion Words- worth and Southey adhered, from choice, all their after lives. When Coleridge went to settle at Stowey, Wordsworth also re- moved to Allfoxden, about five miles further down, near the Bristol Channel. Here his secluded habits gave rise to some ludicrous cir- cumstances, annoying enough, however, to drive him out of the neighbourhood. He was deep in the composition of poetry. He had a Tragedy on the anvil, a poem called Salisbury Plain (never yet publislied), and Peter Bell ; besides his Lyrical Ballads, which last Cottle brought out while he was here. He sought the deepest soli- tude, and here, if anywhere, he could find it. AUfoxden House is situated at the very extremity of the Quantock hills, and within about a mile and a quarter of the Bristol Channel. As you advance from Stowey, the Quantock hills run along at some little distance on your left hand. They are of the character of downs, open and moor- land on the top, and with great masses of wood here and there on their slopes. The country on your right is level, rich, and well wooded. On arriving near Allfoxden, you turn abruptly to the left ; and, winding about through a woody lane, and passing through a little hamlet, you begin to feel as if you were going quite out of the world of mankind. You are at the foot of the hills, and a thick WORDSWORTH. 535 wood terminates your way. But tbrougli this wood you have to pass to discover the house where Wordsworth had hidden himself. Entering at a gate, you hud yourself in a mo.st Druidical gloom. The wood is of well-grown, tall, and thickly-growing oak ; tilled still closer with hollies, which were once underwood, but which have shot up, and emulated the very oaks themselves in altitude. They are unques- tionably amongst the loftiest hollies in England. Altogether the mass of wood is dense, the scene is shadowy, the ground is strewn •with its brown carpet of fallen leaves. As you advance, on your right hand you catch a sound of water ; and, pursuing it, you find it issues from the bottom of a deep narrow glen or dean, which no doubt gives the name to the place — All fox den, or glen of all the foxes. This glen is a very poetical feature of the place, and espe- cially attractive to a man in Wordsworth's then tm'n of mind, which led him to the deepest seclusion for the sake of abstraction. Tall trees soar up from its sides, and meet above ; some of them have fallen across, dashed down by the wind. Wild plants grow lu.\uri- autly below ; woodbines and other creepers climb and cling from bough to bough ; and the pure and crystal water hurries along over its gravelly bed, beneath this mass of shade and overhanging banks, with a merry music to the neighbouring sea. Leaving this glen, you hold on through the wood to the left, and soon emerge into a park, enclosed by hills and woods, where a good country house looks out towards the sea. It is one of the most secluded, and yet pleasantly secluded, houses in England. Around it sweep the hills, scattered with fine timber, beneath which reposes a herd of deer, and before it stretches the sea at a little distance. The house is somewhat raised above the level of the valley, so as to catch the charming view of the lands, woods, and outspread waters below. To the left, near the coast, you catch a view of the walls of St. Audrey, the seat of Sir Peregrine Ackland, pleasingly assuring you that you are not quite cut off fi'om humanity. Below the house lies a sunny flower garden, and behind, the ascending lawn is enriched by finely disposed masses of trees ; amongst them some enormous old oaks, and elms of noblest growth. There are two elms, growing close together, of remarkable size and height, beneath which a seat is placed, commanding a view of the park and sea ; and just below it a fine, well-grown larch, which used to be a very favourite tree of the poet's. Under these trees he used to sit and read and compose ; and no man could have coveted a more con- genial study. Here originated or took form many of his lyrical ballads. If you ascend the park, you .find yourself, after a good stout climb, on the open hills. One summit after another, covered with clumps of Scotch firs, allures you to ascend, till at length you find yourself far from any abode, on the high moorland hills, amidst a piolound but glorious solitude. Fine glens, with glittering streams, and here and there a lonely cottage sending up its quiet smoke, run amongst these hills, and e.xteusivo tracts of woodland o£fer you aU the charms of forest seclusion. The hills which range 536 WORDSWORTH. along behind Stowey cease here, and were the great haunt of Cole- ridge and Wordsworth. They might, if they pleased, extend their rambles over them, from the abode of the one to that of thn other. We find numerous evidences of their haunting of these hills amongst their poems. The ballad of the Thorn is said to be derived hence. Coleridge mentions their name occasionally. He has a poem to a brook amongst the Quantock hills ; and the opening of his Fears in Solitude, written in 1798, when he was at Stowey, and quoted at p. 94, is most descriptive of their scenery. But the views from the Quautock hills are as charming as the hills themselves. From above Allfoxden you look down directly on the Bristol Channel, the little island of Steepholms lying in the liquid foreground, and the Welsh hills stretching along in the hack. On your right j'ou see the whole level but rich countiy stretching away to Bridgewater, and on towards Bristol. In this pleasant but solitary region we must recollect, however, that the young poets were not left entirely to their solitary rambles and cogitations. Coleridge had his wife and one or two young chil- dren with him. Wordsworth had his sister Dorothy, the great com- panion in his many wanderings through various parts of the kingdom. Then there was Mr. Poole, their common friend at Stowey ; Charles Lloyd, the son of the quaker banker of Birmingham, a poet, with the usual fate of a poet, sorrow and an early death, was there part of the time, as a great admirer of and boarder at Coleridge's. Southey, Cottle, Charles Lamb, and the two Wedgwoods, and others, visited them. We may well believe that this knot of friends, young, full of enthusiasm, of the love of nature, and the dreams of poetry, became a source of the strangest wonder to the simple and very ignorant inhabitants of that part of the country. People whose children at the present hour, as will be seen by the account of Coleridge, do not know what a poet means, were not very likely to comprehend what could bring such a number of strange yoimg men all at once into their neighbourhood. What could they be after there ? The honest people had no idea of persons frequenting a place but in pursuit of some honest or dishonest caUing. They could not see what calling these young gentlemen were following there, and they very naturally set down their busines to be of the latter description. They were neither lawyers, doctors, nor parsons. They were neither farmers, merchants, nor, according to their notions, thorough gentlefolks ; /. e. people who lived in large houses, kept large numbers of servants, and drove about in fine carriages. On the contrary, they went wandering about amongst the hills and woods, and by the sea. They were out, it was said, more by night than by day ; and I have heard people of rank and education, which ought to have informed them better, assert, and who still do assert, that they led a very dissolute life ! The grave and moral Words- worth, the respectable Wedgwoods, correct Robert Southey, and Coleridge dreaming of glories and intellectualities beyond the moon, were set down for a very disreputable gang ! Innocent Mrs. Coleridge, and poor Dolly Wordsworth, were seen strolling WORDSWORTH. 537 about with them, and were pronounced no better than tliey should be ! Such was the character which they unconsciously acquired, that Wordsworth was at length actually driven out of the country. Coleridge, writing to Cottle, says, " Wordsworth has beeen ca- balled against xo long and no loudly, that he has found it impossible to prevail on the tenant of the Allfoxden estate to let him the house, after their first agreement is expired, so he must quit it at Midsummer. " At all events, come down, Cottle, as soon as you can, but before Midsummer ; and we will procure a horse, easy as thy own soul, and we will go on a roam to Linton and Limouth, which, if thou coraest in May, will be in all their pride of woods and waterfalls, not to speak of its august cliffs, and the gi-een ocean, and the vast valley of stones, all which live disdainful of the seasons, or accept new honours only from the winter's snows." This poetic trip, in company with another strange man, would, of course, be considered by the neighbours to be another smuggling or spy excursion. What else could they be going aU that way for, to look at " the green sea," and at gi-eat " valleys of stones ? " Wordsworth, always a solemn-looking mortal, even in his youth, was particularly obnoxious to their suspicions, especially as he lived in that large house, in that very solitary place. Hear Cottle's account of the affair. "Mr. Wordsworth had taken the Allfoxden house, near Stowey, for one year, during the minority of the heir ; and the reason why he was refused a continuance by the ignorant man who had the letting of it arose, as Mr. Coleridge informed me, from a whimsical cause, or rather a series of causes. The wiseacres of the village had, it seems, made Mr. Wordsworth the object of their serious conversation. One said, that * he had seen him wander about by night, and look rather strangely at the moon ! And then, he roamed over the hills Uke a partridge.' Another said, ' he had heard him mutter, as he walked, in some outlandish brogue, that nobody could understand ! ' Another said, ' It's useless to talk, Thomas ; I think he is what people call " a wise man" ' (a conjuror !). Another said, ' You are every one of you wrong. I know what he is. We have all met him tramping away towards the sea. Would any man in his senses take all that trouble to look at a parcel of water ? I think he carries on a snug business in the smuggling line, and, in these journey.s, is on the look- out for some wet cargo !' Another very significantly said, ' I know- that he has got a private still in his cellar ; for I once passed his house at a httle better than a hundred yards' distance, and I could smell the spirits as plain as an ashen fagot at Christmas.' Another said, ' However that was, he is surely a desperd French jacobin ; for he is so silent and dark that nobody ever heard him say one word about politics.' And thus these ignoramuses drove from their village a greater ornament than will ever again be found amongst them." Southey once thought of settling near Neath in.stcad of the Lakes, and had pitched on a house which was to let, but the owner refused 638 WOBDSWORTH. to receive him as tenant, because he had heard a rumour of his being a jacobin. Cottle gives an amusing adventure at Allfoxden, which must not be omitted. "A visit to Mr. Coleridge at Stowey, in the year 1797, had been the means of my introduction to Mr. Wordsworth. Soon after our acquaintance had commenced, Mr. Wordsworth happened to be in Bristol, and asked me to spend a day or two with him at Allfoxden. I consented, and drove him down in a gig. AVe called for Mr. Coleridge, Miss Wordsworth, and the servant at Stowey ; and they walked, while we rode to Mr. Wordsworth's house, distant two or three miles, where we purposed to dine. A London alderman would smile at our bill of fai'e. It consisted of philosopher's viands ; namely, a bottle of brandy, a noble loaf, and a stout piece of cheese ; and as there was plenty of lettiices in the garden, with all these comforts we calculated on doing very well. " Our fond hopes, however, were somewhat damped, by finding that our stout piece of cheese had vanished ! A sturdy rat of a beggar, whom we had relieved on the road, with his olfactories all alive, no doubt, smelt our cheese ; and, while we were gazing at the magnificent clouds, contrived to abstract our treasure. Cruel tramp ! an ill return for our pence ! We both wished the rind might not choke him ! The mournful fact was ascertained a httle before we drove into the court-yard of the house. Mr. Coleridge bore the loss with great fortitude, observing that we should never starve with a loaf of bread and a bottle of brandy. He now, with the dexterity of an adept, admired by his friends around, unbuckled the horse, and putting down the .shafts with a jerk, as a triumphant conclusion of his work, — lo ! the bottle of brandy that had been placed most carefully behind us on the seat, from the inevitable law of gravity, suddenly rolled down, and, before we could arrest the spirituous avalanche, pitching right on the stones, was dashed to pieces ! We all beheld the spectacle, silent and petrified ! We might have col- lected the broken fragments of glass ; but the brandy, that was gone ! clean gone ! " One little untoward thing often follows another ; and while the rest stood musing, chained to the place, regaling themselves with the cogniac effluvium, and all miserably chagrined, I led the horse to the stable, where a fresh pei'plexity arose. I removed the harness without difficulty, but after many strenuous attempts, I could not get off the collar. In despair, I called for assistance, when aid soon drew near. Mr. Wordsworth first brought his ingenuity into exercise, but, after several unsuccessful efforts, he relinquished the achieve- ment as altogether impracticable. Mr. Coleridge now tried his hand, but showed no more grooming skill than his predecessors ; for after twisting the poor horse's neck, almost to strangulation, and to the great danger of his eyes, he gave up the useless task, pronouncing that the horse's head must have grown — gout or dropsy ! since the collar was put on ! ' For,' said he, ' it is a do\vnright impossibihty for such a huge os frontis to pass through so narrow a collar ! ' Just at this instant, the servant girl came near, and understanding the WORDSWORTH. 539 cause of our consternation, * La, master,' said she, ' you do not go about the work in the right way. You should do like this ; ' when, turning the collar completely upside down, she slipped it off in a moment, to our great humiliation and wonderment ; each satisfied, afresh, that there were heights of knowledge in the world to which he had not attained. " We w^ere now summoned to dinner ; and a dinner it was, such as every blind and starving man in the three kingdoms would have rejoiced to behold. At the top of the table stood a superb brown loaf. The centre dish presented a pile of the true cos lettuces, and at the bottom appeared an emjity plate, where the stout piece of cheese ought to have stood ! — cruel mendicant ! and though the brandy was clean gone, yet its place was well, if not belter sujjplied by a superabundance of fine si)arkling Castalian champagne ! A happy thought at this time started into one of our minds, that some sauce would render the lettuces a little more acceptable, when an individual in the company recollected a question once propounded by the most patient of men — ' How can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt % ' and asked for a little of that valuable culinary article. ' Indeed, Sir,' said Betty, ' I quite forgot to buy salt.' A general laugh followed the announcement, in which our host heartily joined. This was nothing. We had plenty of other good things ; and while crunching our succulents, and munching our crusts, we pitied the far worse condition of those, perchance as hungry as our- selves, who were forced to dine alone, off ether. For our next meal, the mile-off village furnished all that could be desired, and these trifling incidents present the sum and the result of half the little passing disasters of life." In September of 1798, Wordsworth, his sister, and Coleridge, set out for Germany. On his return to England he settled at Crasmere, about the beginning of this century. At Grasmere, he resided in two or three different houses ; one was Town-end, where his friends the Cooksons now reside ; another at Allan-bank, at a white house on the hill-side, conspicuous in our vignette ; a third, the parsonage. He continued to live at Grasmere fifteen years, anti in 1811 removed to Eydal Mount, where he spent the remainder of his years. His patrimony could not have been large, as I have heard Mrs. Wordsworth say, that, at the time of their marriage, they had in joint income about one hundred pounds a-ycar. This, however, would go a good way with a young couple, of simple habits, in a place like Grasmere at that time of day ; and he did not hesitate in those circumstances to expect any one staying with him to pay for their board. Mrs Wordsworth was a ]\liss Hutchinson of Cocker- mouth. Poetry was Wordsworth's real business fj'om the first, and it continued the great business of his life. His sister Dorothy, also gifted with considerable poetic power, as may be seen in tlie Address to a Child during a boisterous winter evening, and The Mother's Return, at pji. 9 and 12 of the first volume of liis poems, as well as in the Journal of their Wanderings together, was his great and con- genial companion. She had a passion for nature not less ardent 540 WORDSWORTH. than his own, and went on at his side, fearless of rain, or cold, or tempest, nor shrinking from heat. She was ready to climb the mountain, to cross the torrent, or slide down the slippery steep, with equal boldness and skill, derived from long practice. With him she traversed a great part of Scotland, Wales, and parts of England. He describes their thus setting out from Grasmere: — " To cull contentment upon wildest shores, And luxuries extract from bleakest moors ; With prompt embrace all beauty to enfold, And having rights in all that we behold." To this ramble, chiefly on foot, we are indebted for some of the most vigorous and characteristic lyrics that Wordsworth ever wrote. He was young, ardent, and overflowing with enthusiasm ; and the soil of Scotland, on which so many deeds of martial fame had been done, or where Ossian had sung in the misty years of far-off" times, or other bards whose names had for centuries been embalmed in the strains which the spirit of the people had perpetuated, kindled in him a fervent sympathy. We can imagine the delighted brother and sister marching on, over the beautiful hiUs, the dark heaths, and down the enchanting vales of the Highlands, conversing eagerly of the scenes they had seen, and the incidents they had heard, till the glowing thoughts had formed themselves, in the poet's mind, into almost instant song. These poems have all the character of having been cast, hot from the furnace of inspiration, into their present mould. There is a life, an original freshness, and a native music about them. Such are Ellen Irvine, or the Braes of Kirtle ; To a Highland Girl ; Glen Almain, or the Solitary Glen : Stepping Westwood ; The Solitary Reaper ; Rob Roy's Grave ; Yarrow Re- visited ; In the Pass of Killicranky ; The Jolly Matron of Jedburgh and her Husband ; The Blind Highland Boy ; The Brownie's Cell ; Cora Linn, &c. It was to this beloved companion of his wanderings that he, the year afterwards, addressed the beautiful verses, on revisiting Tintern.— Vol. II. p. 179. Was there something in " the shooting gleams of those wild eyes, which foretold that, like the lights of a fitful sky, they should flash and quickly disappear ? The mind of that beloved sister went for many years, as it were, before her, and she lived on in a second infancy, carefully cherished in the poet's heme. Wordsworth, as I have observed, devoted himself to no profession but that of poetry. He followed the stream of life as it led him down the retired vale of poetic meditation, but not without, at times, being visited by fears of what the end might be. Of this he gave a graphic description in his poem of Resolution and Independ- ence, the hero of which is the old leech gatherer. " I heard the skylark warbling in the sky; And I bethought me of the playful hare : Even such a happy child of earth am I ; Even as these blissful creatures do 1 fare : Far from the world I walk and from all care. But there may come another day to me — Solitude, pain of heart, distress and poverty. WORDSWORTH. 541 " My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought, As if life's business were a summer mood ; As if all needful things would come unsought To genial faith, still rich in genial good. But how can he expect that others should Build for him, sow for him, and at his call Love him, who for himself will take no care at all ? I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous hoy, 'i'iie sleepless soul tliat perished in his pride ; Of liim who walked in glory and in joy, Following his plough along the mountain side. By our own spirits are we deified : We poets in our youtli begin in gladness, But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness." But this sad and common fate of poets was not to visit Word.s- worth. The devotion he had vowed to nature was to remain hal- lowed, happy, and unbroken to the end. His lot was to be the very ideal of the poetic lot. He was to live amid his native mountains, guaranteed against care and poverty ; at liberty to roam at will amid beauty and solitude ; to work out his deepest thoughts in stately verse, and in his old age to receive there the reverence of his countrymen. He had the interest of the Lowther family. By that he was appointed distributor of stamps for the counties of Cumber- land and Westmorland ; in his case a mere sinecure, for the business of the office was easily executed by one or more experi- enced clerks. His three children married well : his eldest son, a clergyman, to a daughter of Mr. Curwen, formerly M.P. ; and his daughter to Mr. Quillinan. This charming woman is since de- ceased. His second son has succeeded him in his stamp-distributor- ship. Wordsworth succeeded Southey in the laureatoship, and had superadded a jsension of three or four hundred a-year. Perhaps none of the purely ])oetic tribe laboured less for fortune, and few have been more fortunate. The early experience of himself and his poetic cotemporaries is very instructive to all who seek to realize a reputation ; it is, to have faith, to persevere, and believe nature and not critics. Never was a fiercer onslaught made than by the Edin- burgh Review on the whole race of poets who then arose. With the same fatality which has since led that journal to declare that no steamer woidd be able to cross the Atlantic, and that Grey, the author of the railway sj'stem, was a madman and ought to be put into Bedlam, it denounced the whole class of young poets, who were destined to revive real poetry in the land, as it afterwards did Lord Byron, as drivellers and fools. Scotland, having starved to death its own Burns, made a determined attempt to annihilate all the rising poetry of England. It commenced the review of AVords- worth's Excursion with the ludicrous words, — "This will never do ! " and declared that there was not a line of poetry, or scarcely of common sense, in it, " From the hour that the tlriveller squatted himself down in the sun, to the end of his preaching." If any unfortunate author had made one-tenth of the gross Ijlunders wliich Jeffrey did in meddling with poets, ho would have been [)ronounced an idiot. But Jeffrey had no conception whatever of poetry ; yet in the height of critical conceit, he went on, dwarf as he was, 542 WORDSWOUTH. assailing every inspired giant that appeared, till Byron with one cuff settled him. Let every youthful aspirant remember this his- tory ; and that if criticism could prevail over genius, we should not at this moment have one great established poet on our list of fame. It was Professor Wilson who first, in Blackwood's, by the most glowing and eloquent eulogiums, month after month, made Words- worth popular ; and one of the most curious facts in modern literature is that, in the Life and Lettei's of Wordsworth, Wilson is scarcely mentioned and nowhere thanked. Wordsworth's poetical philosophy is now thought to be too well known to need much explanation. He has indeed expounded it himself in almost every page. Yet, after all the brilliant and profound criticism which has been expended upon it, by almost every review in these kingdoms, and by every writer on poetry and poets, the simple truth remains to be told. The fact lies too much on the surface for very deep and metaphysical divers to perceive. And what, then, is the funda- mental philosophy of Wordsworth 1 It is, what he, perhaps, would himself have started to hear, simply a poetic Quakerism. The Quaker's religious faith is in immediate inspiration. He believes that if he " centres down," as he calls it, into his own mind, and puts to rest all his natural faculties and thoughts, he will receive the impulses and intimations of the Divine Spirit. He is not to seek, to strive, to inquire, but to be passive, and receive. This is precisely the great doctrine of Wordsworth, as it regards poetry. He believes the Divine Spirit which fills the universe, to have so moulded all the forms of visible nature, as to make them to us perpetual monitors and instructors : — " To inform The mind that is within us ; to impress With quietness and beauty, and to feed With lofty thoughts." Thus, in Expostulation and Reply, this doctrine is most distinctly pronoimced : — " 'Why, William, on that old grey stone, Thus for the length of half a day. Why, William, sit you thus alone, And dream your time away J " 'Where are your hooks ? that light bequeathed To beings else forlorn and blind i Up I up ! and drink the spirit breathed From dead men to their kind. " ' You look round on your mother earth, As if she for no purpose bore you ; As if you were her lirst-born birth. And none had lived before you ! ' " One morning thus by Esthwaite lake, When life was sweet, I knew not why, To me my good friend Mathew spake, And thus I made reply : — " ' The eye, it cannot choose but see; We cannot bid the ear be still ; ' • Our bodies feel, where'er they be, Against, or with our will. WORDSWORTH. 543 " ' Nor less I deem that there are powers Which of themselves our minds impress ; That we can feel this mind of ours In a wise passiveness. " 'Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum Of things for ever speaking, That nothing of itself will come, But we must still be seeking ? ' " The same doctrine is inculcated in the very next poem, The Tables Turned. Here the poet calls his friend from hia books as full of toil and trouble, adding : — " And hark! how blithe the throstle sings ! lie, too, is no mean preacher : Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher. " She has a world of ready wealth Our minds and hearts to bless — Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, Truth breathed by cheerfulness. " One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man. Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can. " Sweet is the lore which Nature brings ; Our meddling intellect Mis-sliapes the beauteous forms of things ; We murder to dissect. " Enough of science and of art; Close up these barren leaves ; Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives." Now, if George Fox had written poetry, that is exactly what he would have written. So completely does it embody the grand Quaker doctrine, that Clarkson, in his Portraiture of Quakerism, has quoted it as an illustration, without, however, perceiving that the gi'and and complete fabric of Wordsworth's poetry is built on this foimdation : that this dogma of quitting men, books, and theories, and sitting down quietly to receive the unerring intimations and influences of the spirit of the universe, is identical in Fox and Wordsworth — is the very same in the poetry of the one as in the religion of the other. The two reformers acquired their faith by the same process, and in the same manner. They went out into solitude, into night, and into woods, to seek the oracle of truth. Fox retired to a hollow oak, as he tells us, and with prayers and tears sought after the truth, and came at length to see that it lay not in schools, colleges, and jjulpits, but in the teaching of the great Father of Spirits ; and that to receive this divine intuition the human soul must withdraw from outward objects, and become wholly passive and receptive. Wordswcrth retired to the " Mountains, to the sides Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, Wherever Nature led." And he tells us to this practice he owed " Another gift Of aspect most sublime; that blessed mood In which the burden of the myatery. In which the heavy and the weary weight 64 i WORDSWORTH. Of all this unintelligible world Is lightened : that serene and blessed mood, In -Hhich the afTections gently lead us on, Until the breath of this corporeal frame, And even the motion of our human blood, Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul. While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things." — Vol. II. p. 181. So literal was this in Wordsworth, that Mrs. Wordsworth observed to me that her husband had injured his health by almost ceasing to breathe in his moods of deep abstraction. This is perfect Quakerism ; the grand demand of which is, that you .shall put down " this med- dling intellect, which mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things " — shall lay at rest the actions and motions of your own minds, and subdue the impatience of the body. It was this vory doctrine of the non-necessity of human inter- ference between us and all knowledge, of the all-sufficiency of this invisible and " great teacher," as Wordsworth calls him, which led George Fox and his disciples to abandon all forms of worship, to strip divine service of all music, singing, formal prayers, written sermons, and to sit down in a perfectly passive state of silence, to gather a portion of " All this mighty sum Of things for ever speaking," into " A heart That watches and receives." " Come out," says Fox, " from all your vain learning and philo- sophy, from your schools and colleges, from all your teachings and preachings of human instruction, from all your will-worship and your man-made-ministers, and sit down in the presence of Him who made all things, and lives through all things, — who made the ear, the eye, and the heart of man, and lives in and through them, and can and will inform them. Put down every high and airy imagina- tion, every carnal willing and doing ; cease to strive in your own strength, and learn to depend on the teaching and strength of the Holy Spirit that fiUeth heaven and earth ; and the light given to enlighten every man that cometh into the world will soon shine in upon you, and the truth in all its fulness will be made known to you far beyond the teaching of all bishops, archbishops, professors, or other swelling men, puffed with the vain wind of human learning. Come out from among them ; be not of them ; leave the dead to bury the dead. He that sits at the king's table needeth not the dry crumbs and the waste offal of hireling servitors ; he that hath the sun itself shining on his head needeth no lesser, much less artificial lights." These, though not his actual words, are the spirit of his words. In this state he regards man as restored to the original privilege of his nature, aud admitted to communion with the spirit of the Creator, and into contact with all knowledge. "He sees into the life of things." So fully did Fox consider that he saw into the life WORDSWORTH. 54/5 of things, that he believed that the knowledge of the quality of all plants, minerals, and physical substances was imparted to him ; and that had he not had a still higher vocation assigned him, as a discerner and comforter of spirits, he could have practised most successfully as a physician. He believed and taught — and Barclay, hi? great disciple, in his famous Apology, teaches the same thing — that in this state of communion with the Spirit of all knowledge, a man needs no interpreter of the Scrijitures ; that without any knowledge of the original languages, he can instinctively tell where they are erroneously rendered, and what is the true meaning. He has pene- trated to the fountain of truth, and not only of truth, but, to use Wordsworth's words again, of "the deep power of joy." He is raised above all earthly evil and anxiety, and breathes in the invisible presence the pure air of heaven. He is restored to the unity of his nature, to power, intelhgence, and felicity. How exactly is this the language of our poet ! " I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime Of something far more deeplj' interfused. Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : Amotion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought. And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows, and the woods, And mountains ; and of all tliat we behold From this green earth ; of all the mighty world Of eye and ear, both what they half create, And what perceive : well pleased to recognise, In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being."— Vol. II. pp. 183, 184. But this doctrine is not the casual doctrine of Wordsworth in one or two casual or isolated poems ; it is the foundation and fabric of the whole. It is the great theme everywhere pursued. Of his principal and noblest production. The Excursion, it is the brain, the very backbone, the vitals, and the moving sinews. Take away that, and you take all. Take that, and you reduce the poet to a level with a hundred others. His hero, the wanderer, is a shepherd-boy grown into a pedlar, or pack-merchant, who has been educated and baptized into this sublime knowledge of God speaking through nature. In his sixth year he tended cattle on the hills. " He, many an evening, to his distant home In solitude returning, saw the hills Grow larger in the darkness, all alone lieheld the stars come out above his head, And travelled through the wood, with no one neai To whom he might confess the things ht saw. So the foundations of his mind were laid. In such conuniinion, not trom terror free, While yet a cliiM, an*! long before his time, He had perceived the presence and the pcwar Of greatness." N N 546 WORDSWORTH. " He had received a precious gift," the poet tells us, that gift of spiritual perception which the poet himself adds that he also had received. In the features of nature, — " Even in their fixed and steady lineaments, He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind, Expression ever varying. Thus informed. He had small need of books." There " was wanting yet the pure delight of love" in his inspiration, but that came also, and — " Such was the boy; but for the growing youth What soul was his, when, from the naked top Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun Rise up, and bathe the world in light I He looked — Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched, And in their silent faces did he read Unutterable love. Sound needed none, Nor any voice of joy ; his spirit drank The spectacle : sensation, soul, and form All melted into him : they swallowed up His animal being ; in them did he live. And by them did he live : they were his life. In such access of mind, in such high hour Of visitation from the living Gad, Thought was not ; in enjoyment it expired. No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request, Rapt into still communion that transcends The imperfect offices of prayer and praise. His mind was a thanksgiving to the Power That made him; it was blessedness and love!" That is one of the finest pieces of Quakerism that ever was written ; there is nothing in George Fox himself more perfect. It is a de- scription of that state to which every true Friend aspires ; which he believes attainable without the mediation of any priest, or the presence of any church ; which Fox and the early Friends so often describe as having been accorded to them in the midst of their public meetings, or in the solitude of the closet, or the journey. It is that state of exaltation, the very flower and glorious moment of a religious life, which is the privilege of him who draws near to and walks with God. That " Access of mind, Of visitation from the living God," when " Thought is not; in enjoyment it expires." It is an eloquent exposition of the genuine worship to which, according to the Friends, every sincere seeker may and will be admitted, when " Rapt into still communion that transcends The imperfect offices of prayer and praise, His mind is a thanksgiving to the Power That made him; it is blessedness and love." But to show how completely Word.sworth's system is a system of poetical Quakerism, I should be obliged to Lake his Excursion, and collate the whole with passages from the writings of the early WORDSWORTH. 547 Friends, Fox, Penn, Barclay, Pennington, and others. The Excnr-iion is a very bible of Quakerism. Every page abounds vnth it. It i.s, in fact, wholly and fervently permeated by the soul of Quaker the- ology. The Friends teach that the great guide of life is " the light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world ;" hence they were originally termed " children of light," till the nickname of Quakers superseded it. They declare this light to be " the infallible guide " of all men who will follow it. What says Words- worth ? " Early he perceives Within himself a measure and a rule, Which to the Sun of Truth he can apply, That shines for hira, and shines for all mankind. * * * he refers His notions to this standard; on this rock Rest his desires ; and hence in after life, Soul-strengthening patience, and sublime content." The whole of the fourth book, from which this extract is made, is no other than a luminous and vivid exposition of pure Quakerism. The Wanderer is its apostle. He shows how in all ages and countries men have been influenced by this voice of God in nature ; and, not comprehending it fully, have mixed it up with the forms and pheno- mena of nature itself, and shaped religions out of it. Hence the Chaldean faith ; hence the Grecian mjiihology. "They felt A spiritual Presence, ofttimes misconceived, But still a high dependence, a divine Bounty and government, tliat filled their hearts With joy and gratitude, and fear and love; And from their fervent lips drew hymns of praise, That through the desert rang. Though favoured less. Far less than these, yet such in their degree Were those bewildered pagans of old time." — P. 109. oo say the Friends ; and to such a pitch do they carry their belief in their " universal and saving light," that they contend, that to the most savage nations, " having not law, it becomes a law," and that through it the spirit, if not the history of the Savioiu- is revealed and made operative, and that thus the voice of .salvation is preached in the heart where never outward gospel has been heard. The Friends contend that science and mere human wisdom most com monly tend to darken and weigh down this divine principle, to cloud this eternal lustre in the soul. So says the eloquent Wanderer. He asks. Shall our great discoverers obtain less from sense and reason than these obtained 1 " Shall men for whoni our age UnbaiTled powers of vision hath prepared. To explore the world without, and world within, Be Joyless as the blind t Ambitious souls, Whom earth, at this late season, hath produced To regulate the moving spheres, and weigh The planets in the hollow of their hand j And they who rathi r dive than soar, whose pains Have solved the elements, or analysed The thinking principle ;— shall they, in fict. Prove a degraded race? And what avails Renown, if their presumption makes them such f VV2 648 WORDSWOUTH. ! there is laughter at their work in heaven! Inquire of ancient wisdom ; po, demand Of mighty nature, if 'twas ever meant That we should pry far off, yet be unraised; That we should pore, and dwindle as we pore. » * * * # That this magnificent effect of power. The earth we tread, the sky that v.e behold By day, and all the pomp that night reveals — That these, and that superior mystery, Our vital frame, so fearfully devised. And the dread soul within it, should exist Only to be examined, pondered, searched. Probed, vexed, and criticised ? — Accuse me not Of arrogance, unknown Wanderer as I am, If, having walked with nature threescore year? And offered, far as frailty would allow, My heart a daily sacrifice to Truth, 1 now afl^irm of Nature and of Truth, Whom I have served, that their Divinity Revolts, offended at the ways of men. Swayed by such motives, to such ends employed." — Pp. 170, 171. This divine principle, which can thus outsoar and put to shame the vanity and conceit of science, can also baffle and repulse all the sophistries of metaphysics. " Within the soul a faculty abides. That with interpositions which would hide And darken, so can deal, that they become Contingencies of pomp, and serve to exalt Her native brightness." — P. 174. There, too, "Wordsworth and the Friends are entirely agreed, and yet further. This faculty exists in and operates for all ; and whoever trusts in it shall, like the Friends, pursue their way, careless of all the changes of fashions or opinions. " Access for you Is yet preserved to principles of truth, Which tlie Imaginative Will upholds In seats of wisdom, not to be approached By the inferior faculty that moulds. With her minute and speculative pains, Opinion, ever changing." He illustrates the operation of this inward and primeval faculty by the simile of the child listening to a shell, and hearing, as it were, the murmurs of its native sea. Such a shell, he says, is " The universe itself Unto the ear of faith ; " and in this you have a sanctuary to retire to at will, where you will become victorious over every delusive power and principle. The Friends consider this the glory of our mortal state ; and Words- worth says, — " Yes, you have felt, and may not cease to feel, The estate of man would be indeed forlorn, If false conclusions of the reasoning power Made the eye blind, and closed the passages Through which the sar converses with the heart." — P. 178. But the j)oet and the Friends agree that there is a power seated in the human soul, superior to the imderstanding, superior to the reasoning faculty, the sm-e test of truth, to which every man may WORDSWORTH. S'iH confidently appeal in all cases ; for it is the voice of God himself. With the poet and the Friends the result of this divine philosophy is the same — the most perfect patience, the most holy conhdence in the ever-present divinity ; connected with no forms, no creeds, no particular conditions of men ; not confined by, not approachalile only in temples and churches, but free as his own winds, boundless as his own seas, universal as his own sunshine over all his varied lands and peojile ; whispering peace in the lonely forest, courage on the seas, adoration on the mountain tops, hope under the burning tropics and the blistering lash of the savage white man, joy in the dungeon, and glory on the death-bed. " Religion tells of amity sublime, Which no condition can preclude : of One, Who sees all sutVoiiny, comprehends all wants, All weakness fathoms, can supply all needs." — P. 175. There is an illumination for the critics ! For these thirty years have they been astounding themselves at the originality of Words- worth's philosophy, and expounding it by all imaginable aids of metaphysics. We have heard endless lectures on the ideuhty, the psychological profundity, the ab.stract doctrines of the poet ; his new views, his spiritual communion with and exposition of the mysteries of nature, and of the soul in harmony with natui'e, &c. &c. That is the simple solution ; it is Quakerism in poetry, neither more nor less. The question i.s, how Wordsworth stumbled on this doc- trine — a doctrine on which his great poetical reputati(jn is, in fact, built. Possibly, like George Fox, he found it in his solitary wander- ings and cogitations ; but more probably he drew it direct from George Fox's Journal itself. It is a curious but a well-known fact, that all that knot of young and enthusiastic writers at Bristol, and after- wards at Stowey and Allfoxden, Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, Were deeply read and imbued with the old Quaker worthies. Pro- bably tbey were made acquainted with them by their two Quaker friends, Lovell and Lloyd. Coleridge was so impressed with their principles, that, though he preached, he did it in a blue coat and white waistcoat, that, as he said, " he might not have a rag of the woman of Babylon on him." He imbibed and proclaimed all the Quaker hatred of slavery and war. Ho declares in his Bietual operation against this vile cannibal commerce, none more effectually exercised their influence than James Mont- gomery. His poem, arrayed in all tlio charms and gniccs of his noble art, has been read by every genuine lover of geuuiuo poetry 6G0 MONTGOMERY. It has sunk mto the generous heart of youth ; and who shall say in how many it has been in after years the unconscious yet actual spring of tliat manly demand for the extinction of the wrongs of the African, which all good men in England, and wherever the English language is read, still make, and will make till it be finally accom- plished ? What fame of genius can be put in competition with the profound satisfaction of a mind conscious of the godlike privilege of aiding in the happiness of man in all ages and regions of the earth, and feeling that it has done that by giving to its thoughts tht power and privileges of a spirit, able to enter all houses at aU hours, and stimulate brave souls to the bravest deeds of the heroLsm of humanity 1 There are great charms of verse displayed in the poem of Tho West Indies. One would scarcely have believed the subject of the slave trade capable of them. But the genial, glowing description of the West Indian islands, of the torrid magnificence of the interior of Africa — " Regions immense, unsearchable, unlcnown — Bask in the splendour of the solar zone ; A world of wonders, — where creation seems No more the works of Nature, but her dreams, — Great, wild, and wonderful." The white villains of Europe, desecrating the name of Christian — Spaniards, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Danes, and Portu- guese — all engaged in the brutal traffic, are sketched with the same vigorous pencil ; but the portraitm'e of the Creole is a master-piece, and I quote it because it still is not a mere picture, but a dreadful reality. " Lives there a reptile baser than the slave ? —Loathsome as death, corrupted as the grave; See the dull Creole, at his pompous board, Attendant vassals cringing round their lord; Satiate with food, his heavy eye-lids close. Voluptuous minions fan him to repose ; Prone on the noonday couch he lolls in vain. Delirious slumbers rock his maudlin brain ; He starts in horror from bewildering dreams; His bloodshot eye with fire and frenzy gleams ; He stalks abroad ; through all his wonted rounds, The negro trembles, and the lash resounds. And cries of anguish, shrilling through the air, To distant fields his dread approach declare. Mark, as he passes, everj' head declined; Then slowly raised — to curse him from behind. This is the veriest wretch on nature's face. Owned by no country, spurned by every race; The tethered tyrant of one narrow span ; The bloated vampire of a living man : His frame, — a fungus form of dunghill birth, That taints the air, and rots above the earth; His soul ;— has lie a soul, whose sensual breast Of selfish passions is a serpent's nest ? Who follows headlong, ignorant and blind, The vague, brute-instinct of an idiot mind; Whose heart 'mid scenes of suffering senseless grown, Even from his mother's lap was chilled to stone ; Whose torpid pulse no social feelings move ; A stranger to the tenderness of love; His motley harem charms his gloating eye, Where ebon, brown, and olive beauties vie : MONTGOMERY. 5(1 ] His children, sprung alike from sloth and vice Are born his slaves, and loved at market price : Has lie a soul ? — With his departing breath A form shall hail him at the gates of death, The spectre Conscience, — shrieking through the gloom, ' Man, we shall meet again beyond tlie tomb ! ' " There are few more pathetic passages in the English language than these, describing the laboui's and the extinctions of the Charib tribes. " The conflict o'er, the valiant in their graves. The wretched remnant dwindled into slaves; . Condemned in pestilential cells to pine. Delving for gold amidst the gloomy mine. The sufferer, sick of life-protracting breath, Inhaled with joy the tire-damp blast of death ; — Condemned to fell the mountain palm on high. That cast its shadow from the evening sky. Ere the tree trembled to his feeble stroke. The woodman languished, and his heart-strings broke; — Condenmed in torrid noon, with palsied hand, To urge the slow plough o'er the oi)durate land, The labourer, smitten by the sun's fierce ray, A cori)se along the unfinished furrow lay. O'erwlirlmed at length with ignominious toil, Mingling their barren ashes with the soil, Down to the dust the Charib people passed. Like autumn foliage, withering in the blast; The whole race sunk beneath the oppressor's rod. And left a blank among the works of (jod." When we bear in mind that these beautiful passages of poetr}- are not the mere ornamental descriptions of things gone by and done with ; but that, though races are extinguished, and millions of negroes, kidnapped to supply their loss, have porLshcd in their misery, the hoiTors and outrages of slavery remain, spite of all we have done to put an end to them, — we cannot too highly estimate the productions of the muse which are devoted to the cause of these children of misery and sorrow, nor too often return to their perusal. In the World before the Flood, and Greenland, the same great purpose of serving the cause of virtue is equally conspicuous. The one relates the contests and triumphs of the good over the vicious in the antediluvian ages, and is full of the evidences of a fine imagi- nation and a lofty piety. Many think this the greatest of Jlont- gomery's productions. It abounds with beauties which we rnu.st not allow ourselves to particularize here. In Greenland he celebrates the missionary labours of the body to which his parents and Jiis brother belonged. In the Pelican Island he quitted his favoiu-ito versification, the heroic, in which he displays so much force and harmony, and employed blank verse. There is less hiunan nitorest in this poem, but it is, perhaps, the most philosophical of liis writings, and gives great scope to his imaginative and descriptive powers. He imagines himself as a sort of siviritual existence, watching the progress of the ]iopulation of the world, from its inanimate state till it was thronged with men, and the savage began to tliink, and to be prepared for the visitation of the Gospi-l mes- sengers of peace and knowledge. It is obvious that vast opportimity is thus given for the recital of the wonders, awful and beautiful, o o 562 MONTGOMERY. of the various realms of nature — the growth of coral islands and continents in the sea, and the varied developments of life on the land. The last scene, with a noble savage and his grandchild, in which the old man is smitten with a sense of his immortality, and of the presence of God, and praying, is followed in his act of devotion by the child, is very fine. But I must only allow myself to quote, as a specimen of the style of this poem, so difFei-ent to all others by the same author, one of its opening passages already referred to. " I was a spirit in the midst of these, All eye, ear, thought; existence was enjoj'ment; Light was an element of life, and air The clothinp; of my incorporeal form, — A form impalpahle to mortal touch. And volatile as fragrance from the flower. Or music in the woodlands. What the soul Can make itself at pleasure, that I was ; A child in feeling and imagination ; Learning new lessons still, as Nature wrought Her wonders in my presence. All I saw. Like Adam, when he walked in Paradise, I knew and named by secret Intuition. Actor, spectator, sufferer, each in turn, I ranged, explored, reflected. Now I sailed And now 1 soared; anon, expanding, seemed Difl^used into immensity, yet bound Within a space too narrow for desire. The mind, the mind, perpetual themes must task. Perpetual power impel and hope allure. I and the silent sun were here alone. But not companions ; high and bright he held His course; I gazed with admiration on him — There all communion ended ; and I sighed To feel myself a wanderer without aim, An exile amid splendid desolation, A prisoner with inflnity surrounded." James Montgomery was born November 4, 1771, in the little town of Irvine, in Ayrshire ; a place which has also had the honour of giving birth to John Gait, and of being for about six months the abode of Robert Burns, when a youth, who was sent there to learn the art and mystery of flax-dressing, but his master's shop being burnt, he quitted Irvine and that profession at the same time. The house in which Burns resided does not seem to be now very posi- tively known, but it was in the Glasgow Vennel. The house where Montgomery was born is well known. It is in Halfway-street, and was pointed out to me by the zealous admirer and chronicler of all that belongs to genius, Mr. MaxweU Dick, of Irvine, in whose pos- session are some of the most interesting of the autograph copies of Burns's Poems, especially the Cotter's Saturday Night. The house of Montgomery, at the time of his birth and till his fifth year, was a very humble one. His father was the Moravian minister there, and probably had not a large congregation. We know how the ministers of this pious people will labour on in the most physically or morally desolate scene, if they can hope but to win one soul. The cottage is now inhabited by a common weaver, and consists of two rooms only, on the ground floor, one of which is occupied by the loom. The chapel, which used to stand opposite, MONTGOMERT. 563 is now pulled down. This cottage is located in a nairow alley, back from the street. When sixty years of age, the poet visited hia birthplace, and was received there by the provost and magistrates of the town with great honour ; in his own words, " the heart of all Irvine seemed to be moved on the occasion, and every soul of it, old and young, rich and poor, to hail me to my birthplace." Accom- panied by his townsmen, he visited the cottage of his birth, and was surprised to find the interior marked by a memorial of his having been born there. Mr. Dick, who was present on this occa- sion, said, that no sooner had he entered the fir.st room, which used to be, as it is still, the sitting-room, than the memory of his child- hood came strongly back upon him, and he sat down and recounted various things which he recollected of the apartment, and of what had taken place in it. The year after this visit to his birthplace, Montgomery received an oificial letter from the authorities, stating that, as the town-chest contained one of the original manu.scripts of the poet Burns, it was requested that he would enrich this depository with a similar gift. He accordingly sent them the oi-iginal copy of The "World before the Flood in manuscript, which is there preserved. In his fifth year he returned with his parents to Grace Hill, a settlement of the Moravian Brethren, near Ballymena, in the county of Antrim, in Ireland ; and where his parents had resided previousl}' to the year of the poet's birth. When between six and seven he was removed to the seminary of the Brethren at Fulneck, in York- shire. In the year 1783 his parents were sent out as missionaries to the West Indies, to preach to the poor slave the consoling doctrine of another and a better world, " where the wretched hear not the voice of the oppressor," and " where the servant is free from his master." There they both died. One lies in the island of Barba- does, the other in Tobago. "Beneath the lion-star they sleep, Beyond the western deep, And when the sun's noon-glory crests the waves. He shines without a shadow on their graves." In the Fulneck academy, amongst a people remarkable for their ardour in religion, and their industry in the pursuit of useful learn- ing, James Montgomery received his education. He Wi^s intended for the ministry, and his preceptors were every way competent to the task of preparing him for the important office for which he was designed. His studies were various : the French, German, Latin, and Greek languages ; history, geography, and music ; but a desire to distinguish himself as a poet soon interfered with the i>]an laid out for him. When ten years old he began to write vei-ses. and con- tinued to do so with unabated ardour till the period when he quitted Fulneck, in 1787 ; they were chiefly on religious subjects. This early devotion to poetry, irre.sistil)le as it was, he was wont himself to regard as the source of many troubles. It retarded his improvement at school, he has said, and finally altered his destina- tion in life, compelhng him to exchange an almost monastic seo.lu- oo2 564 MONTGOMERY. sion from society, for the hurry and bustle of a world, which, for a time, seemed disposed to repay him but ill for the sacridce. It is not to be supposed, however, that his opinion of this change remained the same. In whatever character James Montgomery had jDerformed his allotted work in this world, I am persuaded that he would have performed it with the same conscientious stead- fastness. In his heart, the spirit of his pious parents, and of that society in which he was educated, would have made him a faithful servant of that Master whom he has so sincerely served. Whether he had occupied a pulpit here, or had gone out to preach Chris- tianity in some far-olF and savage land, he would have been the same man, faithful and devout. But it may well be questioned whether in any other vocation he could have been a tenth part as successfully useful as he has been. There was need of him in the world, and he was sent thither, spite of parentage, education, and himself. There was a talent committed to him that is not com- mitted to all. He was to be a minister of God, but it was to be from the hallowed chair of jjoetry, and not from the pulpit. There was a voice to be raised against slavery and vice, and that voice was to perpetuate itself on the rhythmical page, and to kindle thousands of hearts with the fire of religion and liberty long after his own was cold. There was a niche reserved for him in the temple of poetry, which no other could occupy. It was that of a bard who, freeing his most religious lays from dogmas, should diffuse the love of religion by the religion of love. He himself has shown how well he knew his appointed business, and how sacredly he had resolved to discharge it, when, in A Theme for a Poet, he asks, — " What monument of mind Shall I bequeatli to deathless fame, That after-times may love my name I " And after detailing the characteristics of the principal poets of the age, he adds : — " Transcendent masters of the lyre ! Not to your honours I aspire ; Humbler, yet higher views Have touched my spirit into flame; The pomp of fiction I disclaim: Fair Truth ! be thou my muse : Reveal in splendour deeds obscure — Abase the proud, exalt the poor. " 1 sing the men who left their home, Amidst barbarian hordes to roam. Who land and ocean crossed, — Led by a load-star, marked on high By Faith's unseen, all-seeing eye, — To seek and save the lost ; Where'er the curse on Adam spread, To call his offspring from the dead. " Strong in the great Redeemer's name, They bore the cross, despised the shame', And, like their Master here, Wrestled with danger, pain, distress, Hunger, and cold, and nakedness, And every form of fear ; To feel his love their only joy. To tell that love their sole employ." MONTGOMERY. 566 The highest ambition of James Montgomery was, then, to do that by his pen which his bi'ethren did by word of mouth. He had not abandoned that gi'eat object to which he had as an orphan been, as it were, dedicated by those good men in whose hands he had been left ; he had only changed the mode of attaining it. At the very time that he quitted their tranquil asylum and broke forth into the world, he was, unknown to himself and them, following the unseen hand of Heaven. His lot was determined, and it was not to go forth into the wilderness of the north or south, of Labrador or South Africa, but of the active world of England. There wanted a bold voice, of earnest principle, to be raised against great oppressions ; a spirit of earnest duty, to be infused into the heart of poetic htera- ture; and a tone of heavenly faith and confidence given to the pojjular harp, for which thousands of heai'ts were listening in vain ; and he was the man. That was the work of life assigned to him. He was to be still of the Unitas Fratrum — still a missionary; — and well has he fulfilled his mission ! Fulneck, the chief settlement of the Moravian Brethren in Eng- land, at which we have seen that Montgomery continued till his sixteenth year, is about eight miles from Leeds. It was built about 1760, which was near the*time of the death of Count Ziuzendorf. It was then in a fine and little inhabited country. It is now in a country as populous as a town, full of tall chinmeys vomiting out enormous masses of soot rather than smoke, and covering the land- scape as with an eternal veil of black mist. The villages are like towns for extent. Stone and smoke are equally abundant. Stone houses, door-posts, window-frames, stone floors, and stone stairs, nay, the very roofs are covered with stone slabs, and when they are new, are the most completely drab buildings. The factories are the same. Where windows are stopped up, it is with stone slabs. The fences to the fields are stone walls, and the gate-posts are stone, and the stiles are stones reared so close to one another, that it is tight work getting through them. Not a bit of wood is to be seen except the doors, water-spouts, and huge water-butts, which are often hoisted in front of the house on the level of the second floor, on strong stone rests. The walls, as well as wooden frames in the fields, are clothed with long pieces of cloth, and women stand mending holes or smoothing off knots in them, as they hang. Troops of boys and girls come out of the factories at meal times, aa blue as so many little blue devils, hands, faces, clothes, all blue from weaving the fresh dyed yarn. The older mill girls go cleaner and smarter, all with coloured handkerchiefs tied over their heads, chiefly bright red ones, and look very continental. Dirty rows of children sit on dirty stone door- sills, and there are strong scents of oat cake, and Genoa oil, and oily yarn. There is a general smut of blackness over all, even in the very soil and dust. And Methodist chapels, — Salems and Ebenezers, — are seen on all hands. Who that has ever been into a cloth-weaving district, does not see the place and people ? Well, up to the very back of Fulneck, throng these crowds and attributes of cloth manufacturing. Leaving the coach and the high 566 MOIfTGOMERY. road, I walked on three miles to the left, through this busy smoke- land, then through a large village, and then over some fields. Every- where were the features of a fine country, but like the features of the people, full of soot, and with volumes of vapour rolling over them. Coming, at length, to the back of a hill, I saw emerging close under my feet a long row of stately roofs, with a belfry, or cupola, crowned with a vane in the centre. These were the roofs of the Moravian settlement of Fulneck, the back of which was towards me, and the front towards a iine valley, on the opposite slope of which were noble woods, and a stately old brick mansion. That is the house, and that the estate of a Mr. Tempest, who will have no manufactory on his land. This is the luckiest tempest that was ever heard of; for it keeps a good open space in front of Fulneck clear, though it is elbowed up at each end, and backed up behind with factories, and workpeople's houses ; and even beyond Mr. Tempest's estate you see other tall soot-vomiting chimneys rearing themselves on other ridges ; and the eternal veil of Cimmerian smoke-mist floats over the fair, ample, and beautifully wooded valley, lying between the settle- ment and these swarthy apparitions of the manufacturing system, which seem to long to step forward and claim all — ay, and finally to turn Fulneck into a weaving mill, as they probably will one day. The situation, were it not for these circumstances, is fine. It has something monastic about it. The establishment consists of one range of buildings, though built at various times. There are the school, chapel, master's house, &c., in the centre, of stone, and a sisters' and brothers' house, of brick, at each end, with various cottages behind. A fine broad terrace-walk extends along the front, a furlong in length, being the length of the buildings ; from which you may form a conception of the stately scale of the place, which is one-eighth of a mile long. From this descend the gardens, play-grounds, &c., down the hill for a great way, and pri- vate walks are thence continued as far again, to the bottom of the valley, where they are further continued along the brook side, amongst the deep woodlands. The valley is called the Tong valley ; the brook the Tong ; and Mr. Tempest's house, on the opposite slope, Tong hall. At the left hand, and as you stand in front of the building, look- ing over the valley, lies the burial-ground, or, as they would call it in Germany, the " Friedhof," or coui't of peace. It reminded me much of that of Herrnhut, except that it descends frona you, instead of ascending. It is covered with a rich green turf, is planted round and down the middle with sycamore trees, and has a cross walk, not two or thi'ee, like Herrnhut. I asked Mr. Wilson, the director, who walked with me, whether this arrangement had not originally a meaning — these walks forming a cross. He said, he believed it had, and that the children were buried in a line, extending each way from the centre perpendicular walk, along the cross walk, from a sentimental feeling that they were thus laid peculiarly in the arms of Jesus, and in the protection of his cross. The grave-stones are laid flat, just as at Herrnhut, and of the same size and fashion. Here, MONTGOMERY. 567 however, we miss the central row of venerable tombs of the Zinzeu- dorf family, and those simple memorial stones lying around them, every one of which bears a name of patriarchal renown in the annals of this society of devoted Christians. Yet even here we cannot avoid feeling that we walk amid the ashes of the faithful descendants of one of the most remarkable and most ancient branches of God's church, whose history Montgomery has so impressively sketched in a few lines : — " When Europe languished in barbarian gloom, Beneath the ghostly tyranny of Rome, W'hose second empire, cowled and mitred, burst A phoenix from the ashes of the first ; From persecution's piles, by bigots fired, Among Rohemian mountains Truth retired. There, midst rude rocks, in lonely glens obscure, She found a people, scattered, scorned, and poor; A little flock through quiet valleys led, A Christian Israel in the desert fed ; While roaming wolves that scorned the shepherd's hand, Laid waste God's heritage through every land. AVith these the lovely exile sojourned long ; Soothed by her presence, solaced by her song. They toiled through danger, trials, and distress, A band of virgins in the wilderness, With burning lamps, amid their secret bowers, Counting the watches of the weary hours, In patient hope the Bridegroom's voice to hear. And see his banner in the clouds appear. But when the morn returning chased the night. These stars that shone in darkness, sunk in light. Luther, like Phosphor, led the conquering day, His meek forerunners waned, and passed away. " Ages rolled by; the turf perennial bloomed O'er the lorn relics of tliose saints entombed i No miracle proclaimed their power divine. No kings adorned, no pilgrims kissed their shrine; Cold and forgotten, in the grave they slept : But God remembered them : — their Father kept A faithful remnant ; o'er their native clime His Spirit moved in his appointed time; 'J'he race revived at his Almighty breath, A seed to serve him from the dust of death. ' Go forth, my sons, through heathen realms proclaim Mercy to sinners in a Saviour's name.' Thus spake the Lord ; they heard and they obeyed ; — Greenland lay wrapped in nature's heaviest shade; Thither the ensign of the cross they bore ; The gaunt barbarians met them on the shore With joy and wonder, hailing from afar. Through polar storms, the light of Jacob's star." The internal arrangements of the establishments are just the same as at all their settlements. The chapel, very much like a Friends* meeting-house, only having an organ ; and the bed-rooms of the chil- dren are large, ventilated from the roof, and furnished with the same rows of single curtainless beds, with white coverlets, reminding you of the sleeping-rooms of a nunnery. My reception, though I took no introduction, was most kind aiiij cordial. The brethren have hero about seventy boys and fifty girls, as pupils, who had just returned from the Midsummer holidays, and were, many of them, very busy iu their gardens. As I heard 568 MONTGOMERY. their merry voices, and caught the glance of their bright eager eyes amongst the trees, I wondered how many would look back hereafter to this quiet sweet place, and exclaim, with the poet who first met the muse here, — " Days of my cliildhood, hail ! Whose gentle spirits wandering here, Down in the visionary vale Before mine eyes appear, Benignly pensive, beautifully pale: O days for ever fled, for ever dear, Days of my childhood, hail ! " When Montgomery removed from Fulueck, the views of his friends were so far changed, that we find him placed by them in a retail shop, at Mirfield, near Wakefield. Here, though he was treated with great kindness, and had only too little business, and too much leisure to attend to his favourite pursuit, he became exceedingly discon- solate, and after remaining in his new situation about a year and a half, he privately absconded, and with less than five shillings in his pocket, and the wide world before him, began his career in pursuit of fame and fortune. His ignorance of mankind, the result of his retired and religious education, — the consequent simplicity of his manners, and his forlorn appearance, — exposed him to the contempt of some, and to the compassion of others, to whom he applied. The brilliant bubble of patronage, wealth, and celebrity, which floated before his imagination, soon burst, and on the fifth day of his travels he found a situation similar to the one he had left, at the village of Wath, near Rotherham. A residence in London was the object of his ambition ; but wanting the means to carry him thither, he resolved to remain in the country till he could procure them. Accordingly, he wrote to his friends amongst the Moravian Brethren, whom he had forsaken, requesting them to recommend him to his new master, conscious that they had nothing to allege against him, excepting the imprudent step of separating himself from them ; and not being under articles at Mirfield, he besought them not to compel him to return. He received from them the most generous propositions of forgiveness, and of an establishment more congenial to his wishes. This he declined, frankly explaining the causes of his late melan- choly, but concealing the ambitious motives which had secretly prompted him to withdraw from their benevolent protection. Find- ino- him unwilling to yield, they supplied his immediate necessities, and warmly recommended him to the kindness of the master he had chosen. It was this master, with whom he remained only twelve months, that, many years afterwai'ds, in the most calamitous period of Montgomery's life, sought him out amidst his misfortunes, not for the purpose of offering consolation only, but of serving him sub- stantially by every means in his power. The interview which took place between the old man and his former servant, the evening pre- vious to his trial at Doncaster, ever lived in the remembrance of him who could forget an injury, but not a kindness. No father could have evinced a greater affection for a darUng son ; the tears he shed MONTGOMERY. ,009 were honourable to his feelings, and were the best testiraouy to the conduct and integrity of James Montgomery. A curious incident, worth relating here, is told in Holland and Everett's life of the poet, as occurring at the time when he waited at Wath for his testimonials from Fulnock, before being engaged by his new master. Aware of the proximity of Weutwoith House, and having heard of the affable and generous character of its noble owner, Earl Fitzwilliam, the young adventurer conceived the idea of presenting him with a copy of verses. Accordingly, with a fluttering heart in his bosom, and a fairly-transcribed copy of his poem in his pocket, he proceeded to Weutworth Park, where he had the good fortune to meet his lordship. The verses were presented, read by the Earl on the spot, and in return the young poet received a golden guinea — the first money which his poetry j^rocured for him. From Wath he removed to London, having prepared his way by sending a volume of his manuscript poems to Mr. Harrison, then a bookseller in Paternoster-row. Mr. Harrison, who was a man of correct taste and hberal dispo.sitiou, received him into his house, and gave him the greatest encouragement to cultivate his talents, but none to publish his poems ; seeing, as he observed, no probability that the author would acquire either fame or fortune b}' appearing at that time before the public. The remark was just ; but it con- veyed the mo.st unexpected and afflicting information to our youthful poet, who yet knew little of the world, excej^t from books, and who had permitted his imagination to be dazzled with the accounts which he had read of the splendid success and magnificent patronage which poets had formerly experienced. He was so disheartened by this circumstance, that, on occasion of a misunderstanding with ilr. Har- rison, he, at the end of eight months, quitted the metropolis, and returned to Wath, where he was received with a hearty welcome by his former employer. While in London, having been advised to turn his attention to jjrose, as more profitable than verse, he composed an Eastern story, which he took one evening to a publisher in the east end of the town. Being directed through the shop, to the private room of the great man, he presented his manuscript in form. The prudent bookseller read the title, marked the number of pages, counted the lines in a page, and made a calculation of the whole ; then, turning to the author, who stood in a.stonishment at this summary mode of deciding on the merit of a work of imngi nation, he very civilly returned the copy, saying, — " !Sir, your nianuscrint is too small — it won't do for me ; take it to K , he publishes those kind of things." Montgomery retreated with so much confusion from the presence of the bookseller, that, in passing through the shop, he dashed his unfortunate head against a patent lamp, broke the glass, spilt the oil, and, making an awkward apology to the shopmen, who stood tittering behind the counter, to tlic no small mortification of the poor author, he rushed into the street, equally unable to restrain his vexation or his laughter, and retired to his home, filled with chagrin at this ludicrous and untoward misfortune. On his journey from London to Wath, which was made in one of the 570 MONTGOMERY. heavy coachea of those clays, Montgomery was so much stnick by the coimteiiance and apiDearauce of his vis-a-vis traveller, that the im- pression never left his mind. He was stern and silent, with a gloomy visage, like that of a Cortes or Pizarro. His figure was tall and thin ; he had an atrabilious countenance, with a spasmodic twitching of the muscles of the face, and a blue beard reaching almost to his keen eyes, from the occasional glances of which Montgomery shrank as from the fascination of a rattlesnake. " He was," said Montgomery, " precisely one of those persons whom you feel it would be unsafe to offend." On the arrival of the coach at Nottingham, this mys- terious stranger left it, and Montgomery read upon the label of his portmanteau, " Hon. Captain Byron." No doubt, therefore, that this remarkable individual was no othei than the father of the after- wards celebrated poet Lord Byron, and who was on his way to Newstead Abbey. From Wath, where Montgomery had sought only a temporai-y residence, he removed in 1792, and engaged himself with Mr. Gales of Sheffield, as an assistant in his business of auctioneer. Gales was also a bookseller, and printed a newspaper, in which popular politics were advocated with great zeal and ability. To this paper Montgomery contributed essays and verses occasionally ; but though politics sometimes engaged the service of his hand, the Muses had his whole heart, and he sedulously cultivated their favour ; though no longer with those false, yet animating hopes, which formerly stimulated his exertions. In 1794, when Mr. Gales left England, a gentleman, to whom Montgomery was an almost entire stranger, enabled him to undertake the publication of the paper on his own account : but it was a perilous situation on which he en- tered ; the vengeance which was ready to burst upon his predecessor soon fell upon him. At the present day it would scarcely be believed, were it not to be found in the records of a court of justice, that in 1795 Mont- gomery was convicted of a libel on the war then carrying on between Great Britain and France, by publishing, r.t the request of a stranger whom he had never seen before, a song written by a clergyman of Belfast, tiiiie months before the tear began. This fact was admitted in the court ; and though the name of this country did not occur in the libel, nor was there a single note or comment of any kind what- ever affixed to the oi'iginal words, which were composed at the time and in censure of the Duke of Brunswick's proclamation and march to Paris, he was pronounced r/uilti/, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment, and a tine of twenty pounds. Mr. M. A. Taylor presided on this occasion. The first verdict delivered by the jury, after an hour's deliberation, was " Guilty of jjiiblishing." This verdict, tantamount to an acquittal, they were directed to reconsider, and to deduce the malicious intention, not from the circumstances attending the publication, but from the words of the song. Another hour's deliberation produced the general verdict of " Guilty r Scarcely had Montgomery, then but about twenty-three years of MONTGOMERY. 571 age, returned to his bome, when he was again called upon to answer for another oftence. A riot took place in the streets of SheflBsld, in which, unfortunately, two men were shot by the military. In the warmth of his feelings he detailed the dreadful occurrence in his paper. The details were deemed a libel, and he was again sentenced to six months' imprisonment, and a fine of thirty pounds. The magistrate who prosecuted him on this occasion is now dead, and Montgomery would be the last man in the world who could permit anything to be said here, in justification of himself, which might seem to cast a refle'^tion on the memory of one who afterwards treated him with tiie most friendly attention, and promoted his interest by every meaiii." in his power. The active imagination of Montgomery had induced him to sup- pose that the deprivati'^n of liberty was the loss of every earthly good ; in confinement he learned another lesson, and he bore it with fortitude and cheerfulness. In York Castle he had opportunities of amusement, as well as leisure for study ; and he found kindness, consolation, and friendship within the walls of a prison. Writing to one of his friends at this time, he says of his jirison companions! — "There are four well-behaved persons, who have lived in the most respectable circles, and seen better days ; and also eight of the people called Quakers, who are confined for refusing to pay tithes. There are three venerable grey-headed men amongst them. One of the old Quakers is my principal and best companion ; a very gay, shrewd, cheerful man, with a heart as honest and as tender as his face is clear and shining." Another was Joseph Brown, who afterwards died in prison, after a confinement of two years, and in whose memory Montgomery wrote a well-known and greatly-admired poem. During confinement he wrote, and ]ire)iared for the press, a volume of poems, which he pubhshid, in 1797, under the title of Prison Amusements. I went, in August, 1845, to visit York Castle, with the particular object of seeing the room which Montgomery occupied during his last imprisonment, and where he wrote the Pri.son Amu.sements. " The room which I occupied," said the ])oet to me, " is up-stairs, and is distinguished by a round window between two Tonic pillars, at the end of the building nearest to the city and Cliflbrd's tower, and facing the Court-house." On requesting the turnkey to show me that as the room where Montgomery had been confined, ho assured me that it was not the room, but the true place was the coiTesponding room at the opposite end of the building ; and which, in fact, was the scene of his first imprisonment. The ])oet's first imprisonment was, in many respects, the bitterest ; but it was diu'ing the second term that the view from his window, coiiunanding the meadows along the Ouse, with their walks, trees, and a particular windmill, caused in Iiim such intense longings for liberty, that the moment he was liberated he hurried out of the court, descended to the Ouse, and perambulated its ]ianl