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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4198141 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #54143 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54143) diff --git a/old/54143-0.txt b/old/54143-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index ae70c6e..0000000 --- a/old/54143-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7020 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, English Lands Letters and Kings: The Later -Georges to Victoria, by Donald Grant Mitchell - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: English Lands Letters and Kings: The Later Georges to Victoria - - -Author: Donald Grant Mitchell - - - -Release Date: February 9, 2017 [eBook #54143] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS: -THE LATER GEORGES TO VICTORIA*** - - -E-text prepared by MWS and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team -(http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by -Internet Archive (https://archive.org) - - - -Note: Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - https://archive.org/details/englishlands04mitc - - - Project Gutenberg has the other three volumes of this work. - I: Fom Celt to Tudor - see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54168 - II: From Elizabeth to Anne - see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54142 - III: Queen Anne and the Georges - see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37226 - - - - - -ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS - -The Later Georges to Victoria - - - * * * * * * - -ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS - -_By Donald G. Mitchell_ - - I. From Celt to Tudor - II. From Elizabeth to Anne -III. Queen Anne and the Georges - IV. The Later Georges to Victoria - -_Each 1 vol., 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.50_ - -AMERICAN LANDS AND LETTERS - -From the Mayflower to Rip Van Winkle - -_1 vol., square 12mo, Illustrated, $2.50_ - - * * * * * * - - -ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS - -The Later Georges to Victoria - -by - -DONALD G. MITCHELL - -[Illustration] - - - - - - -New York -Charles Scribner’S Sons -MDCCCXCVII - -Copyright, 1897, by -Charles Scribner’S Sons - -Trow Directory -Printing and Bookbinding Company -New York - - - - -_FORECAST._ - - -The printers ask if there is to be prefatory matter. - -There shall be no excuses, nor any defensive explanations: and I shall -only give here such forecast of this little book as may serve as a -reminder, and appetizer, for the kindly acquaintances I meet once more; -and further serve as an illustrative _menu_, for the benefit of those -newer and more critical friends who browse tentatively at the tables of -the booksellers. - -This volume--the fourth in its series of English Lands and Letters--opens -upon that always delightful country of hills and waters, which is known as -the Lake District of England;--where we found Wordsworth, stalking over -the fells--and where we now find the maker of those heavy poems of -_Thalaba_ and _Madoc_, and of the charming little biography of Nelson. -There, too, we find that strange creature, De Quincey, full of a tumult of -thoughts and language--out of which comes ever and anon some penetrating -utterance, whose barb of words fixes it in the mind, and makes it rankle. -Professor Wilson is his fellow, among the hills by Elleray--as strenuous, -and weightier with his great bulk of Scottish manhood; the _Isle of Palms_ -is forgotten; but not “Christopher in his Shooting Jacket”--stained, and -bespattered with Highland libations. - -A Londoner we encounter--Crabb Robinson, full of gossip and -conventionalities; and also that cautious, yet sometimes impassioned -Scottish bard who sang of _Hohenlinden_, and of _Gertrude of Wyoming_. -Next, we have asked readers to share our regalement, in wandering along -the Tweed banks, and in rekindling the memories of the verse, the home, -and the chivalric stories of the benign master of Abbotsford, for -whom--whatever newer literary fashions may now claim allegiance and -whatever historic _quid-nuncs_ may say in derogation--I think there are -great multitudes who will keep a warm place in their hearts and easily -pardon a kindred warmth in our words. - -After Dryburgh, and its pall, we have in these pages found our way to -Edinboro’, and have sketched the beginners, and the beginnings of that -great northern quarterly, which so long dominated the realm of British -book-craft, and which rallied to its ranks such men as Jeffrey and the -witty Sydney Smith, and Mackintosh and the pervasive and petulant -Brougham--full of power and of pyrotechnics. These great names and their -quarterly organ call up comparison with that other, southern and -distinctive Quarterly of Albemarle Street, which was dressed for literary -battle by writers like Gifford, Croker, Southey, and Lockhart. - -The Prince Regent puts in an appearance in startling waistcoats and -finery--vibrating between Windsor and London; so does the bluff -Sailor-King William IV. Next, Walter Savage Landor leads the drifting -paragraphs of our story--a great, strong man; master of classicism, and -master of language; now tender, and now virulent; never quite master of -himself. - -Of Leigh Hunt, and of his graceful, light-weighted, gossipy literary -utterance, there is indulgent mention, with some delightful passages of -verse foregathered from his many books. Of Thomas Moore, too, there is -respectful and grateful--if not over-exultant--talk; yet in these swift -days there be few who are tempted to tarry long in the “rosy bowers by -Bendemeer.” - -From Moore and the brilliant fopperies of “The First Gentleman of Europe,” -we slip to the disorderly, but pungent and vivid essays of Hazlitt--to the -orderly and stately historic labors of Hallam, closing up our chapter with -the gay company who used to frequent the brilliant salon of the Lady -Blessington--first in Seamore Place, and later at Gore House. There we -find Bulwer, Disraeli (in his flamboyant youth-time), the elegant Count -d’Orsay, and others of that train-band. - -Following quickly upon these, we have asked our readers to fare with us -along the old and vivid memories of Newstead Abbey--to track the -master-poet of his time, through his early days of romance and -marriage--through his journeyings athwart Europe, from the orange groves -of Lisbon to the olives of Thessaly--from his friendship with Shelley, and -life at Meillerie with its loud joys and stains--through his wild revels -of Venice--his masterly verse-making--his quietudes of Ravenna (where the -Guiccioli shone)--through his passionate zeal for Greece, and his last -days at Missolonghi, with one brief glimpse of his final resting-place, -beside his passionate Gordon mother, under the grim, old tower of -Hucknall-Torkard. So long indeed do we dwell upon this Byronic episode, as -to make of it the virtual _pièce de résistance_ in the literary _menu_ of -these pages. - -After the brusque and noisy King William there trails royally into view -that Sovereign Victoria, over whose blanched head--in these very June days -in which I write--the bells are all ringing a joyous Jubilee for her -sixtieth year of reign. But to our eye, and to these pages, she comes as a -girl in her teens--modest, yet resolute and calm; and among her advisers -we see the suave and courtly Melbourne; and among those who make -parliamentary battle, in the Queen’s young years, that famed historian -who has pictured the lives of her kinsfolk--William and Mary--in a way -which will make them familiar in the ages to come. - -We have a glimpse, too, of the jolly Captain Marryat cracking his -for’castle jokes, and of the somewhat tedious, though kindly, G. P. R. -James, lifting his chivalric notes about men-at-arms and knightly -adventures--a belated hunter in the fields of ancient feudal gramarye. - -And with this pennant of the old times of tourney flung to the sharp winds -of these days, and shivering in the rude blasts--where anarchic threats -lurk and murmur--we close our preface, and bid our readers all welcome to -the spread of--what our old friend Dugald Dalgetty would call--the -_Vivers_. - - D. G. M. - -EDGEWOOD, June 24, 1897. - - - - -_CONTENTS._ - - - PAGE - - CHAPTER I. - - THE LAKE COUNTRY, 2 - - ROBERT SOUTHEY, 5 - - HIS EARLY LIFE, 11 - - GRETA HALL, 15 - - THE DOCTOR AND LAST SHADOWS, 20 - - CRABB ROBINSON, 24 - - THOMAS DE QUINCEY, 28 - - MARRIAGE AND OTHER FLIGHTS, 34 - - CHAPTER II. - - CHRISTOPHER NORTH, 40 - - WILSON IN SCOTLAND, 45 - - THOMAS CAMPBELL, 52 - - A MINSTREL OF THE BORDER, 59 - - THE WAVERLEY DISPENSATION, 65 - - GLINTS OF ROYALTY, 77 - - CHAPTER III. - - A START IN LIFE, 83 - - HENRY BROUGHAM, 87 - - FRANCIS JEFFREY, 92 - - SYDNEY SMITH, 96 - - A HIGHLANDER, 103 - - REST AT CANNES, 107 - - CHAPTER IV. - - GIFFORD AND HIS QUARTERLY, 113 - - A PRINCE REGENT, 118 - - A SCHOLAR AND POET, 125 - - LANDOR IN ITALY, 132 - - LANDOR’S DOMESTICITIES, 136 - - FINAL EXILE AND DEATH, 138 - - PROSE OF LEIGH HUNT, 142 - - HUNT’S VERSE, 147 - - AN IRISH POET, 152 - - LALLA ROOKH, 157 - - CHAPTER V. - - THE “FIRST GENTLEMAN,” 165 - - HAZLITT AND HALLAM, 168 - - QUEEN OF A SALON, 173 - - YOUNG BULWER AND DISRAELI, 178 - - THE POET OF NEWSTEAD, 187 - - EARLY VERSE AND MARRIAGE, 193 - - CHAPTER VI. - - LORD BYRON A HUSBAND, 201 - - A STAY IN LONDON, 206 - - EXILE, 212 - - SHELLEY AND GODWIN, 216 - - BYRON IN ITALY, 223 - - SHELLEY AGAIN, 225 - - JOHN KEATS, 229 - - BURIED IN ROME, 233 - - PISA AND DON JUAN, 237 - - MISSOLONGHI, 241 - - CHAPTER VII. - - KING WILLIAM’S TIME, 252 - - HER MAJESTY VICTORIA, 255 - - MACAULAY, 259 - - IN POLITICS AND VERSE, 265 - - PARLIAMENTARIAN AND HISTORIAN, 270 - - SOME TORY CRITICS, 277 - - TWO GONE-BY STORY TELLERS, 281 - - - - -_ENGLISH LANDS, LETTERS, & KINGS._ - - - - -CHAPTER I. - - -The reader will, perhaps, remember that we brought our last year’s ramble -amongst British Lands and Letters to an end--in the charming Lake District -of England. There, we found Coleridge, before he was yet besotted by his -opium-hunger; there, too, we had Church-interview with the stately, -silver-haired poet of Rydal Mount--making ready for his last Excursion -into the deepest of Nature’s mysteries. - -The reader will recall, further, how this poet and seer, signalized some -of the later years of his life by indignant protests against the -schemes--which were then afoot--for pushing railways among the rural -serenities of Westmoreland. - - -_The Lake Country._ - -It is no wonder; for those Lake counties are very beautiful,--as if, some -day, all the tamer features of English landscape had been sifted out, and -the residue of picturesqueness and salient objects of flood and mountain -had been bunched together in those twin regions of the Derwent and of -Windermere. Every American traveller is familiar, of course, with the -charming glimpses of Lake Saltonstall from the Shore-line high-road -between New York and Boston; let them imagine these multiplied by a score, -at frequently recurring intervals of walk or drive; not bald duplications; -for sometimes the waters have longer stretch, and the hills have higher -reach, and fields have richer culture and more abounding verdure; -moreover, occasional gray church towers lift above the trees, and specks -of villages whiten spots in the valleys; and the smoothest and hardest of -roads run along the margin of the lakes; and masses of ivy cover walls, -and go rioting all over the fronts of wayside inns. Then, mountains as -high as Graylock, in Berkshire, pile suddenly out of the quieter -undulations of surface, with high-lying ponds in their gulches; there are -deep swales of heather, and bald rocks, and gray stone cairns that mark -the site of ancient Cumbrian battles. - -No wonder that a man loving nature and loving solitude, as Wordsworth did -love them, should have demurred to the project of railways, and have -shuddered--as does Ruskin now--at the whistling of the demon of -civilization among those hills. But it has come there, notwithstanding, -and come to stay; and from the station beyond Bowness, upon the -charmingest bit of Windermere, there lies now only an early morning’s walk -to the old home of Wordsworth at Rydal. Immediately thereabout, it is -true, the levels are a little more puzzling to the engineers, so that the -thirteen miles of charming country road which stretch thence--twirling -hither and yon, and up and down--in a northwesterly direction to the town -of Keswick and the Derwent valley, remain now in very much the same -condition as when I walked over them, in leisurely way, fifty odd years -ago this coming spring. The road in passing out from Rydal village goes -near the cottage where poor Hartley Coleridge lived, and earlier, that -strange creature De Quincey (of whom we shall have presently more to say); -it skirts the very margin of Grasmere Lake; this latter being at your -left, while upon the right you can almost see among the near hills the -famous “Wishing Gate;” farther on is Grasmere village, and Grasmere -church-yard--in a corner of which is the grave of the old poet, and a -modest stone at its head on which is graven only the name, William -Wordsworth,--as if anything more were needed! A mile or two beyond, one -passes the “Swan Inn,” and would like to lodge there, and maybe clamber up -Helvellyn, which here shows its great hulk on the right--no miniature -mountain, but one which would hold its own (3,000 feet) among the lesser -ones which shoulder up the horizon at “Crawford’s,” in the White -Mountains. - -Twirling and winding along the flank of Helvellyn, the road comes -presently upon the long Dunmail Rise, where a Cumbrian battle was fought, -and where, some six hundred feet above the level of Rydal water, one -plunges into mountain savagery. All the while Helvellyn is rising like a -giant on the right, and on the left is the lake of Thirlmere, with its -shores of precipice. An hour more of easy walking brings one to another -crest of hill from which the slope is northward and westward, and from -this point you catch sight of the great mass of Skiddaw; while a little -hitherward is the white speckle of Keswick town; and stretching away from -it to your left lies all the valley of Derwent Water--with a cleft in the -hills at its head, down which the brooklet of Lodore comes--“splashing and -flashing.” - - -_Robert Southey._ - -I have taken the reader upon this stroll through a bit of the Lake country -of England that we might find the poet Dr. Southey[1] in his old home at -Keswick. It is not properly in the town, but just across the Greta River, -which runs southward of the town. There, the modest but good-sized house -has been standing for these many years upon a grassy knoll, in its little -patch of quiet lawn, with scattered show of trees--but never so many as to -forbid full view up the long stretch of Derwent Water. His own hexameters -shall tell us something of this view: - - “I stood at the window beholding - Mountain and lake and vale; the valley disrobed of its verdure; - Derwent, retaining yet from eve a glassy reflection - Where his expanded breast, then still and smooth as a mirror, - Under the woods reposed; the hills that calm and majestic - Lifted their heads into the silent sky, from far Glaramara, - Bleacrag, and Maidenmawr to Grisedal and westernmost Wython, - Dark and distinct they rose. The clouds had gathered above them - High in the middle air, huge purple pillowy masses, - While in the West beyond was the last pale tint of the twilight, - Green as the stream in the glen, whose pure and chrysolite waters - Flow o’er a schistous bed.” - -This may be very true picturing; but it has not the abounding flow of an -absorbing rural enthusiasm; there is too sharp a search in it for the -assonance, the spondees and the alliteration--to say nothing of the -mineralogy. Indeed, though Southey loved those country ways and heights, -of which I have given you a glimpse, and loved his daily walks round about -Keswick and the Derwent, and loved the bracing air of the mountains--I -think he loved these things as the feeders and comforters of his physical -rather than of his spiritual nature. We rarely happen, in his verse, upon -such transcripts of out-of-door scenes as are inthralling, and captivate -our finer senses; nor does he make the boughs and blossoms tell such -stories as filtered through the wood-craft of Chaucer. - -Notwithstanding this, it is to that home of Southey, in the beautiful Lake -country, that we must go for our most satisfying knowledge of the man. He -was so wedded to it; he so loved the murmur of the Greta; so loved his -walks; so loved the country freedom; so loved his workaday clothes and cap -and his old shoes;[2] so loved his books--double-deep in his library, and -running over into hall and parlor and corridors; loved, too, the -children’s voices that were around him there--not his own only, but those -always next, and almost his own--those of the young Coleridges. These were -stranded there, with their mother (sister of Mrs. Southey), owing to the -rueful neglect of their father--the bard and metaphysician. I do not think -this neglect was due wholly to indifference. Coleridge sidled away from -his wife and left her at Keswick in that old home of his own,--where he -knew care was good--afraid to encounter her clear, honest, -discerning--though unsympathetic--eyes, while he was putting all resources -and all subterfuges to the feeding of that opiate craze which had fastened -its wolfish fangs upon his very soul. - -And Southey had most tender and beautiful care for those half-discarded -children of the “Ancient Mariner.” He writes in this playful vein to young -Hartley (then aged eleven), who is away on a short visit: - - “Mr. Jackson has bought a cow, but he has had no calf since you left - him. Edith [his own daughter] grows like a young giantess, and has - a disposition to bite her arm, which you know is a very foolish - trick. Your [puppy] friend Dapper, who is, I believe, your God-dog, - is in good health, though he grows every summer graver than the - last. I am desired to send you as much love as can be enclosed in a - letter. I hope it will not be charged double on that account at the - post-office. But there is Mrs. Wilson’s love, Mr. Jackson’s, your - Aunt Southey’s, your Aunt Lovell’s and Edith’s; with a _purr_ from - Bona Marietta [the cat], an open-mouthed kiss from Herbert [the - baby], and three wags of the tail from Dapper. I trust they will all - arrive safe. Yr. dutiful uncle.” - -And the same playful humor, and disposition to evoke open-eyed wonderment, -runs up and down the lines of that old story of Bishop Hatto and the rats; -and that other smart slap at the barbarities of war--which young people -know, or ought to know, as the “Battle of Blenheim”--wherein old Kaspar -says,-- - - “it was a shocking sight - After the field was won; - For many thousand bodies here - Lay rotting in the sun. - But things like that, you know, must be, - After a famous Victory. - - Great praise the Duke of Marlboro’ won - And our good Prince Eugene; - ‘Why, ’twas a very wicked thing!’ - Said little Wilhelmine. - ‘Nay--nay--my little girl,’ quoth he, - ‘It was a famous Victory.’” - -Almost everybody has encountered these Southeyan verses, and that other, -about Mary the “Maid of the Inn,” in some one or other of the many -“collections” of drifting poetry. There are very few, too, who have not, -some day, read that most engaging little biography of Admiral Nelson, -which tells, in most straightforward and simple and natural way, the -romantic story of a life full of heroism, and scored with stains. I do not -know, but--with most people--a surer and more lasting memory of Southey -would be cherished by reason of those unpretending writings already named, -and by knowledge of his quiet, orderly, idyllic home-life among the Lakes -of Cumberland--tenderly and wisely provident of the mixed household -committed to his care--than by the more ambitious things he did, or by the -louder life he lived in the controversialism and politics of the day. - - -_His Early Life._ - -To judge him more nearly we must give a slight trace of his history. Born -down in Bristol (in whose neighborhood we found, you will remember, -Chatterton, Mistress More, Coleridge, and others)--he was the son of a -broken down linen-draper, who could help him little; but a great aunt--a -starched woman of the Betsey Trotwood stamp--could and did befriend him, -until it came to her knowledge, on a sudden, that he was plotting -emigration to the Susquehanna, and plotting marriage with a dowerless girl -of Bristol; then she dropped him, and the guardian aunt appears nevermore. - -An uncle, however, who is a chaplain in the British service, helps him to -Oxford--would have had him take orders--in which case we should have had, -of a certainty, some day, Bishop Southey; and probably a very good one. -But he has some scruples about the Creed, being over-weighted, perhaps, by -intercourse with young Coleridge on the side of Unitarianism: “Every atom -of grass,” he says, “is worth all the Fathers.”[3] He, however, -accompanies the uncle to Portugal; dreams dreams and has poetic visions -there in the orange-groves of Cintra; projects, too, a History of -Portugal--which project unfortunately never comes to fulfilment. He falls -in with the United States Minister, General Humphreys, who brings to his -notice Dwight’s “Conquest of Canaan,” which Southey is good enough to -think “has some merit.” - -Thereafter he comes back to his young wife; is much in London and -thereabout; coming to know Charles Lamb, Rogers, and Moore, with other -such. He is described at that day as tall--a most presentable man--with -dark hair and eyes, wonderful arched brows; “head of a poet,” Byron said; -looking up and off, with proud foretaste of the victories he will win; he -has, too, very early, made bold literary thrust at that old story of Joan -of Arc: a good topic, of large human interest, but not over successfully -dealt with by him. After this came that extraordinary poem of _Thalaba_, -the first of a triad of poems which excited great literary wonderment (the -others being the _Curse of Kehama_ and _Madoc_). They are rarely heard of -now and scarcely known. Beyond that fragment from _Kehama_, beginning - - “They sin who tell us Love can die,” - -hardly a page from either has drifted from the high sea of letters into -those sheltered bays where the makers of anthologies ply their trade. Yet -no weak man could have written either one of these almost forgotten poems -of Southey; recondite learning makes its pulse felt in them; bright -fancies blaze almost blindingly here and there; old myths of Arabia and -Welsh fables are galvanized and brought to life, and set off with special -knowledge and cumbrous aids of stilted and redundant prosody; but all is -utterly remote from human sympathies, and all as cold--however it may -attract by its glitter--as the dead hand - - “Shrivelled, and dry, and black,” - -which holds the magic taper in the Dom Daniel cavern of _Thalaba_. - -A fourth long poem--written much later in life--_Roderick the Goth_, has a -more substantial basis of human story, and so makes larger appeal to -popular interest; but it had never a marked success. - -Meantime, Southey has not kept closely by London; there have been -peregrinations, and huntings for a home--for children and books must have -a settlement. Through friends of influence he had come to a fairly good -political appointment in Ireland, but has no love for the bulls and -blunderbusses which adorn life there; nor will he tutor his patron’s -boys--which also comes into the scale of his duties--so gives up that -chance of a livelihood. There is, too, a new trip to Portugal with his -wife; and a new reverent and dreamy listening to the rustle of the shining -leaves of the orange-trees of Cintra. I do not think those murmurous tales -of the trees of Portugal, burdened with old monastic flavors, ever went -out of his ears wholly till he died. But finally the poet does come to -settlement, somewhere about 1803--in that Keswick home, where we found him -at the opening of our chapter. - - -_Greta Hall._ - -Coleridge is for awhile a fellow-tenant with him there, then blunders away -to Grasmere--to London, to Highgate, and into that over-strained, -disorderly life of which we know so much and yet not enough. But Southey -does not lack self-possession, or lack poise: he has not indeed so much -brain to keep on balance; but he thinks excellently well of his own parts; -he is disgusted when people look up to him after his Irish -appointment--“as if,” he said, “the author of _Joan of Arc_, and of -_Thalaba_, were made a great man by scribing for the Chancellor of the -Exchequer.” - -Yet for that poem of _Thalaba_, in a twelve-month after issue, he had only -received as his share of profits a matter of £3 15s. Indeed, Southey would -have fared hardly money-wise in those times, if he had not won the favor -of a great many good and highly placed friends; and it was only four years -after his establishment at Keswick, when these friends succeeded in -securing to him an annual Government pension of £200. Landor had possibly -aided him before this time; he certainly had admired greatly his poems and -given praise that would have been worth more, if he had not spoiled it by -rating Southey as a poet so much above Byron, Scott, and Coleridge.[4] - -In addition to these aids the _Quarterly Review_ was set afoot in those -days in London--of which sturdy defender of Church and State, Southey soon -became a virtual pensioner. Moreover, with his tastes, small moneys went a -long way; he was methodical to the last degree; he loved his old coats and -habits; he loved his marches and countermarches among the hills that -flank Skiddaw better than he loved horses, or dogs, or guns; a quiet -evening in his library with his books, was always more relished than ever -so good a place at Drury Lane. New friends and old brighten that -retirement for him. He has his vacation runs to Edinboro’--to London--to -Bristol; the children are growing (though there is death of one little -one--away from home); the books are piling up in his halls in bigger and -always broader ranks. He writes of Brazil, of Spanish matters, of new -poetry, of Nelson, of Society--showing touches of his early radicalism, -and of a Utopian humor, which age and the heavy harness of conventionalism -he has learned to wear, do not wholly destroy. He writes of Wesley and of -the Church--settled in those maturer years into a comfortable -routine-ordered Churchism, which does not let too airy a conscience prick -him into unrest. A good, safe monarchist, too, who comes presently, and -rightly enough--through a suggestion of George IV., then Regent in place -of crazy George III.[5]--by his position as Poet Laureate; and in that -capacity writes a few dismally stiff odes, which are his worst work. Even -Wordsworth, who walks over those Cumberland hills with reverence, and with -a pious fondness traces the “star-shaped shadows on the naked -stones”--cannot warm to Southey’s new gush over royalty in his New Year’s -Odes. Coleridge chafes; and Landor, we may be sure, sniffs, and swears, -with a great roar of voice, at what looks so like to sycophancy. - -To this time belongs that ode whose vengeful lines, after the fall of -Napoleon, whip round the Emperor’s misdeeds in a fury of Tory Anglicanism, -and call on France to avenge her wrongs:-- - - “By the lives which he hath shed, - By the ruin he hath spread, - By the prayers which rise for curses on his head-- - Redeem, O France, thine ancient fame! - Revenge thy sufferings and thy shame! - Open thine eyes! Too long hast thou been blind! - Take vengeance for thyself and for mankind!” - -This seems to me only the outcry of a tempestuous British scold; and yet a -late eulogist has the effrontery to name it in connection with the great -prayerful burst of Milton upon the massacre of the Waldenses:-- - - “Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints whose bones - Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold.” - -No, no; Southey was no Milton--does not reach to the height of an echo of -Milton. - -Yet he was a rare and accomplished man of books--of books rather than -genius, I think. An excellent type of the very clever and well-trained -professional writer, working honestly and steadily in the service to which -he has put himself. Very politic, too, in his personal relations. Even -Carlyle--for a wonder--speaks of him without lacerating him. - -In a certain sense he was not insincere; yet he had none of that -out-spoken exuberant sincerity which breaks forth in declaratory speech, -before the public time-pieces have told us how to pitch our voices. -Landor had this: so had Coleridge. Southey never would have run away from -his wife--never; he might dislike her; but Society’s great harness (if -nothing more) would hold him in check; there were conditions under which -Coleridge might and did. Southey would never over-drink or over-tipple; -there were conditions (not rare) under which Coleridge might and did. Yet, -for all this, I can imagine a something finer in the poet of the _Ancient -Mariner_--that felt moral chafings far more cruelly; and for real poetic -unction you might put _Thalaba_, and _Kehama_, and _Madoc_ all in one -scale, and only _Christabel_ in the other--and the Southey poems would be -bounced out of sight. But how many poets of the century can put a touch to -verse like the touch in _Christabel_? - - -_The Doctor and Last Shadows._ - -I cannot forbear allusion to that curious book--little read now--which was -published by Southey anonymously, called _The Doctor_:[6] a book showing -vast accumulation of out-of-the-way bits of learning--full of quips, and -conceits, and oddities; there are traces of Sterne in it and of Rabelais; -but there is little trenchant humor of its own. It is a literary jungle; -and all its wit sparkles like marsh fire-flies that lead no whither. You -may wonder at its erudition; wonder at its spurts of meditative wisdom; -wonder at its touches of scholastic cleverness, and its want of any -effective coherence, but you wonder more at its waste of power. Yet he had -great pride in this book; believed it would be read admiringly long after -him; enjoyed vastly a boyish dalliance--if not a lying by-play--with the -secret of its authorship; but he was, I think, greatly aggrieved by its -want of the brilliant success he had hoped for. - -But sorrows of a more grievous sort were dawning on him. On the very year -before the publication of the first volumes of _The Doctor_, he writes to -his old friend, Bedford: “I have been parted from my wife by something -worse than death. Forty years she has been the life of my life; and I have -left her this day in a lunatic asylum.” - -But she comes back within a year--quiet, but all beclouded; looking -vacantly upon the faces of the household, saddened, and much thinned now. -For the oldest boy Herbert is dead years since; and the daughter, Isabel, -“the most radiant creature (he says) that I ever beheld, or shall -behold”--dead too; his favorite niece, Sara Coleridge, married and gone; -his daughter Edith, married and gone; and now that other Edith--his -wife--looking with an idle stare around the almost empty house. It was at -this juncture, when all but courage seemed taken from him, that Sir Robert -Peel wrote, offering the poet a Baronetcy; but he was beyond taking heart -from any such toy as this. He must have felt a grim complacency--now that -his hair was white and his shoulders bowed by weight of years and toil, -and his home so nearly desolate--in refusing the empty bauble which -Royalty offered, and in staying--plain Robert Southey. - -Presently thereafter his wife died; and he, whose life had been such a -domestic one, strayed round the house purposeless, like a wheel spinning -blindly--off from its axle. Friends, however, took him away with them to -Paris; among these friends--that always buoyant and companionable Crabb -Robinson, whose diary is so rich in reminiscences of the literary men of -these times. Southey’s son Cuthbert went with him, and the poet made a -good mock of enjoying the new scenes; plotted great work again--did labor -heartily on his return, and two years thereafter committed the -indiscretion of marrying again: the loneliness at Keswick was so great. -The new mistress he had long known and esteemed; and she (Miss Caroline -Bowles) was an excellent, kindly, judicious woman--although a poetess. - -But it was never a festive house again. All the high lights in that home -picture which was set between Skiddaw and the Derwent-water were blurred. -Wordsworth, striding across the hills by Dunmail Rise, on one of his rare -visits, reports that Southey is all distraught; can talk of nothing but -his books; and presently--counting only by months--it appears that he will -not even talk of these--will talk of nothing. His handwriting, which had -been neat--of which he had been proud--went all awry in a great scrawl -obliquely athwart the page. For a year or two he is in this lost trail; -mumbling, but not talking; seeing things--yet as one who sees not; -clinging to those loved books of his--fondling them; passing up and down -the library to find this or the other volume that had been carefully -cherished--taking them from their shelves; putting his lips to them--then -replacing them;--a year or more of this automatic life--the light in him -all quenched. - -He died in 1843, and was buried in the pretty church-yard of Crosthwaite, -a short mile away from his old home. Within the church is a beautiful -recumbent figure of the poet, which every traveller should see. - - -_Crabb Robinson._ - -I had occasion to name Crabb Robinson[7] as one of the party accompanying -Southey on his last visit to the Continent. Robinson was a man whom it is -well to know something of, by reason of his Boswellian _Reminiscences_, -and because--though of comparatively humble origin--he grew to be an -excellent type of the well-bred, well-read club-man of his day--knowing -everybody who was worth knowing, from Mrs. Siddons to Walter Scott, and -talking about everybody who was worth talking of, from Louis Phillippe to -Mrs. Barbauld. - -He was quick, of keen perception--always making the most of his -opportunities; had fair schooling; gets launched somehow upon an -attorney’s career, to which he never took with great enthusiasm. He was an -apt French scholar--passed four or five years, too, studying in Germany; -his assurance and intelligence, aptitude, and good-nature bringing him to -know almost everybody of consequence. He is familiar with Madame de -Staël--hob-nobs with many of the great German writers of the early part of -this century--is for a time correspondent of the _Times_ from the Baltic -and Stockholm; and from Spain also, in the days when Bonaparte is raging -over the Continent. He returns to London, revives old acquaintances, and -makes new ones; knows Landor and Dyer and Campbell; is hail fellow--as -would seem--with Wordsworth, Southey, Moore, and Lady Blessington; falls -into some helpful legacies; keeps lazily by his legal practice; husbands -his resources, but never marries; pounces upon every new lion of the day; -hears Coleridge lecture; hears Hazlitt lecture; hears Erskine plead, and -goes to play whist and drink punch with the Lambs. He was full of -anecdote, and could talk by the hour. Rogers once said to his guests who -were prompt at breakfast: “If you’ve anything to say, you’d better say it; -Crabb Robinson is coming.” He talked on all subjects with average -acuteness, and more than average command of language, and little graceful -subtleties of social speech--but with no special or penetrative analysis -of his subject-matter. The very type of a current, popular, well-received -man of the town--good at cards--good at a club dinner--good at -supper--good in travel--good for a picnic--good for a lady’s tea-fight. - -He must have written reams on reams of letters. The big books of his -_Diary and Reminiscences_[8] which I commend to you for their amusing and -most entertaining gossip, contained only a most inconsiderable part of his -written leavings. - -He took admirable care of himself; did not permit exposure to draughts--to -indigestions, or to bad company of any sort. Withal he was charitable--was -particular and fastidious; always knew the best rulings of society about -ceremony, and always obeyed; never wore a dress-coat counter to good form. -He was an excellent listener--especially to people of title; was a -judicious flatterer--a good friend and a good fellow; dining out five days -in the week, and living thus till ninety: and if he had lived till now, I -think he would have died--dining out. - -Mr. Robinson was not very strong in literary criticism. I quote a bit from -his _Diary_, that will show, perhaps as well as any, his method and range. -It is dated _June 6, 1812_: - - “Sent _Peter Bell_ to Chas. Lamb. To my surprise, he does not like - it. He complains of the slowness of the narrative--as if that were - not the _art_ of the poet. He says Wordsworth has great thoughts, - but has left them out here. [And then continues in his own person.] - In the perplexity arising from the diverse judgments of those to - whom I am accustomed to look up, I have no resource but in the - determination to disregard all opinions, and trust to the simple - impression made on my own mind. When Lady Mackintosh was once - stating to Coleridge her disregard of the beauties of nature, which - men commonly affect to admire, he said his friend Wordsworth had - described her feeling, and quoted three lines from ‘_Peter Bell_:’ - - ‘A primrose by a river brim - ‘A yellow primrose was to him, - ‘And it was nothing more.’ - - “‘Yes,’ said Lady Mackintosh--‘that is precisely my case.’” - - -_Thomas De Quincey._ - -On the same page of that _Diary_--where I go to verify this quotation--is -this entry: - - “At four o’clock dined in the [Temple] Hall with De Quincey,[9] who - was very civil to me, and cordially invited me to visit his cottage - in Cumberland. Like myself, he is an enthusiast for Wordsworth. His - person is small, his complexion fair, and his air and manner are - those of a sickly and enfeebled man.”[10] - -Some twenty-seven years before the date of this encounter, the sickly -looking man was born near to Manchester, his father being a well-to-do -merchant there--whose affairs took him often to Portugal and Madeira, and -whose invalidism kept him there so much that the son scarce knew -him;--remembers only how his father came home one day to his great country -house--pale, and propped up with pillows in the back of his carriage--came -to die. His mother, left with wealth enough for herself and children, was -of a stern Calvinistic sort; which fact gives a streak of unpleasant color -here and there to the son’s reminiscences. He is presently at odds with -her about the Bath school--where he is taught--she having moved into -Somersetshire, whereabout she knows Mistress Hannah More; the boy comes to -know this lady too, with much reverence. The son is at odds with his -mother again about Eton (where, though never a scholar, he has glimpses of -George III.--gets a little grunted talk even, from the old king)--and is -again at odds with the mother about the Manchester Grammar School: so much -at odds here, that he takes the bit fairly in his mouth, and runs away -with _Euripides_ in his pocket. Then he goes wandering in -Wales--gypsy-like--and from there strikes across country blindly to -London, where he becomes gypsy indeed. He bargains with Jews to advance -money on his expectations: and with this money for “sinker,” he sounds a -depth of sin and misery which we may guess at, by what we know, but which -in their fulness, even his galloping pen never told. Into some of those -depths his friends traced him, and patched up a truce, which landed him in -Oxford. - -Quiet and studious here at first--he is represented as a rare talker, a -little given to wine--writing admiring letters to Wordsworth and others, -who were his gods in those days; falling somehow into taste for that drug -which for so many years held him in its grip, body and soul. The Oxford -career being finished after a sort, there are saunterings through London -streets again--evenings with the Lambs, with Godwin, and excursions to -Somersetshire and the Lake country, where he encounters and gives nearer -worship to the poetic gods of his idolatry. Always shy, but earnest; most -interesting to strangers--with his pale face, high brow and lightning -glances; talking too with a winning flow and an exuberance of epithet that -somewhiles amounts to brilliancy: no wonder he was tenderly entreated by -good Miss Wordsworth; no wonder the poet of the “Doe of Rylstone” enjoyed -the titillation of such fresh, bright praises! - -So De Quincey at twenty-four became householder near to Grasmere--in the -cottage I spoke of in the opening of the chapter--once occupied by -Wordsworth, and later by Hartley Coleridge. There, on that pretty shelf of -the hills--scarce lifted above Rydal-water, he gathers his books--studies -the mountains--provokes the gossip of all the pretty Dalesmen’s -daughters--lives there a bachelor, eight years or more--ranging round and -round in bright autumnal days with the sturdy John Wilson (of the _Noctes -Ambrosianæ_)--cultivating intimacy with poor crazy Lloyd (who lived -nearby)--studying all anomalous characters with curious intensity, and -finding anomalies where others found none. Meantime and through all, his -sensibilities are kept wrought to fever heat by the opiate drinks--always -flanking him at his table; and he, so dreadfully wonted to those devilish -drafts, that--on some occasions--he actually consumes within the -twenty-four hours the equivalent of seven full wine-glasses of laudanum! -No wonder the quiet Dales-people looked dubiously at the light burning in -those cottage windows far into the gray of morning, and counted the -pale-faced, big-headed man for something uncanny. - -In these days comes about that strange episode of his mad attachment to -the little elfin child--Catharine Wordsworth--of whom the poet-father -wrote:-- - - “Solitude to her - Was blithe society, who filled the air - With gladness and involuntary songs. - Light were her sallies, as the tripping fawn’s, - Forth startled from the form where she lay couched; - Unthought of, unexpected, as the stir - Of the soft breeze ruffling the meadow flowers.” - -Yet De Quincey, arrogantly interpreting the deep-seated affections of that -father’s heart, says, “She was no favorite with Wordsworth;” but he -“himself was blindly, doatingly, fascinated” by this child of three. And -of her death, before she is four, when De Quincey is on a visit in London, -he says, with crazy exaggeration: - - “Never, perhaps, from the foundations of those mighty hills was - there so fierce a convulsion of grief as mastered my faculties on - receiving that heart-shattering news.… I had always viewed her as an - impersonation of the dawn and the spirit of infancy.… I returned - hastily to Grasmere; stretched myself every night, for more than two - months running, upon her grave; in fact often passed the night upon - her grave … in mere intensity of sick, frantic yearning after - neighborhood to the darling of my heart.”[11] - -This is a type of his ways of feeling, and of his living, and of his -speech--tending easily to all manner of extravagance: black and white are -too tame for his nerve-exaltation; if a friend looks sharply, “his eye -glares;” if disturbed, he has a “tumult of the brain;” if he doubles his -fist, his gestures are the wildest; and a well-built son and daughter of a -neighbor Dalesman are the images of “Coriolanus and Valeria.” - - -_Marriage and other Flights._ - -At thirty-one, or thereabout, De Quincey married the honest daughter of an -honest yeoman of the neighborhood. She was sensible (except her marriage -invalidate the term), was kindly, was long-suffering, and yet was very -human. I suspect the interior of that cottage was not always like the -islands of the blessed. Mr. Froude would perhaps have enjoyed lifting the -roof from such a house. Many children were born to that strangely coupled -pair,--some of them still living and most worthy. - -It happens by and by to this impractical man, from whose disorderly and -always open hand inherited moneys have slipped away; it happens--I -say--that he must earn his bread by his own toil; so he projects great -works of philosophy, of political economy, which are to revolutionize -opinions; but they topple over into opium dreams before they are realized. -He tries editing a county paper, but it is nought. At last he utilizes -even his vices, and a chapter of the _Confessions of an Opium Eater_, in -the _London Magazine_, draws swift attention to one whose language is as -vivid as a flame; and he lays bare, without qualm, his own quivering -sensibilities. This spurt of work, or some new craze, takes him to London, -away from his family. And so on a sudden, that idyl of life among the -Lakes becomes for many years a tattered and blurred page to him. He is -once more a denizen of the great city, living a shy, hermit existence -there; long time in a dim back-room of the publisher Bohn’s, in Bedford -Street, near to Covent Garden. He sees Proctor and Hazlitt odd-whiles, and -Hood, and still more of the Lambs; but he is peevish and distant, and -finds largest company in the jug of laudanum which brings swift succeeding -dreams and stupefaction. - -We will have a taste of some of his wild writing of those days. He is -speaking of a dream. - - “The dream commenced with a music of preparation and of awakening - suspense; a music like the opening of the Coronation Anthem, and - which, like that, gave the feeling of a vast march; of infinite - cavalcades filing off, and the tread of innumerable armies. The - morning was come of a mighty day, a day of crisis and of final hope - for human nature, then suffering some mysterious eclipse, and - laboring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, I knew not - where--somehow, I knew not how--by some beings, I knew not whom--a - battle, a strife, an agony was conducting, was evolving like a great - drama or a piece of music.… I had the power, and yet had not the - power to decide it … for the weight of twenty Atlantes was upon me - as the oppression of inexpiable guilt. Deeper than ever plummet - sounded, I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened; - there came sudden alarms, hurrying to and fro, trepidations of - innumerable fugitives, I know not whether from the good cause or the - bad; darkness and lights; tempest and human faces; and at last, with - the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that - were worth all the world to me, and but a moment allowed--and - clasped hands and heart-breaking partings, and then everlasting - farewells! and with a sigh such as the caves of hell sighed when the - incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of Death, the sound was - reverberated--everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again - reverberated--everlasting farewells!” - -Some years later he drifts again to Grasmere, but only to pluck up root -and branch that home with wife and children,--so wonted now to the -pleasant sounds and sights of the Lake waters and the mountains--and to -transport them to Edinboro’, where, through Professor Wilson, he has -promise of work which had begun to fail him in London. - -There,--though he has the introduction which a place at the tavern table -of Father Ambrose gives--he is a lonely man; pacing solitary, sometimes in -the shadow of the Castle Rock, sometimes in the shadow of the old houses -of the Canongate; always preoccupied, close-lipped, brooding, and never -without that wretched opium-comforter at his home. It was in _Blackwood_ -(1827) he first published the well known essay on “Murder as a Fine -Art,”--perhaps the best known of all he wrote; there, too, he committed to -paper, in the stress of his necessities, those sketchy _Reminiscences_ of -his Lake life; loose, disjointed, ill-considered, often sent to press -without any revision and full of strange coined words. I note at random, -such as _novel-ish erector_ (for builder), _lambencies_, _apricating_, -_aculeated_; using words not rarely, etymologically, and for some -recondite sense attaching. Worse than this, there is dreary tittle-tattle -and a pulling away of decent domestic drapery from the lives of those he -had professed to love and honor; tedious expatiation, too, upon the -scandal-mongering of servant-maids, with illustrations by page on page; -and yet, for the matter of gossip, he is himself as fertile as a -seamstress or a monthly nurse, and as overflowing and brazen as any -newspaper you may name. - -But here and there, even amid his dreariest pages, you see, -quivering--some gleams of his old strange power--a thrust of keen thought -that bewilders you by its penetration--a glowing fancy that translates one -to wondrous heights of poetic vision; and oftener yet, and over and over, -shows that mastery of the finesse of language by which he commands the -most attenuated reaches of his thought, and whips them into place with a -snap and a sting. - -Yet, when all is said, I think we must count the best that he wrote only -amongst the curiosities of literature, rather than with the manna that -fell for fainting souls in the wilderness. - -De Quincey died in Edinburgh, in 1859, aged seventy-four. - - - - -CHAPTER II. - - -In our last chapter we took a breezy morning walk amid the Lake scenery of -England--more particularly that portion of it which lies between the old -homes of Wordsworth and of Southey; we found it a thirteen-mile stretch of -road, coiling along narrow meadows and over gray heights--beside mountains -and mountain tarns--with Helvellyn lifting mid-way and Skiddaw towering at -the end. We had our talk of Dr. Southey--so brave at his work--so generous -in his home charities--so stiff in his Churchism and latter-day -Toryism--with a very keen eye for beauty; yet writing poems--stately and -masterful--which long ago went to the top-shelves, and stay there. - -We had our rough and ready interviews with that first of “War -Correspondents”--Henry Crabb Robinson--who knew all the prominent men of -this epoch, and has given us such entertaining chit-chat about them, as we -all listen to, and straightway forget. Afterwards we had a look at that -strange, intellectual, disorderly creature De Quincey--he living a long -while in the Lake Country--and in his more inspired moments seeming to -carry us by his swift words, into that mystical region lying beyond the -borders of what we know and see. He swayed men; but he rarely taught them, -or fed them. - - -_Christopher North._ - -We still linger about those charmingest of country places; and by a wooden -gateway--adjoining the approach to Windermere Hotel--upon the “Elleray -woods,” amid which lived--eighty years ago--that stalwart friend of De -Quincey’s, whose acquaintance he made among the Lakes, and who, like -himself, was a devoted admirer of Wordsworth. Indeed, I think it was at -the home of the latter that De Quincey first encountered the tall, lusty -John Wilson--brimful of enthusiasm and all country ardors; brimful, too, -of gush, and all poetic undulations of speech. He[12] was a native of -Paisley--his father having been a rich manufacturer there--and had come to -spend his abundant enthusiasms and his equally abundant moneys between -Wordsworth and the mountains and Windermere. He has his fleet of yachts -and barges upon the lake; he knows every pool where any trout lurk--every -height that gives far-off views. He is a pugilist, a swimmer, an -oarsman--making the hills echo with his jollity, and dashing off through -the springy heather with that slight, seemingly frail De Quincey in his -wake--who only reaches to his shoulder, but who is all compact of nerve -and muscle. For Greek they are fairly mated, both by love and learning; -and they can and do chant together the choral songs of heathen tragedies. - -This yellow-haired, blue-eyed giant, John Wilson--not so well-known now -as he was sixty years ago--we collegians greatly admired in that far-off -day. He had written the _Isle of Palms_, and was responsible for much of -the wit and dash and merriment which sparkled over the early pages of -_Blackwood’s Magazine_--in the chapters of the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_ and in -many a paper besides:--he had his first university training at Glasgow; -had a brief love-episode there also, which makes a prettily coy appearance -on the pleasant pages of the biography of Wilson which a daughter (Mrs. -Gordon) has compiled. After Glasgow came Oxford; and a characteristic bit -of his later writing, which I cite, will show you how Oxford impressed -him:-- - - “Having bidden farewell to our sweet native Scotland, and kissed ere - we parted, the grass and the flowers with a show of filial - tears--having bidden farewell to all her glens, now a-glimmer in the - blended light of imagination and memory, with their cairns and - kirks, their low-chimneyed huts, and their high-turreted halls, - their free-flowing rivers, and lochs dashing like seas--we were all - at once buried not in the Cimmerian gloom, but the Cerulean glitter - of Oxford’s Ancient Academic groves. The genius of the place fell - upon us. Yes! we hear now, in the renewed delight of the awe of our - youthful spirit, the pealing organ in that Chapel called the - Beautiful; we see the Saints on the stained windows; at the Altar - the picture of One up Calvary meekly ascending. It seemed then that - our hearts had no need even of the kindness of kindred--of the - country where we were born, and that had received the continued - blessings of our enlarging love! Yet away went, even then, - sometimes, our thoughts to Scotland, like carrier-pigeons wafting - love messages beneath their unwearied wings.”[13] - -We should count this, and justly, rather over-fine writing nowadays. Yet -it is throughout stamped with the peculiarities of Christopher North; he -cannot help his delightfully wanton play with language and sentiment; and -into whatever sea of topics he plunged--early or late in life--he always -came up glittering with the beads and sparkles of a highly charged -rhetoric. Close after Oxford comes that idyllic life[14] in Windermere to -which I have referred. Four or more years pass there; his trees grow -there; his new roads--hewn through the forests--wind there; he plots a new -house there; he climbs the mountains; he is busy with his boats. Somewhat -later he marries; he does not lose his old love for the poets of the Greek -anthology; he has children born to him; he breeds game fowls, and looks -after them as closely as a New England farmer’s wife after her poultry; -but with him poetry and poultry go together. There are old diaries of -his--into which his daughter gives us a peep--that show such entries as -this:--“The small Paisley hen set herself 6th of July, with no fewer than -nine eggs;” and again--“Red pullet in Josie’s barn was set with eight eggs -on Thursday;” and square against such memoranda, and in script as careful, -will appear some bit of verse like this:-- - - “Oh, fairy child! what can I wish for thee? - Like a perennial flowret may’st thou be, - That spends its life in beauty and in bliss; - Soft on thee fall the breath of time, - And still retain in heavenly clime - The bloom that charms in this.” - -He wrote, too, while living there above Windermere, his poem of the _Isle -of Palms_; having a fair success in the early quarter of this century, but -which was quickly put out of sight and hearing by the brisker, martial -music of Scott, and by the later and more vigorous and resonant verse of -Byron. - -Indeed, Wilson’s poetry was not such as we would have looked for from one -who was a “varra bad un to lick” at a wrestling bout, and who made the -splinters fly when his bludgeon went thwacking into a page of -controversial prose. His verse is tender; it is graceful; it is delicate; -it is full of languors too; and it is tiresome--a gentle girlish treble of -sound it has, that you can hardly associate with this brawny mass of -manhood. - - -_Wilson in Scotland._ - -But all that delightful life amidst the woods of Elleray--with its -game-cocks, and boats, and mountain rambles, and shouted chorus of -Prometheus--comes to a sharp end. The inherited fortune of the poet, by -some criminal carelessness or knavery of a relative, goes in a day; and -our fine stalwart wrestler must go to Edinboro’ to wrestle with the fates. -There he coquets for a time with law; but presently falls into pleasant -affiliation with old Mr. Blackwood (who was a remarkable man in his way) -in the conduct of his magazine. And then came the trumpet blasts of -mingled wit, bravado, and tenderness, which broke into those pages, and -which made young college men in England or Scotland or America, fling up -their hats for Christopher North. Not altogether a safe guide, I think, as -a rhetorician; too much bounce in him; too little self-restraint; too much -of glitter and iridescence; but, on the other hand--bating some -blackguardism--he is brimful of life and heartiness and merriment--lighted -up with scholarly hues of color. - -There was associated with Wilson in those days, in work upon _Blackwood_, -a young man--whom we may possibly not have occasion to speak of again, -and yet who is worthy of mention. I mean J. G. Lockhart,[15] who -afterwards became son-in-law and the biographer of Walter Scott--a slight -young fellow in that day, very erect and prim; wearing his hat well -forward on his heavy brows, and so shading a face that was thin, clean -cut, handsome, and which had almost the darkness of a Spaniard’s. He put -his rapier-like thrusts into a good many papers which the two wrought at -together. All his life he loved literary digs with his stiletto--which was -very sharp--and when he left Edinboro’ to edit the _Quarterly Review_ in -London (as he did in after days) he took his stiletto with him. There are -scenes in that unevenly written Lockhart story of _Adam Blair_--hardly -known now--which for thrilling passion, blazing out of clear sufficiencies -of occasion, would compare well with kindred scenes of Scott’s own, and -which score deeper colorings of human woe and loves and remorse than -belong to most modern stories; not lighted, indeed, with humor; not -entertaining with anecdote; not embroidered with archæologic knowledge; -not rattling with coruscating social fireworks, but--subtle, psychologic, -touching the very marrow of our common manhood with a pen both sharp and -fine. We remember him, however, most gratefully as the charming biographer -of Scott, and as the accomplished translator of certain Spanish ballads -into which he has put--under flowing English verse--all the clashing of -Cordovan castanets, and all the jingle of the war stirrups of the Moors. - -We return now to Professor Wilson and propose to tell you how he came by -that title. It was after only a few years of work in connection with -_Blackwood_ that the Chair of Moral Philosophy in Edinboro’ -University--which had been held by Dugald Stewart, and later by Dr. Thomas -Brown--fell vacant; and at once the name of Wilson was pressed by his -friends for the position. It was not a little odd that a man best known by -two delicate poems, and by a bold swashbuckler sort of magazine writing -should be put forward--in such a staid city as Edinboro’, and against -such a candidate as Sir William Hamilton--for a Chair which had been held -by Dugald Stewart! But he _was_ so put forward, and successfully; Walter -Scott and the Government coming to his aid. Upon this, he went resolutely -to study in the new line marked out for him; his rods and guns were, for -the time, hung upon the wall; his wrestling frolics and bouts at -quarter-staff, and suppers at the Ambrose tavern, were laid under -limitations. He put a conscience and a pertinacity into his labor that -he had never put to any intellectual work before.[16] But there were -very many people in Edinboro’ who had been aggrieved by the -appointment--largely, too, among those from whom his pupils would come. -There was, naturally, great anxiety among his friends respecting the -opening of the first session. An eye-witness says:-- - - “I went prepared to join in a cabal which was formed to put him - down. The lecture-room was crowded to the ceiling. Such a collection - of hard-browed, scowling Scotsmen, muttering over their knob-sticks, - I never saw. The Professor entered with a bold step, amid profound - silence. Every one expected some deprecatory, or propitiatory - introduction of himself and his subject, upon which the mass was to - decide against him, reason or no reason; but he began with a voice - of thunder right into the matter of his lecture, kept - up--unflinchingly and unhesitatingly, without a pause--a flow of - rhetoric such as Dugald Stewart or Dr. Brown, his predecessors, - never delivered in the same place. Not a word--not a murmur escaped - his captivated audience; and at the end they gave him a right-down - unanimous burst of applause.”[17] - -From that time forth, for thirty years or more, John Wilson held the -place, and won a popularity with his annual relays of pupils that was -unexampled and unshaken. Better lectures in his province may very possibly -have been written by others elsewhere--more close, more compact, more -thoroughly thought out, more methodic. His were not patterned after Reid -and Stewart; indeed, not patterned at all; not wrought into a burnished -system, with the pivots and cranks of the old school-men all in their -places. But they made up a series--continuous, and lapping each into each, -by easy confluence of topic--of discourses on moral duties and on moral -relations, with full and brilliant illustrative talk--sometimes in his -heated moments taking on the gush and exuberance of a poem; other times -bristling with reminiscences; yet full of suggestiveness, and telling as -much, I think, on the minds of his eager and receptive students as if the -rhetorical brilliancies had all been plucked away, and some master of a -duller craft had reduced his words to a stiff, logical paradigm. - -From this time forward Professor Wilson lived a quiet, domestic, yet fully -occupied life. He wrote enormously for the magazine with which his name -had become identified; there is scarce a break in his thirty years’ -teachings in the university; there are sometimes brief interludes of -travel; journeys to London; flights to the Highlands; there are breaks in -his domestic circle, breaks in the larger circle of his friends; there are -twinges of the gout and there come wrinkles of age; but he is braver to -resist than most; and for years on years everybody knew that great gaunt -figure, with blue eyes and hair flying wild, striding along Edinboro’ -streets. - -His poems have indeed almost gone down under the literary horizon of -to-day; but one who has known _Blackwood_ of old, can hardly wander -anywhere amongst the Highlands of Scotland without pleasant recollections -of Christopher North and of the musical bravuras of his speech. - - -_Thomas Campbell._ - -Another Scotsman, who is worthy of our attention for a little time, is one -of a different order; he is stiff, he is prim, he is almost priggish; he -is so in his young days and he keeps so to the very last. - -A verse or two from one of the little poems he wrote will bring him to -your memory: - - “On Linden when the sun was low, - All bloodless lay the untrodden snow, - And dark as winter was the flow, - Of Iser, rolling rapidly.” - -And again: - - “Then shook the hills with thunder riven, - Then rushed the steed to battle driven, - And louder than the bolts of heaven, - Far flashed the red artillery.” - -If Thomas Campbell[18] had never written anything more than that page-long -story of the “Battle of Hohenlinden,” his name would have gone into all -the anthologies, and his verse into all those school-books where boys for -seventy years now have pounded at his martial metre in furies of -declamation. And yet this bit of martial verse, so full of the breath of -battle, was, at the date of its writing, rejected by the editor of a small -provincial journal in Scotland--as not coming up to the true poetic -standard![19] - -I have spoken of Campbell as a Scotsman; though after only a short stay in -Scotland--following his university career at Glasgow--and a starveling -tour upon the Continent (out of which flashed “Hohenlinden”)--he went to -London; and there or thereabout spent the greater part of the residue of a -long life. He had affiliations of a certain sort with America, out of -which may possibly have grown his _Gertrude of Wyoming_; his father was -for much time a merchant in Falmouth, Virginia, about 1770; being however -a strong loyalist, he returned in 1776. A brother and an uncle of the poet -became established in this country, and an American Campbell of this stock -was connected by marriage with the family of Patrick Henry. - -The first _coup_ by which Campbell won his literary spurs, was a bright, -polished poem--with its couplets all in martinet-like order--called the -_Pleasures of Hope_. We all know it, if for nothing more, by reason of -the sympathetic allusion to the woes of Poland: - - “Ah, bloodiest picture in the book of time! - Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime; - Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe, - Strength in her arms nor mercy in her woe! - Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear, - Closed her bright eye and curbed her high career, - Hope for a season bade the world farewell, - And freedom shrieked as Kosciusko fell!” - -Even at so late a date as the death of Campbell (1844), when they buried -him in Westminster Abbey, close upon the tomb of Sheridan, some grateful -Pole secured a handful of earth from the grave of Kosciusko to throw upon -the coffin of the poet. - -But in addition to its glow of liberalism, this first poem of Campbell -was, measured by all the old canons of verse, thoroughly artistic. Its -pauses, its rhymes, its longs and shorts were of the best prize order; -even its errors in matters of fact have an academic tinge--as, for -instance,-- - - “On Erie’s banks, where tigers steal along!” - -The truth is, Mr. Campbell was never strong in his natural history; he -does not scruple to put flamingoes and palm trees into the valley of -Wyoming. Another reason why the first poem of Campbell’s, written when he -was only twenty-one, came to such success, was the comparatively clear -field it had. The date of publication was at the end of the century. Byron -was in his boyhood; Scott had not published his _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ -(1805); Southey had printed only his _Joan of Arc_ (1796), which few -people read; the same may be said of Landor’s _Gebir_, (1797); Cowper was -an old story; Rogers’s _Pleasures of Memory_ (1792), and Moore’s -translation of _Anacreon_ (1799-1800), were the more current things with -which people who loved fresh poetry could regale themselves. The _Lyrical -Ballads_ of Wordsworth and Coleridge had indeed been printed, perhaps a -year or two before, down in Bristol; but scarce any one read _these_; few -bought them;[20] and yet--in that copy of the _Lyrical Ballads_ was lying -_perdu_--almost unknown and uncared for--the “Rime of the Ancient -Mariner.” - -_Gertrude of Wyoming_, a poem, written at Sydenham, near London, about -1807, and which, sixty years ago, every good American who was collecting -books thought it necessary to place upon his shelves, I rarely find there -now. It has not the rhetorical elaboration of Campbell’s first poem; never -won its success; there are bits of war in it, and of massacre, that are -gorgeously encrimsoned, and which are laced through and through with -sounds of fife and warwhoop; but the landscape is a disorderly -exaggeration (I have already hinted at its palm trees) and its love-tale -has only the ardors of a stage scene in it; we know where the tragedy is -coming in, and gather up our wraps so as to be ready when the curtain -falls. - -He was a born actor--in need (for his best work) of the foot-lights, the -on-lookers, the trombone, the bass-drum. He never glided into victories of -the pen by natural inevitable movement of brain or heart; he stopped -always and everywhere to consider his _pose_. - -There is little of interest in Campbell’s personal history; he married a -cousin; lived, as I said, mostly in London, or its immediate -neighborhood. He had two sons--one dying young, and the other of weak -mind--lingering many years--a great grief and source of anxiety to his -father, who had the reputation of being exacting and stern in his family. -He edited for a long time the _New Monthly Magazine_, and wrote much for -it, but is represented to have been, in its conduct, careless, -hypercritical, and dilatory. He lectured, too, before the Royal Institute -on poetry; read oratorically and showily--his subject matter being -semi-philosophical, with a great air of learning and academically dry; -there was excellent system in his discourses, and careful thinking on -themes remote from most people’s thought. He wrote some historical works -which are not printed nowadays; his life of Mrs. Siddons is bad; his life -of Petrarch is but little better; some poems he published late in life are -quite unworthy of him and are never read. Nevertheless, this prim, -captious gentleman wrote many things which have the ring of truest poetry -and which will be dear to the heart of England as long as English ships -sail forth to battle. - - -_A Minstrel of the Border._ - -Yet another Scotsman whose name will not be forgotten--whether British -ships go to battle, or idle at the docks--is Walter Scott.[21] I scarce -know how to begin to speak of him. We all know him so well--thanks to the -biography of his son-in-law, Lockhart, which is almost Boswellian in its -minuteness, and has dignity besides. We know--as we know about a -neighbor’s child--of his first struggles with illness, wrapped in a fresh -sheepskin, upon the heathery hills by Smailholme Tower; we know of the -strong, alert boyhood that succeeded; he following, with a firm seat and -free rein--amongst other game--the old wives’ tales and border ballads -which, thrumming in his receptive ears, put the Edinboro law studies into -large confusion. Swift after this comes the hurry-scurry of a boyish -love-chase--beginning in Grey Friar’s church-yard; she, however, who -sprung the race--presently doubles upon him, and is seen no more; and he -goes lumbering forward to another fate. It was close upon these -experiences that some friends of his printed privately his ballad of -_William and Helen_, founded on the German Lenore:-- - - “Tramp, tramp! along the land they rode! - Splash, splash! along the sea! - The scourge is red, the spur drops blood, - The flashing pebbles flee!” - -And the spirit and dash of those four lines were quickly recognized as -marking a new power in Scotch letters; and an echo of them, or of their -spirit, in some shape or other, may be found, I think, in all his -succeeding poems and in all the tumults and struggles of his life. The -elder Scott does not like this philandering with rhyme; it will spoil the -law, and a solid profession, he thinks; and true enough it does. For the -_Border Minstrelsy_ comes spinning its delightfully musical and tender -stories shortly after Lenore; and a little later appears his first long -poem--the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_--which waked all Scotland and England -to the melody of the new master. He was thirty-four then; ripening later -than Campbell, who at twenty-one had published his _Pleasures of Hope_. -There was no kinship in the methods of the two poets; Campbell all -precision, and nice balance, delicate adjustment of language--stepping -from point to point in his progress with all grammatic precautions and -with well-poised poetic steps and demi-volts, as studied as a dancing -master’s; while Scott dashed to his purpose with a seeming abandonment of -care, and a swift pace that made the “pebbles fly.” Just as unlike, too, -was this racing freedom of Scott’s--which dragged the mists away from the -Highlands, and splashed his colors of gray, and of the purple of blooming -heather over the moors--from that other strain of verse, with its -introspections and deeper folded charms, which in the hands of Wordsworth -was beginning to declare itself humbly and coyly, but as yet with only the -rarest applause. I cannot make this distinction clearer than by quoting a -little landscape picture--let us say from _Marmion_--and contrasting with -it another from Wordsworth, which was composed six years or more before -_Marmion_ was published. First, then, from Scott--and nothing prettier -and quieter of rural sort belongs to him,-- - - “November’s sky is chill and drear, - November’s leaf is red and sear; - Late gazing down the steepy linn - That hems our little garden in.” - -(I may remark, in passing, that this is an actual description of Scott’s -home surroundings at Ashestiel.) - - “Low in its dark and narrow glen - You scarce the rivulet might ken, - So thick the tangled greenwood grew, - So feeble trilled the streamlet through; - Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen - Through brush and briar, no longer green, - An angry brook it sweeps the glade, - Breaks over rock and wild cascade, - And foaming brown with double speed - Marries its waters to the Tweed.” - -There it is--a completed picture; do what you will with it! Reading it, is -like a swift, glad stepping along the borders of the brook. - -Now listen for a little to Wordsworth; it is a scrap from Tintern -Abbey:-- - - “Once again I see - These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines - Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms, - Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke - Sent up in silence, from among the trees! - With some uncertain notice, as might seem - Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, - Or of some hermit’s cave, where by his fire - The hermit sits alone.” - -(Here is more than the tangible picture; the smoke wreaths have put unseen -dwellers there); and again:-- - - “O Sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro’ the woods, - How often has my spirit turned to thee! - - I have learned - To look on Nature, not as in the hour - Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes - The still, sad music of humanity! - Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power - To chasten and subdue. And I have felt - A presence that disturbs me with the joy - Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime - Of something far more deeply 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 men - A motion 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.” - -This will emphasize the distinction, to which I would call attention, in -the treatment of landscape by the two poets: Wordsworth putting _his_ all -on a simmer with humanities and far-reaching meditative hopes and -languors; and Scott throwing windows wide open to the sky, and saying -only--look--and be glad! - -In those days Wordsworth had one reader where Scott had a hundred; and the -one reader was apologetic and shy, and the hundred were loud and gushing. -I think the number of their respective readers is more evenly balanced -nowadays; and it is the readers of Scott who are beginning to be -apologetic. Indeed I have a half consciousness of putting myself on this -page in that category:--As if the Homeric toss and life and play, and -large sweep of rivers, and of battalions and winnowed love-notes, and -clang of trumpets, and moaning of the sea, which rise and fall in the -pages of the _Minstrel_ and of _Marmion_--needed apology! Apology or no, I -think Scott’s poems will be read for a good many years to come. The guide -books and Highland travellers--and high-thoughted travellers--will keep -them alive--if the critics do not; and I think you will find no better -fore-reading for a trip along the Tweed or through the Trosachs than -_Marmion_, and the _Lady of the Lake_. - - -_The Waverley Dispensation._ - -Meantime, our author has married--a marriage, Goldwin Smith says, of -“intellectual disparagement”; which I suppose means that Mrs. Scott was -not learned and bookish--as she certainly was not; but she was honest, -true-hearted, and domestic. Mr. Redding profanely says that she was used -to plead, “Walter, my dear, you must write a new book, for I want another -silk dress.” I think this is apocryphal; and there is good reason to -believe that she gave a little hearty home huzza at each one of Mr. -Scott’s quick succeeding triumphs. - -Our author has also changed his home; first from the pretty little village -of Lasswade, which is down by Dalkeith, to Ashestiel by the Yarrow; and -thence again to a farm-house, near to that unfortunate pile of Abbotsford, -which stands on the Tweed bank, shadowed by the trees he planted, and -shadowed yet more heavily by the story of his misfortunes. I notice a -disposition in some recent writers to disparage this notable country home -as pseudo-Gothic and flimsy. This gives a false impression of a structure -which, though it lack that singleness of expression and subordination of -details which satisfy a professional critic, does yet embody in a -singularly interesting way, and with solid construction, all the -aspirations, tastes, clannish vanities and archæologic whims of the great -novelist. The castellated tower is there to carry the Scottish standard, -and the cloister to keep alive reverent memory of old religious houses; -and the miniature Court gate, with its warder’s horn; and the Oriole -windows, whose details are, maybe, snatched from Kenilworth; the mass, -too, is impressive and smacks all over of Scott’s personality and of the -traditions he cherished. - -I am tempted to introduce here some notes of a visit made to this locality -very many years ago. I had set off on a foot-pilgrimage from the old -border town of Berwick-on-Tweed; had kept close along the banks of the -river, seeing men drawing nets for salmon, whose silvery scales flashed in -the morning sun. All around swept those charming fields of Tweed-side, -green with the richest June growth; here and there were shepherds at their -sheep washing; old Norham Castle presently lifted its gray buttresses into -view; then came the long Coldstream bridge, with its arches shimmering in -the flood below; and after this the palace of the Duke of Roxburgh. In -thus following up leisurely the Tweed banks from Berwick, I had slept the -first night at Kelso; had studied the great fine bit of ruin which is -there, and had caught glimpses of Teviot-dale and of the Eildon Hills; had -wandered out of my way for a sight of Smailholme tower, and of Sandy -Knowe--both associated with Scott’s childhood; I passed Dryburgh, where he -lies buried, and at last on an evening of early June, 1845, a stout -oarsman ferried me across the Tweed and landed me in Melrose. - -I slept at the George Inn--dreaming (as many a young wayfarer in those -lands has since done), of Ivanhoe and Rebecca, and border wars and _Old -Mortality_. Next morning, after a breakfast upon trout taken from some -near stream (very likely the Yarrow or the Gala-water), I strolled two -miles or so along the road which followed the Tweed bank upon the southern -side, and by a green foot-gate entered the Abbotsford grounds. The forest -trees--not over high at that time--were those which the master had -planted. From his favorite outdoor seat, sheltered by a thicket of -arbor-vitæ, could be caught a glimpse of the rippled surface of the Tweed -and of the turrets of the house. - -It was all very quiet--quiet in the wood-walks; quiet as you approached -the court-yard; the master dead; the family gone; I think there was a yelp -from some young hound in an out-building, and a twitter from some birds I -did not know; there was the unceasing murmur of the river. Besides these -sounds, the silence was unbroken; and when I rang the bell at the entrance -door, the jangle of it was very startling; startling a little terrier, -too, whose quick, sharp bark rang noisily through the outer court. - -Only an old house-keeper was in charge, who had fallen into that dreadful -parrot-like way of telling visitors what things were best worth -seeing--which frets one terribly. What should you or I care (fresh from -_Guy Mannering_ or _Kenilworth_) whether a bit of carving came from -Jedburgh or Kelso? or about the jets in the chandelier, or the way in -which a Russian Grand Duke wrote his name in the visitors’ book? - -But when we catch sight of the desk at which the master wrote, or of the -chair in which he sat, and of his shoes and coat and cane--looking as if -they might have been worn yesterday--these seem to bring us nearer to the -man who has written so much to cheer and to charm the world. There was, -too, a little box in the corridor, simple and iron-bound, with the line -written below it, “Post will close at two.” It was as if we had heard the -master of the house say it. Perhaps the notice was in his handwriting (he -had been active there in 1831-2--just thirteen years before)--perhaps not; -but--somehow--more than the library, or the portrait bust, or the chatter -of the well-meaning house-keeper, it brought back the halting old -gentleman in his shooting-coat, and with ivory-headed cane--hobbling with -a vigorous step along the corridor, to post in that iron-bound box a -packet--maybe a chapter of _Woodstock_. - -I have spoken of the vacant house--family gone: The young Sir Walter -Scott, of the British army, and heir to the estate--was at that date -(1845) absent in the Indies; and only two years thereafter died at sea on -his voyage home. Charles Scott, the only brother of the younger Sir -Walter, died in 1841.[22] Miss Anne Scott, the only unmarried daughter of -the author of _Waverley_, died--worn-out with tenderest care of mother and -father, and broken-hearted--in 1833. Her only sister, Mrs. (Sophia Scott) -Lockhart, died in 1837. Her oldest son--John Hugh, familiarly known as -“Hugh Little John”--the crippled boy, for whom had been written the _Tales -of a Grandfather_, and the darling of the two households upon -Tweed-side--died in 1831. I cannot forbear quoting here a charming little -memorial of him, which, within the present year, has appeared in Mr. -Lang’s _Life of Lockhart_. - - “A figure as of one of Charles Lamb’s dream-children haunts the - little beck at Chiefswood, and on that haugh at Abbotsford, where - Lockhart read the manuscript of the _Fortunes of Nigel_, fancy may - see ‘Hugh Little John,’ ‘throwing stones into the burn,’ for so he - called the Tweed. While children study the _Tales of a Grandfather_, - he does not want friends in this world to remember and envy the boy - who had Sir Walter to tell him stories.”--P. 75, vol. ii. - -A younger son of Lockhart, Walter Scott by name, became, at the death of -the younger Walter Scott, inheritor of all equities in the landed estate -upon Tweed-side, and the proper Laird of Abbotsford. His story is a short -and a sad one; he was utterly unworthy, and died almost unbefriended at -Versailles in January, 1853. - -His father, J. G. Lockhart, acknowledging a picture of this son, under -date of 1843, in a letter addressed to his daughter Charlotte--(later -Mrs. Hope-Scott,[23] and mother of the present proprietress of -Abbotsford), writes with a grief he could not cover:-- - - “I am not sorry to have it by me, though it breaks my heart to - recall the date. It is of the sweet, innocent, happy boy, home for - Sunday from Cowies [his school].… Oh, God! how soon that day became - clouded, and how dark its early close! Well, I suppose there is - another world; if not, sure this is a blunder.” - -I have not spoken--because there seemed no need to speak--of the way in -which those marvellous romantic fictions of Sir Walter came pouring from -the pen, under a cloud of mystery, and of how the great burden of his -business embarrassments--due largely to the recklessness of his jolly, -easy-going friends, the Ballantynes--overwhelmed him at last. Indeed, in -all I have ventured to say of Scott, I have a feeling of its -impertinence--as if I were telling you about your next-door neighbor: we -all know that swift, brilliant, clouded career so well! But are those -novels of his to live, and to delight coming generations, as they have the -past? I do not know what the very latest critics may have to say; but, for -my own part, I have strong belief that a century or two more will be sure -to pass over before people of discernment, and large humanities, and of -literary appreciation, will cease to read and to enjoy such stories as -that of the _Talisman of Kenilworth_ and of _Old Mortality_. I know ’tis -objected, and with much reason, that he wrote hastily, carelessly--that -his stories are in fact (what Carlyle called them) extemporaneous stories. -Yet, if they had been written under other conditions, could we have -counted upon the heat and the glow which gives them illumination? - -No, no--we do not go to him for word-craft; men of shorter imaginative -range, and whose judgments wait on conventional rule, must guide us in -such direction, and pose as our modellers of style. Goldsmith and Swift -both may train in that company. But this master we are now considering -wrote so swiftly and dashed so strongly into the current of what he had to -say, that he was indifferent to methods and words, except what went to -engage the reader and keep him always cognizant of his purpose. But do you -say that this is the best aim of all writing? Most surely it is wise for a -writer to hold attention by what arts he can: failing of this, he fails of -the best half of his intent; but if he gains this by simple means, by -directness, by limpid language, and no more of it than the thought calls -for, and by such rhythmic and beguiling use of it as tempts the reader to -follow, he is a safer exemplar than one who by force of genius can -accomplish his aims by loose expressions and redundance of words. - -Next it is objected to these old favorites of ours, that they are not -clever in the exhibit and explication of mental processes, and their -analysis of motives is incomplete. Well, I suppose this to be true; and -that he did, to a certain extent (as Carlyle used to allege grumblingly), -work from the outside-in. He did live in times when men fell -straightforwardly in love, without counting the palpitations of the heart; -and when heroes struck honest blows without reckoning in advance upon the -probable contractile power of their biceps muscles. Again, it is said that -his history often lacks precision and sureness of statement. Well, the -dates are certainly sometimes twisted a few years out of their proper -lines and seasons; but it is certain, also, that he does give the -atmosphere and the coloring of historic periods in a completer and more -satisfying way than many much carefuller chroniclers, and his portraits of -great historic personages are by common consent--even of the critics--more -full of the life of their subjects, and of a realistic exhibit of their -controlling characteristics, than those of the historians proper. Nothing -can be more sure than that Scott was not a man of great critical learning; -nothing is more sure than that he was frequently at fault in minor -details; but who will gainsay the fact that he was among the most charming -and beneficent of story-tellers? - -There may be households which will rule him out as old fashioned and -stumbling, and wordy, and long; but I know of one, at least, where he will -hold his place, as among the most delightful of visitors--and where on -winter nights he will continue to bring with him (as he has brought so -many times already) the royal figure of the Queen Elizabeth--shining in -her jewels, or sulking in her coquetries; and Dandie Dinmont, with his -pow-wow of Pepper and Mustard; and King Jamie, with Steenie and jingling -Geordie; and the patient, prudent, excellent Jeanie Deans; and the weak, -old, amiable mistress of Tillietudlem; and Rebecca, and the Lady in the -Green Mantle, and Dominie Sampson, and Peter Peebles, and Di Vernon, and -all the rest! - - -_Glints of Royalty._ - -They tell us Scott loved kings: why not? Romanticism was his nurse, from -the days when he kicked up his baby heels under the shadows of Smailholme -Tower, and Feudalism was his foster-parent. Always he loved banners and -pageantry, and always the glitter and pomp which give their under or over -tones to his pages of balladry. And if he stood in awe of titles and of -rank, and felt the cockles of his heart warming in contact with these, -’twas not by reason of a vulgar tuft-hunting spirit, nor was it due to the -crass toadyism which seeks reflected benefit; but it grew, I think, out of -sheer mental allegiance to feudal splendors and traditions. - -Whether Scott ever personally encountered the old king, George III., may -be doubtful; but I recall in some of his easy, family letters (perhaps to -his eldest boy Walter), most respectful and kindly allusions to the august -master of the royal Windsor household--who ordered his home affairs so -wisely--keeping “good hours;” while, amid the turbulences and unrest which -belonged to the American and French Revolutions--succeeding each other in -portentous sequence--he was waning toward that period of woful mental -imbecility which beset him at last, and which clouded an earlier -chapter[24] of our record. The Prince Regent--afterward George IV.--was -always well disposed toward Scott; had read the _Minstrel_, and _Marmion_, -with the greatest gratification (he did sometimes read), and told Lord -Byron as much; even comparing the Scot with Homer--which was as near to -classicism as the Prince often ran. But Byron, in his _English Bards_, -etc., published in his earlier days, had made his little satiric dab at -the _Minstrel_--finding a lively hope in its being _the Last_! - -Murray, however, in the good Christian spirit which sometimes overtakes -publishers, stanched these wounds, and brought the poets to bask together -in the smiles of royalty. The first Baronetcy the Prince bestowed--after -coming to Kingship--was that which made the author of Waverley Sir Walter; -the poet had witnessed and reported the scenes at the Coronation of 1820 -in London; and on the King’s gala visit to Edinboro’--when all the heights -about the gray old city boomed with welcoming cannon, and all the streets -and all the water-ways were a-flutter with tartans and noisy with -bagpipes--it was Sir Walter who virtually marshalled the hosts, and gave -chieftain-like greeting to the Prince. Scott’s management of the whole -stupendous paraphernalia--the banquets, the processions, the receptions, -the decorations (of all which the charming water-colors of Turner are in -evidence)--gave wonderful impressions of the masterful resources and -dominating tact of the man; now clinking glasses (of Glenlivet) with the -mellow King (counting sixty years in that day); now humoring into quietude -the jealousies of Highland chieftains; again threading Canongate at -nightfall and afoot--from end to end--to observe if all welcoming -bannerols and legends are in place; again welcoming to his home, in the -heat of ceremonial occupation, the white-haired and trembling poet Crabbe; -anon, stealing away to his Castle Street chamber for a new chapter in the -_Peveril of the Peak_ (then upon the anvil), and in the heat, and fury, -and absorption of the whole gala business breaking out of line with a -bowed head and aching heart, to follow his best friend, William Erskine -(Lord Kinnedder),[25] out by Queensferry to his burial. - -It was only eight years thereafter, when this poet manager of the great -Scotch jubilee--who seemed good for the work of a score of years--sailed, -by royal permission (an act redeeming and glorifying royalty) upon a -Government ship--seeking shores and skies which would put new vigor (if it -might be) into a constitution broken by toil, and into hopes that had been -blighted by blow on blow of sorrow. - -Never was a royal favor more worthily bespoken; never one more vainly -bestowed. ’Twas too late. No human eye--once so capable of seeing--ever -opened for a first look so wearily upon the blue of the -Mediterranean--upon the marvellous fringed shores of lower Italy--upon -Rome, Florence, and the snowy Swiss portals of the Simplon. - -Royalty (in person of William IV., then on the throne) asked kindly after -the sick magician--who was established presently on a sick bed in London; -while the cabmen on street corners near by talked low of the “great mon” -who lay there a-dying. A little show of recovery gave power to reach -home--Abbotsford and Tweed-side--once more. There was no hope; but it took -time for the great strength in him to waste. - -Withal there was a fine glint of royalty at the end. “Be virtuous, my -dear,” he said to Lockhart; “be a good man.” And that utterance--the -summing up of forty years of brilliant accomplishment, and of baffled -ambitions--emphasized by the trembling voice of a dying man--will dwell -longer in human memories, and more worthily, than the empty baronial pile -we call Abbotsford, past which the scurrying waters of the Tweed ripple -and murmur--as they did on the day Sir Walter was born, and on the day he -was buried at Dryburgh. - - - - -CHAPTER III. - - -Our last chapter was opened by a rather full sketch of Professor Wilson, -and a briefer one of Thomas Campbell--who though of higher repute as a -poet, was a far less interesting man. We then entered upon what may have -seemed a very inadequate account of the great author of Waverley--because -I presumed upon the reader’s full and ready knowledge; and because the -Minstrel’s grand stride over all the Scottish country that is worth the -seeing, and over all that domain in English Lands and Letters, which he -made his own, has been noted by scores of tourists, and by scores of -admiring commentators. You may believe me in saying--that his story was -not scrimped for lack of love; indeed, it would have been easy to riot in -talk about the lively drum-beat of his poems, or the livelier and more -engaging charms of his prose Romance--through two chapters or through ten. -But we must get on; there is a long road before us yet. - - -_A Start in Life._ - -It was somewhere about the year 1798, that a sharp-faced, youngish -Englishman--who had been curate of a small country parish down in -Wiltshire--drove, upon a pleasant June day, on a coach-top, into the old -city of Edinboro’. This clergyman had a young lad seated beside him, whom -he was tutoring; and this tutoring business enabled the curate to take a -respectable house in the city. And by reason of the respectable house, and -his own pleasant humor and intelligence, he came after a year or two to -know a great many of the better folk in Edinboro’, and was invited to -preach an occasional sermon at a small Episcopal chapel in his -neighborhood. But all the good people he met did not prevent his being -a-hungered after a young person whom he had left in the south of England. -So he took a vacation presently and fetched her back, a bride, to the -Scottish capital--having (as he said) thrown all his fortune in her lap. -This fortune was of maternal inheritance, and consisted of six well-worn -silver teaspoons. There was excellent society in Edinboro’ in that day, -among the ornaments of which was Henry Mackenzie,[26] a stately -gentleman--a sort of dean of the literary coteries, and the author of -books which it is well to know by name--_The Man of Feeling_ and _Julia de -Roubigné_--written with great painstaking and most exalted sentiment, -and--what we count now--much dreariness. Then there was a Rev. Archibald -Alison--he too an Episcopal clergyman, though Scotch to the backbone--and -the author of an ingenious, but not very pregnant book, still to be found -in old-fashioned libraries, labelled, _Alison on Taste_. Dugald Stewart -was then active, and did on one or two occasions bring his honored -presence to the little chapel to hear the preaching of the young English -curate I spoke of. And this young curate, poor as he is and with a young -wife, has an itch for getting into print; and does after a little time -(the actual date being 1800) publish a booklet, which you will hardly find -now, entitled _Six Sermons preached at Charlotte Chapel, Edinboro, by Rev. -Sydney Smith_.[27] But it was not so much these sermons, as his wit and -brightness and great range of information, which brought him into easy -intimacy with the most promising young men of the city. Walter Scott he -may have encountered odd whiles, though the novelist was in those days -bent on his hunt after Border Minstrelsy, and would have been shy of the -rampant liberalism ingrained with Smith. - -But the curate did meet often, and most intimately, a certain prim, -delicate, short-statured, black-eyed, smug, ambitious, precocious young -advocate named Francis Jeffrey; and it was in a chamber of this latter--up -three pair of stairs in Buccleugh Place--that Sydney Smith, on a certain -occasion, proposed to the host and two or three other friends there -present, the establishment of a literary journal to be published -quarterly; and out of that proposition grew straightway that famous -_Edinburgh Review_ which in its covers of buff and blue has thrived for -over ninety years now--throwing its hot shot into all opposing camps of -politics or of letters. I have designated two of the arch plotters, Sydney -Smith and Jeffrey. Francis Horner[28] was another who was in at the start; -he, too, a young Scotch lawyer, who went to London on the very year of the -establishment of the journal, but writing for its early issues, well and -abundantly. Most people know him now only by the beautiful statue of him -by Chantrey, which stands in Westminster Abbey; it has a noble head, full -of intellect--full of integrity. Sydney Smith said the Ten Commandments -were writ all over his face. Yet the marble shows a tenderness of soul not -common to those who, like him, had made a profession of politics, and -entered upon a parliamentary career. But the career was short; he died in -1817--not yet forty--leaving a reputation that was spotless; had he lived, -he would have come, without a doubt, to the leadership of liberal opinion -in England. The mourning for him was something extraordinary in its reach, -and its sincerity; a remarkable man--whose politics never up-rooted his -affections, and whose study of the laws of trade did not spoil his temper, -or make him abusive. His example, and his repeated advices, in connection -with the early history of the _Review_, were always against the -personalities and ugly satire which were strong features of it in the -first years, and which had their source--very largely--in the influences -and pertinacity of another member of the _Review_ Syndicate; I mean Henry -Brougham. - - -_Henry Brougham._ - -This was another young lawyer--of Scottish birth, but of Cumberland stock; -ambitious like Jeffrey and equally clever, though in a different line; he -was ungainly and lank of limb; with a dogmatic and presuming manner, and a -noticeably aggressive nose which became afterward the handle (and a very -good handle it made) for those illustrative caricatures of Mr. Punch, -which lasted for a generation. Brougham[29] was always a debater from his -boy-days--and not a little of a bully and outlaw; precocious too--a -capital Latinist--writing a paper on Optics at eighteen, which found -publishment in the Philosophical Transactions; member of the Speculative -Society where Jeffrey and Mackintosh, and Alison were wont to go, and -where his disputatious spirit ran riot. He didn’t love to agree with -anybody; one of those men it would seem who hardly wished his dinner to -agree with him. - -Yet Brougham was one of the master spirits in this new enterprise, and -became a great historic personage. His reputation was indeed rather -political and forensic, than literary, and in his writings he inclined to -scientific discussion. He had, however, a streak of purely literary -ambition, and wrote a novel at one period of his life--after he had -reached maturity--which he called a philosophic Romance.[30] Indeed this -bantling was so swaddled, in philosophic wrappings that it could have -made no noise. Very few knew of it; fewer still ever read it. He said, “It -had not enough of indecency and blasphemy in it to make it popular” (it -was written when Byron was in high repute). But the few who did read it -thought there were other reasons for its want of success. - -He drifted quickly away from Edinboro’, though long keeping up his -connection with the _Review_; became famous as an advocate--notably in -connection with Queen Caroline’s trial; went into Parliament; was -eventually Lord High Chancellor, and won a place in the Peerage. He was -associated intimately, too, with great beneficent schemes--such as the -suppression of the slave trade, the establishment of the London -University, the founding of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful -Knowledge, and the urgence of the great Reform measures of 1832. Yet in -all these, he arrogated more than his share of the honor, wearying his -associates by incessant bickering and scolding, picking flaws in -everything not entirely his own; jealous, suspicious, conceited to the -last degree; never generous in praise of one living beside him; an -enormous worker, with sinews of iron, and on occasions (which are of -record) speaking and wrangling in the House of Commons until two of the -morning, and then going home--not to sleep--but to write a thirty-page -article for the _Edinburgh Review_. Such men make a place for themselves, -and keep it. He was an acrid debater, but a most thorough one--holding all -aspects of a case in view; never getting muddled; ready with facts; ready -with fallacies (if needed); ready for all and any interruptions; setting -them on fire by the stress of his argumentation--like carbons in an -electric circuit; ready with storms of irony and running into rough-edged -sarcasm with singular ease and sharpest appetite. - -On a May evening of 1845 the present writer had the pleasure of watching -him for an hour or more in the House of Lords. He was lank, as I have -said; awkward, nervous, restless; twisting the great seals at his -watch-chain; intent upon everything; now and then sniffing the air, like a -terrier that has lost the scent; presenting a petition, in the course of -the session, in favor of some Newfoundland clients who were anxious for -more direct postal communication--who objected that their mails were sent -in a roundabout way _via_ Halifax. Whereupon Lord Stanley (afterward Earl -Derby), then Secretary for the Colonies, rose in explanation, “regretting -that his Lordship had not communicated with the Colonial Office, which had -considered the question raised; there was no communication by land; the -harbor was often closed by ice; therefore present methods were followed,” -etc. All of which was set forth with most charming grace and suavity; but -Lord Stanley was no sooner ended than the irascible Scotch peer, nettled, -as would seem, by the very graciousness of the explanation, was upon his -feet in an instant, with a sharp “M’ Lards,” that promised fun; and -thereafter came a fusillade of keenest, ironical speech--thanking the -honorable Secretary for “the vera impartant information, that as St. -John’s was upon an island, there could be no communication by land; and -perhaps his learned _Lardship_ supposes, with an acumen commensurate with -his _great_ geographic knowledge, that the sending of the mails by the way -of Halifax will have a tendency to _thaw_ the ice in the Harbor of St. -John’s,” and so on, for a ten minute’s storm of satiric and witty banter. -And then--an awkward plunge backward into his seat--a new, nervous -twirling of his watch-seals, a curious smile of self-approval, followed by -a lapse into the old nervous unrest. - -There was no serenity in Brougham--no repose--scarce any dignity. His -petulance and angry sarcasm and frequent ill-nature made him a much hated -man in his latter days, and involved him in abusive tirades, which people -were slow to forgive. - - -_Francis Jeffrey._ - -As for Mr. Jeffrey, his associate on the _Review_, and for many years its -responsible editor, he was a very different man--of easy address, -courteous, gentlemanly--quite a master of deportment. Yet it was he who -ripped open with his critical knife Southey’s _Thalaba_ and the early -poems of Wordsworth. But even his victims forgot his severities in his -pleasantly magnetic presence and under the caressing suavities of his -manner. He was brisk, _débonnaire_, cheery--a famous talker; not given to -anecdotes or storytelling, but bubbling over with engaging book-lore and -poetic hypotheses, and eager to put them into those beautiful shapes of -language which came--as easily as water flows--to his pen or to his -tongue. He said harsh things, not for love of harsh things; but because -what provoked them grated on his tastes, or his sense of what was due to -Belles Lettres. One did not--after conversing with him--recall great -special aptness of remark or of epithet, so much as the charmingly even -flow of apposite and illustrative language--void of all extravagances and -of all wickednesses, too. Lord Cockburn says of his conversation:-- - - “The listeners’ pleasure was enhanced by the personal littleness of - the speaker. A large man [Jeffrey was very small] could scarcely - have thrown off Jeffrey’s conversational flowers without exposing - himself to ridicule. But the liveliness of the deep thoughts and the - flow of bright expressions that animated his talk, seemed so natural - and appropriate to the figure that uttered them, that they were - heard with something of the delight with which the slenderness of - the trembling throat and the quivering of the wings make us enjoy - the strength and clearness of the notes of a little bird.”[31] - -The first Mrs. Jeffrey dying early in life, he married for second wife a -very charming American lady, Miss Wilkes;[32] having found -time--notwithstanding his engrossment with the _Review_--for an American -journey, at the end of which he carried home his bride. Some of his -letters to his wife’s kindred in America are very delightful--setting -forth the new scenes to which the young wife had been transported. He knew -just what to say and what not to say, to make his pictures perfect. The -trees, the church-towers, the mists, the mosses on walls, the gray -heather--all come into them, under a touch that is as light as a feather, -and as sharp as a diamond. - -His honors in his profession of advocate grew, and he came by courtesy to -the title of Lord Jeffrey--(not to be confounded with that other murderous -Lord Jeffreys, who was judicial hangman for James II.). He is in -Parliament too; never an orator properly; but what he says, always clean -cut, sensible, picturesque, flowing smoothly--but rather over the surface -of things than into their depths. Accomplished is the word to apply to -him; accomplished largely and variously, and with all his accomplishments -perfectly in hand. - -Those two hundred papers which he wrote in the _Edinburgh Review_ are of -the widest range--charmingly and piquantly written. Yet they do not hold -place among great and popular essays; not with Macaulay, or Mackintosh, or -Carlyle, or even Hazlitt. He was French in his literary aptitudes and -qualities; never heavy; touching things, as we have said, with a feather’s -point, yet touching them none the less surely. - -Could he have written a book to live? His friends all thought it, and -urged him thereto. He thought not. There would be great toil, he said, -and mortification at the end; so he lies buried, where we leave him, under -a great tumulus of most happy _Review_ writing. - - -_Sydney Smith._ - -I return now to the clever English curate who was the first to propose the -establishment of that great Northern _Review_, out of which Lord Jeffrey -grew. Smith had written very much and well, and had cracked his jokes in a -way to be heard by all the good people of Edinboro’. But he was poor, and -his wife poor; he had his fortune to make; and plainly was not making it -there, tutoring his one pupil. So, in 1804, he struck out for London, to -carve his way to fortune. He knew few there; but his clever papers in the -_Review_ gave him introduction to Whig circles, and a social plant, which -he never forfeited. Lord and Lady Holland greatly befriended him; and he -early came to a place at the hospitable board of that famous Holland -House--of whose green quietudes we have had glimpses, in connection with -Addison, and in connection with Charles Fox--and whose mistress in the -days we are now upon, showed immense liking for the brilliant and witty -parson. - -All this while, the Rev. Sydney was seeking preaching chances; but was -eyed doubtfully by those who had pulpits in their gift. He was too -independent--too witty--too radical--too hateful of religious -conventionalisms--too _Edinburgh Reviewish_. Neither was he a great -orator; rather scornful of explosive clap-trap or of noisy pulpit -rhetoric; yet he had a resonant voice--earnest in every note and trill; -often sparkling to his points in piquant, conversational way, but wanting -quick-witted ones for their reception and comprehension. He lacked too, in -a measure--what is another great resource for a preacher--the unction -which comes of deep, sustained, devotional feeling, and a conviction of -the unmatchable importance and efficacy of sacerdotal influences. I think -there was no time in his life when he would not rather beguile a wayward -soul by giving him a good, bright witticism to digest than by exhibit of -the terrors of the Law. His Gospel--by preference--was an intellectual -gospel; yet not one that reposed on creeds and formulas. His heart was -large, and his tolerance full. He was a proud Churchman indeed, and loved -to score dissenters; but delighted in the crack of his witticisms, more -than he mourned over their apostasy. Among the “evening meetings” that he -knew very much of, and specially relished, were those at his own little -homestead, with closed blinds, and a few friends, and hot-water, -and--lemons! - -I do not at all mean to imply that he had habits of dissipation, or was -ever guilty of vulgar excesses. Of all such he had a wholesome horror; but -along with it, he had a strong and abiding fondness for what he counted -the good things of life, and the bright things, and the play of wit, and -the encounter of scholarly weapons. - -One beautiful priestly quality, however, always shone in him: that was his -kindliness for the poor and feeble--his sympathy with them--his working -for their benefit; and though he trusted little in appeals to the mere -emotional nature, yet in his charity sermons he drew such vivid pictures -of the suffering poor folk who had come under his eye, as to put half his -auditors in tears. - -His preaching in London at this early period was for the most part at an -out-of-the-way chapel, in connection with a Foundling Hospital; but he -gave a series of Philosophic Lectures at the Royal Institution--never -reckoned by himself with his good work--which were besieged by people who -came to enjoy his witty sayings. In a few years, however, he secured a -valuable church gift in Yorkshire, where he built a rectory--the ugliest -and “honest-est house” in the county--and entertained London and Scottish -friends there, and grew to enjoy--much as he could--the trees, flowers, -and lawns which he planted, and with which he coquetted, though only in a -half-hearted way. His supreme love was for cities and crowds; he counting -the country at its best only a kind of “healthy grave”; flowers, turf, -birds are very well in their way, he says, but not worth an hour of the -rational conversation only to be had where a million are gathered in one -spot.[33] - -And he does at last come to the million--getting, after his Whig friends -came into power, and after the Reform revolution was over, the royal -appointment to a canonry in connection with St. Paul’s Cathedral.[34] - -He also has the gift of a new country “living” in Somersetshire, where he -passes his later summer in another delightfully equipped home; and between -these two church holdings, and certain legacies conveniently falling due, -he has a large income at command, and enjoys it, and makes the poor of his -parishes enjoy it too. - -He has taken a lusty hand in that passage of the Reform bill (1832), and -while its success seemed still to be threatened by the sullen opposition -of the House of Lords, he made that famous witty comparison in which he -likened the popular interest in Reform to a great storm and tide which had -set in from the Atlantic, and the opposition of the Lords, to the efforts -of Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, and-- - - “who was seen at the door of her house with mops and pattens, - trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously - pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. - Partington’s spirit was up. But I need not tell you the contest was - unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent - at a slop or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a - tempest.” - -And this happy and droll comparison was met with a great roar of laughter -and of applause that ran all over England. The same tactics of witty -ridicule belonged also to his attacks upon Tractarianism and Puseyism, -which made stir in his latter days. Indeed, his bump of veneration was -very small; and his drollery creeps into his letters as into his speech. -He writes of a visit to Edinboro’: - - “My old friends were glad to see me; some were turned Methodists, - some had lost their teeth, some had grown very fat, some were dying, - and, alas! many were dead. But the world is a coarse enough place; - so I talked away, comforted some, praised others, kissed some old - ladies, and passed a very riotous week.”[35] - -He writes to Moore, the poet: - - “DEAR MOORE: I have a breakfast of philosophers at ten, punctually, - to-morrow--‘muffins and metaphysics, crumpets and contradiction.’ - Will you come?” - -When Mrs. Smith is ailing at her new home in Somersetshire he says: - - “Mrs. S---- has eight distinct illnesses, and I have nine. We take - something every hour, and pass the mixture between us.” - -One part of his suffering comes of hay fever, as to which he says: - - “Light, dust, contradiction--the sight of a dissenter--anything sets - me sneezing; and if I begin sneezing at twelve, I don’t leave off - till two, and am heard distinctly in Taunton (when the wind sets - that way), a distance of six miles.” - -This does not show quite so large a reserve and continence of speech as we -naturally look for in the clerical profession; but this, and other such -do, I think, set the Rev. Sydney Smith before us, with his witty -proclivities, and his unreserve, and his spirit of frolic, as no citations -from his moral and intellectual philosophy could ever do. And I easily -figure to myself this portly, well-preserved gentleman of St. Paul’s, -fighting the weaknesses of the gout with a gold-headed cane, and picking -his way of an afternoon along the pavements of Piccadilly, with eye as -bright as a bird’s, and beak as sharp as a bird’s--regaling himself with -the thought of the dinner for which he is booked, and of the brilliant -talkers he is to encounter, with the old parry and thrust, at Rogers’s -rooms, or under the noble ceiling of Holland House. - - -_A Highlander._ - -Another writer--whose sympathies from the beginning were with the -Liberalism of the _Edinburgh Review_ (though not a contributor till some -years after its establishment) was Sir James Mackintosh.[36] A Highlander -by birth--he was at Aberdeen University--afterwards in Edinboro’, where he -studied medicine, and getting his Doctorate, set up in London--eking out a -support, which his medical practice did not bring, by writing for the -papers. - -This was at the date when the recent French Revolution and its issues were -at the top of all men’s thoughts; and when Burke had just set up his -glittering bulwark of eloquence and of sentiment in his famous -“Reflections”; and our young Doctor (Mackintosh)--full of a bumptious -Whiggism, undertook a reply to the great statesman--a reply so shrewd, so -well-seasoned, so sound--that it brought to the young Scotchman (scarce -twenty-five in those days) a fame he never outlived. It secured him the -acquaintance of Fox and Sheridan, and the friendship of Burke, who in his -latter days invited the young pamphleteer, who had so strongly, yet -respectfully, antagonized his views, to pass a Christmas with him at his -home of Beaconsfield. Of course, such a success broke up the doctoring -business, and launched Mackintosh upon a new career. He devoted himself to -politics; was some time an accredited lecturer upon the law of nations; -was knighted presently and sent to Bombay on civil service. His friends -hoped he might find financial equipment there, but this hope was vain; -red-tape was an abomination to him always; cash-book and ledger -represented unknown quantities; he knew no difference between a shilling -and a pound, till he came to spend them. He was in straits all his life. - -His friendship for Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, and Brougham was maintained by -correspondence, and on his return from India he became an occasional -contributor to the great Scotch _Review_ on various subjects. - -His range of acquirements was most wide--too wide and too unceasing for -the persistency which goes with great single achievements. His histories -are fragments. His speeches are misplaced treatises; his treatises are -epitomes of didactic systems. When we weigh his known worth, his keenness -of intellect, his sound judgment, his wealth of language, his love for -thoroughness--which led him to remotest sources of information--his -amazing power in colloquial discourse, we are astonished at the little -store of good things he has left. There was a lack in him, indeed, of the -salient and electrical wit of Sydney Smith; a lack of the easy and -graceful volubility of Jeffrey; lack of the abounding and illuminating -rhetoric of Macaulay; but a greater lack was of that dogged, persistent -working habit which gave to Brougham his triumphs. - -Yet Mackintosh was always plotting great literary designs; but his -fastidious taste, and his critical hunger for all certainties, kept him -forever in the search of new material and appliances. He was dilatory to -the last degree; his caution always multiplied delays; no general was ever -so watchful of his commissariat--none ever so unready for a “Forward, -march!” Among his forecasts was that of a great history of England. Madame -de Staël urged her friend to take possession of her villa on Lake Geneva -and, like Gibbon, write his way there to a great fame. He did for awhile -set himself resolutely to a beginning at the country home of Weedon Lodge -in Buckinghamshire--accumulated piles of fortifying MSS. and private -records; but for outcome we have only that clumsy torso which outlines the -Revolution of 1688.[37] - -His plans wanted a hundred working years, instead of the thirty which are -only allotted to men. What Jeffrey left behind him marks, I think, the -full limit of his powers; the same is true of Brougham, and true probably -of Macaulay; and I think no tension and no incentive would have wrought -upon Sydney Smith to work greater and brighter things than he did -accomplish. A bishopric would only have set his gibes into coruscation at -greater tables, and perhaps given larger system to his charities. But -Mackintosh never worked up to the full level of his best power and large -learning, except in moments of conversational exaltation. - - -_Rest at Cannes._ - -Before closing our chapter we take one more swift glimpse at that -arch-plotter for Whiggism--in the early days of the _Edinburgh -Review_--whom we left fidgetting in the House of Lords, on a May evening -of 1845. He had a longer life by far than most of those who conspired for -the maintenance of the great blue and buff forerunner of British critical -journals. He was only twenty-three when he put his shoulder to the -quarterly revolutions of the _Edinburgh_--youngest of all the immediate -founders;[38] and he outlived them all and outvoiced them all in the -hurly-burly of the world. - -He survived Macaulay too--an early contributor of whom we shall have more -to say--and though he was past eighty at the death of the historian, he -was alert still, and his brain vagrantly active; but the days of his early -glory and fame--when the young blusterer bolstered up Reform, and slew the -giants of musty privilege and sent “the schoolmaster abroad,” and -antagonized slavery, were gone;[39] so, too, were those palmy times when -he made the courts at Westminster ring with his championship of that poor -Queen (who, whatever her demerits--and they were many--was certainly -abominably maltreated by a husband far worse than she); times when the -populace who espoused her cause shouted bravos to Harry Brougham--times -when he was the best known and most admired man in England; all these, and -his chancellorship, and his wordy triumphs in the House of Lords, were far -behind him, and the inevitable loss of place and power fretted him -grievously. He quarrelled with old coadjutors; in Parliament he shifted -from bench to bench; in the weakness of age, he truckled to power; he -exasperated his friends, and for years together--his scoldings, his -tergiversations, and his plaid trousers made a mine of mockery for Mr. -Punch. As early as 1835-40, Lord Brougham had purchased an estate in the -south of France, in a beautiful nook of that mountain shore which sweeps -eastward from the neighborhood of Marseilles--along the Mediterranean, -and which so many travellers now know by the delights of the Cornice Road -and Monaco, and Mentone, and San Remo. The little fishing village where -years ago Lord Brougham set up his Villa of Louise Eléonore (after a -darling and lost child) is now a suburb of the fashionable resort of -Cannes. At his home there, amongst the olives, the oleanders and the -orange-trees, the disappointed and petulant ex-chancellor passed most of -the later years of his life. - -Friends dropping in upon him--much doubting of their reception--found him -as the humors changed, peevish with strong regrets and recriminations, or -placid under the weight of his years, and perhaps narcotized by the -marvellous beauty of the scenes around him. - -He was over ninety at his death in 1868. To the very last, a man not to be -reckoned on: some days as calm as the sea that rippled under his window; -other days full of his old unrest and petulancies. There are such men in -all times and in all societies--sagacious, fussy, vain, indefatigable, -immensely serviceable, cantankerous; we _can’t_ get on without them; we -are for ever wishing that we could. - - * * * * * - -In our next chapter we shall come upon a critic, who was a famous -editor--adroit, strong, waspish, bookish, and ignoble. We shall encounter -a king, too--of whom we have thus far only had glimpses--who was -jolly--excellently limbed and conditioned physically--a man “of an -infinite jest,” too, and yet as arrant a dastard--by all old-fashioned -moral measures of character--as Falstaff himself. Again we shall follow -traces of a great poet--but never a favorite one--who has left markings of -his career, strong and deep; a man who had a Greek’s delight in things of -beauty, and a Greek’s subtlety of touch; but one can fancy a faun’s ears -showing their tips upon his massive head, and (without fancy) grow -conscious of a heathenism clouding his great culture. Other two poets of -lighter mould we shall meet;--more gracious, lighter pinioned--prettily -flitting--iridescent--grace and sparkle in their utterances, but leaving -no strong markings “upon the sands of time.” - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - - -We have wandered much in our two last chapters beyond what may be reckoned -strictly English lands, into that pleasant region lying between the Tweed -and the Firth of Forth; and it was north of the heights of Lammermuir and -of the Pentland Hills, and in that delightful old city which is dominated -by the lesser heights of the Salisbury crags, the Castle Rock, and Calton -Hill, that we found the builders of that great _Review_, which in its -livery of buff and blue still carries its original name. I traced the -several careers of Sydney Smith, Lord Brougham, and Judge Jeffrey; the -first of these, from a humble village curacy, coming to be one of the most -respected literary men of England, and an important official of St. Paul’s -Cathedral; if his wit had been less lively he might have risen to a -bishopric. Brougham was, first, essayist, then advocate, then -Parliamentary orator, then Reformer, then Lord High Chancellor--purging -the courts of much legal trumpery--always a scold and quarreller, and -gaining in the first year of William IV. his barony of Brougham and Vaux: -hence the little squib of verse, which will help to keep his exact title -in mind: - - “Why is Lord Brougham like a sweeping man - That close by the pavement walks? - Because when he’s done all the sweep that he can - He takes up his _Broom_ and _Valks_!” - -As for Jeffrey, he became by his resolute industry and his literary graces -and aptitudes one of the most admired and honored critics of Great -Britain. - - -_Gifford and His Quarterly._ - -Our start-point to-day is on the Thames--in that devouring city of London, -which very early in the century was laying its tentacles of growth on all -the greenness that lay between Blackwall and Bayswater, and which--athwart -the Thames shores--strode blightingly from Clapham to Hackney. - -It was, I believe, in the year 1809 that Mr. John Murray, the great -publisher of London--stirred, perhaps, by some incentive talk of Walter -Scott, or of other good Tory penmen, and emulous of the success which had -attended Jeffrey’s _Review_ in the north, established a rival one--called -simply _The Quarterly_--intended to represent the Tory interests as -unflinchingly and aggressively as the _Edinburgh_ had done Whig interests. -The first editor was a William Gifford[40] (a name worth remembering among -those of British critics), who was born in Devonshire. He was the son of a -dissolute house-painter, and went to sea in his young days, but was -afterwards apprenticed to a shoemaker. Some piquant rhymes he made in -those days attracting the attention of benevolent gentlemen, he was put in -the way of schooling, and at Oxford, where he studied. It was while there -he meditated, and perhaps executed, some of those clever translations from -Persius and Juvenal, which he published somewhat later. He edited Ben -Jonson’s works in a clumsy and disputatious way, and in some of his -earlier, crude, satirical rhymes (_Baviad_) paid his respects to Madame -Thrale in this fashion: - - “See Thrale’s gay widow with a satchel roam, - And bring in pomp laborious nothings home.” - -Again he pounces upon the biographer of Dr. Johnson thus-wise: - - “Boswell, aping with preposterous pride, - Johnson’s worst frailties, rolls from side to side, - His heavy head from hour to hour erects, - Affects the fool, and is what he affects.” - -These lines afford a very good measure of his poetic grace and aptitude; -but they give only a remote idea of his wonderful capacity for abusing -people who did not think as he thought. He had a genius in this direction, -which could not have discredited an editorial room in New York--or -elsewhere. Walter Scott--a warm political friend--speaks of him as “a -little man, dumpled up together, and so ill-made as to seem almost -deformed;” and I think that kindly gentleman was disposed to attribute -much of the critic’s rancor to his invalidism; but if we measure his -printed bile in this way, there must be credited him not only his usual -rheumatic twinges, but a pretty constant dyspepsia, if not a chronic -neuralgia. Of a certainty he was a most malignant type of British party -critics; and it is curious how the savors of its first bitterness do still -linger about the pages of the _Quarterly Review_. - -John Wilson Croker[41] will be best known to our readers as the editor of -that edition of Boswell’s “Johnson,” to which I have alluded. Within the -last ten years, however, his memoirs and correspondence, in two bulky -volumes, have excited a certain languid interest, and given entertainment -to those who are curious in respect to the political wire-pullings of the -early part of this century in London. He was an ardent co-worker with -Gifford in the early history of the _Quarterly Review_. He loved a lord -every whit as well as Gifford, and by dint of a gentlemanly manner and -gentlemanly associations was not limited to the “back-stairs way” of Mr. -Gifford in courting those in authority. His correspondence with dukes and -earls--to all of whom he is a “dear Croker”--abound; and his account of -interviews with the Prince Regent, and of dinners at the Pavilion in -Brighton, are quite Boswellian in their particularity and in their -atmosphere of worship. There is also long account in the book to which I -have called attention, of a private discourse by George IV., of which Mr. -Croker was sole auditor; and it is hard to determine whether Croker is -more elated by having the discourse to record, or Mr. Jennings by having -such a record to edit. - - -_A Prince Regent._ - -This royal mention brings us once more, for a little space, to our -background of kings. Of the old monarch, George III., we have had frequent -and full glimpses. We wish to know something now of that new prince (whom -we saw in our Scott chapter), but who in 1810, when his father’s faculties -failed altogether, became Regent; and we wish to learn what qualities are -in him and under what training they developed. - -The old father had a substructure of good, hard sense that showed itself -through all his obstinacies; for instance, when Dr. Markham, who was -appointed tutor to his two oldest sons--Prince of Wales and Duke of -York--asked how he should treat them, the old king said: “Treat them? Why, -to be sure, as you would any gentleman’s sons! If they need the birch, -give them the birch, as you would have done at Westminster.” But when they -had advanced a bit, and a certain Dr. Arnold (a later tutor) undertook the -same regimen, the two princes put their forces together and gave the -doctor such a drubbing that he never tried birch again. But it was always -a very close life the princes led in their young days; the old king was -very rigorous in respect of hours and being out at night. By reason of -which George IV. looked sharply after his opportunities, when they did -come, and made up for that early cloisterhood by a large laxity of -regimen.[42] Indeed, he opened upon a very glittering career of -dissipations--the old father groaning and grumbling and squabbling against -it vainly. - -It was somewhere about 1788 or 1789, just when the French Revolution was -beginning to throw its bloody foam over the tops of the Bastille, that -temporary insanity in the old King George III. did for a very brief space -bring the Prince into consequence as Regent. Of the happening of this, and -of the gloom in the palace, there is story in the diary of Madame -D’Arblay,[43] who was herself in attendance upon the Queen. If, indeed, -George III. had stayed mad from that date, and the Prince--then in his -fullest vigor, and a great friend of Fox and other Liberal leaders--had -come to the full and uninterrupted responsibility of the Regency, his -career might have been very different. But the old king rallied, and for -twenty years thereafter put his obstinacies and Tory caution in the way of -the Prince, who, with no political royalties to engage him, and no -important official duties (though he tried hard to secure military -command), ran riot in the old way. He lavishes money on Carlton House; -builds a palace for Mrs. Fitzherbert; coquets with Lady Jersey; affects -the fine gentleman. No man in London was prouder of his walk, his cane, -his club nonchalance, his taste in meats, his knowledge of wines, ragoûts, -indelicate songs, and arts of the toilette. Withal, he is well-made, tall, -of most graceful address, a capital story-teller, too; an indefatigable -diner-out; a very fashion-plate in dress--corsetted, puffed out in the -chest like a pouter pigeon; all the while running vigorously and -scandalously in debt, while the father is setting himself squarely -against any further parliamentary grant in his favor. There are, -however--or will be--relentings in the old King’s mind, if “Wales” will -promise to settle down in life and marry his cousin, Caroline of -Brunswick--if, indeed, he be not already married to Mrs. Fitzherbert, -which some avow and some deny. It does not appear that the Prince is very -positive in his declarations on this point--yes or no. So he filially -yields and accedes to a marriage, which by the conditions of the bargain -is to bring him £70,000 to pay his debts withal. She is twenty-seven--a -good-looking, spirited Brunswicker woman, who sets herself to speaking -English--nips in the bud some love-passages she has at home, and comes -over to conquer the Prince’s affections--which she finds it a very hard -thing to do. He is polite, however; is agreeably disposed to the marriage -scheme, which finds exploitation with a great flourish of trumpets in the -Chapel Royal of St. James. The old King is delighted with his niece; the -old Queen is a little cool, knowing that the Prince does not care a penny -for the bride, and believing that she ought to have found that out. - -She does find it out, however, in good time; and finds out about Mrs. -Fitzherbert and her fine house; and does give her Prince some very severe -curtain lectures--beginning early in that branch of wifely duty. The -Prince takes it in dudgeon; and the dudgeon grows bigger and bigger on -both sides (as such things will); finally, a year or more later--after the -birth of her daughter, the Princess Charlotte--proposals for separation -are passed between them (with a great flourish of diplomacy and golden -sticks), and accepted with exceeding cordiality on both sides. - -Thereafter, the Prince becomes again a man about town--very much about -town indeed. Everybody in London knows his great bulk, his fine -waistcoats, his horses, his hats and his wonderful bows, which are made -with a grace that seems in itself to confer knighthood. For very many -years his domestic life,--what little there was of it,--passed without -weighty distractions. His Regency when established (1811) was held through -a very important period of British history; those great waves of -Continental war which ended in Waterloo belonged to it; so did the -American war of 1812; so did grave disaffection and discontent at home. He -did not quarrel with his cabinets, or impede their action; he learned how -to yield, and how to conciliate. Were it only for this, ’tis hardly fair -to count him a mere posture-master and a dandy. - -He loved, too, and always respected his old mother, the Queen of George -III.;[44] loved too,--in a way--and more than any other creature in the -world except himself, that darling daughter of his, the Princess -Charlotte, who at seventeen became the bride of Leopold, afterward King of -Belgium,--she surviving the marriage only a year. Her memory is kept alive -by the gorgeous marble cenotaph you will see in St. George’s Chapel, -Windsor. - -It was only when George IV. actually ascended the throne in 1820 that his -separated wife put in a disturbing appearance again; she had been living -very independently for some years on the Continent; and it occurred to -her--now that George was actually King--that it would be a good thing, and -not impinge on the old domestic frigidities, to share in some of the -drawing-room splendors and royalties of the British capital. To George IV. -it seemed very awkward; so it did to his cabinet. Hence came about those -measures for a divorce, and the famous trial of Queen Caroline, in which -Brougham won oratorical fame by his brilliant plea for the Queen. This was -so far successful as to make the ministerial divorce scheme a failure; but -the poor Queen came out of the trial very much bedraggled; whether her -Continental life had indeed its criminalities or not, we shall never -positively know. Surely no poor creature was ever more sinned against than -she, in being wheedled into a match with such an unregenerate partaker in -all deviltries as George IV. But she was not of the order of women out of -which are made martyrs for conscience’s sake. It was in the year 1821 that -death came to her relief, and her shroud at last whitened a memory that -had stains. - - -_A Scholar and Poet._ - -We freshen the air now with quite another presence. Yet I am to speak of a -man whose life was full of tumult, and whose work was full of learning and -power--sometimes touched with infinite delicacy. - -He was born four years after Sydney Smith and Walter Scott--both of whom -he survived many years; indeed he lacked only eleven years of completing a -century when he died in Florence, where most of his active--or rather -inactive--life was passed. I allude to the poet and essayist, Walter -Savage Landor.[45] He is not what is called a favorite author; he never -was; he never will be. In fact, he had such scorn of popular applause, -that if it had ever happened to him in moments of dalliance with the -Muses, and of frolic with rhythmic language, to set such music afloat as -the world would have repeated and loved to repeat, I think he would have -torn the music out in disdain for the approval of a multitude. Hear what -he says, in one of his later poetic utterances:-- - - “Never was I impatient to receive - What _any_ man could give me. When a friend - Gave me my due, I took it, and no more, - Serenely glad, because that friend was pleased. - I seek not many; many seek not me. - If there are few now seated at my board, - I pull no children’s hair because they munch - Gilt gingerbread, the figured and the sweet, - Or wallow in the innocence of whey; - Give _me_ wild boar, the buck’s broad haunch give _me_, - And wine that time has mellowed, even as time - Mellows the warrior hermit in his cell.”[46] - -Such verse does not invite a large following, nor did the man. Pugnacious, -tyrannic, loud-mouthed, setting the world’s and the Church’s rubrics at -defiance; yet weighing language to the last jot and tittle of its -significance, and--odd-whiles--putting little tendernesses of thought and -far-reaching poetic aspirations into such cinctures of polished verse--so -jewelled, so compact, so classic, so fine--that their music will last and -be admired as long, I think, as English speech lasts. Apart from all this -man wrote, there is a strange, half-tragic interest in his life, which -will warrant me in telling you more of him than I have told of many whose -books are more prized by you. - -He was the son of a Dr. Landor, of Warwick, in middle England, who by -reason of two adroit marriages was a man of fortune, and so secured -eventually a very full purse to the poet, who if he had depended only on -the sale of his literary wares, would have starved. Language was always -young Landor’s hobby; and he came, by dint of good schooling, to such -dexterity in the use of Latin, as to write it in verse or prose with -nearly the same ease as English. He loved out-of-door pursuits in boyhood -and all his life; was greatly accomplished, his biographer says, in -fishing--especially with a cast-net; and of the prey that sometimes came -into such net there is this frolicsome record: - - “In youth ’twas there I used to scare - A whirring bird, or scampering hare, - And leave my book within a nook - Where alders lean above the brook, - To walk beyond the third mill-pond - And meet a maiden fair and fond - Expecting me beneath a tree - Of shade for two, but not for three. - Ah, my old Yew, far out of view, - Why must I bid you both adieu?”[47] - -At Oxford he was a marked man for his cleverness and for his audacities; -these last brought him to grief there, and going home upon his -rustication, he quarrelled with his father. Thereafter we find him in -London, where he publishes his first little booklet of poems (1795); only -twenty then; counted a fierce radical; detesting old George III. with his -whole heart; admiring the rebel George Washington and declaring it; loving -the French, too, with their liberty and fraternity song, until it was -silenced by the cannonading of Napoleon; thenceforward, he counts that -people a nation of “monkeys, fit only to be chained.” - -But Landor never loved London. We find him presently wandering by the -shores of Wales, and among its mountains. Doubtless he takes his cast-net -with him; the names of Ianthé and Ioné decorate occasional verses; a -certain Rose Aylmer he encounters, too, who loans him a book (by Clara -Reeve), from a sketch in which he takes hint for his wild, weird poem of -_Gebir_, his first long poem--known to very few--perhaps not worth the -knowing. It is blind in its drift; war and pomp and passion in it--ending -with a poisoned cup; and contrasting with these, such rural beatitudes as -may be conjured under Afric skies, with tender love-breezes, ending in -other beatitudes in coral palaces beneath the sea. This, at any rate, is -the phantasmic outline which a reading leaves upon my own memory. Perhaps -another reader may be happier. - -That shadowy Rose Aylmer, through whom the suggestion for the poem came, -was the real daughter of Lord Aylmer, of the near Welsh country; what -Landor’s intimacy with her may have been, in its promise or its reach, we -do not know; but we do know that when she died, somewhat later and in a -far country, the poet gave her name embalmment in those wonderful little -verses, which poor Charles Lamb, it is said, in his later days, would -repeat over and over and over, never tiring of the melody and the pathos. -Here they are:-- - - “Ah, what avails the sceptred race, - Ah, what the form divine! - What--every virtue, every grace! - Rose Aylmer, all were thine. - Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes - May weep, but never see, - A night of memories and of sighs - I consecrate to thee!” - -Meantime, growing into a tempestuous love for the wild Welsh country, he -bargains for a great estate, far up in a valley which opens down upon the -larger valley in which lies Abergavenny; and being rich now by reason of -his father’s death, parts with his beautiful ancestral properties in the -Warwickshire region, lavishing a large portion of the sales-money upon the -savagery of the new estate in Wales. He plants, he builds, he plays the -monarch in those solitudes. He marries, too, while this mountain passion -is on him, a young girl of French or Swiss extraction--led like a lamb -into the lion’s grasp. But the first Welsh quarrel of this -poet-monarch--who was severely classic, and who fed himself all his life -through on the thunder-bolts of Jupiter--was with his neighbors; next with -his workmen; then with his tenants; then the magistrates; last with -everybody; and in a passion of disgust, he throws down his walls, turns -astray his cattle, lets loose his mountain tarns, and leaving behind him -the weltering wreck of his half-built home, goes over with his wife to -Jersey, off the coast of Normandy. There she, poor, tired, frighted, -worried bird--maybe with a little of the falcon in her--would stay; _he_ -would not. So he dashes on incontinently--deserting her, and planting -himself in mid-France at the old city of Tours, where he devotes himself -to study. - -This first family tiff, however, gets its healing, and--his wife joining -him--they go to Como, where Southey (1817) paid them a visit; this poet -had been one of the first and few admirers of _Gebir_, which fact softened -the way to very much of mutual and somewhat over-strained praises between -these two.[48] From Como Landor went to Pisa--afterward to Florence, his -home thenceforth for very many years; first in the town proper and then in -a villa at Fiesole from which is seen that wondrous view--none can forget -who have beheld it--of the valley, which seems a plain--of the nestling -city, with its great Brunelleschi dome, its arrow-straight belfry of -Giotto, its quaint tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, its cypress sentinels on -the Boboli heights, its River Arno shining and winding, and stealing away -seaward from the amphitheatre of hills--on whose slopes are dotted white -convents, sleeping in the sun, and villas peeping out from their cloakings -of verdure, and the gray shimmer of olive orchards. - - -_Landor in Italy._ - -It was in Florence that Landor wrote the greater part of those _Imaginary -Conversations_ which have given him his chief fame; but which, very -possibly, may be outlived in the popular mind by the wonderful finish and -the Saxon force which belong to many of his verselets. - -The conversations are just what their name implies--the talk of learned, -or distinguished men, on such topics as they were supposed to be most -familiar with; all _imagined_, and set forth by the brain of Landor, who -took a strange delight in thus playing with the souls of other men and -making them the puppets of his will. One meets in his pages Roger Ascham -and Lady Jane Grey, Milton and Andrew Marvel, and Achilles and Helena; -then we are transported from Mount Ida to the scene of a homely colloquy -between Washington and Franklin--about monarchy and Republicanism. Again -we have Leofric and Godiva telling their old story with a touching -dramatic interest; and can listen--if we will--to long and dullish dispute -between Dr. Johnson and Horne Tooke, about Language and its Laws; from -this--in which Landor was always much interested--we slip to the -Philo-Russianism of a talk between Peter the Great and Alexis. There are -seven great volumes of it all--which must belong to all considerable -libraries, private or other, and which are apt to keep very fresh and -uncut. Of course there is no logical continuity--no full exposition of a -creed, or a faith, or a philosophy. It is a great, wide, eloquent, homely -jumble; one bounces from rock to rock, or from puddle to puddle (for there -are puddles) at the will of this great giant driver of the chariot of -imaginary talk.[49] There are beauties of expression that fascinate one; -there are sentences so big with meaning as to bring you to sudden pause; -there are wearisome chapters about the balance of French verselets, in -which he sets up the poor Abbé Delille on rhetorical stilts--only to pelt -him down; there are page-long blotches of crude humor, and irrelevant -muddy tales, that you wish were out. As sample of his manner, I give one -or two passages at random. Speaking of Boileau, he says:-- - - “In Boileau there is really more of diffuseness than of brevity [he - loves thus to slap a popular belief straight in the face]; few - observe this, because [Boileau] abounds in short sentences; and few - are aware that sentences may be very short, and the writer very - prolix; as half a dozen stones rising out of a brook give the - passenger more trouble than a plank across it.” [He abounds in - short, pert similes of this sort which seem almost to carry an - argument in them.] - - [Again] “Caligula spoke justly and admirably when he compared the - sentences of Seneca _to sand without lime_.” - - [And once more] “He must be a bad writer, or, however, a very - indifferent one, to whom there are no inequalities. The plants of - such table-land are diminutive and never worth gathering.… The - vigorous mind has mountains to climb and valleys to repose in. Is - there any sea without its shoal? On that which the poet navigates, - he rises intrepidly as the waves riot around him, and sits - composedly as they subside.…” - - “Level the Alps one with another, and where is their sublimity? - Raise up the Vale of Tempe to the downs above, and where are those - sylvan creeks and harbors in which the imagination watches while the - soul reposes, those recesses in which the gods partook of the - weaknesses of mortals, and mortals the enjoyments of the gods.” - -The great learning of Landor and his vast information, taken in connection -with his habits of self-indulgence (often of indolence), assure us that he -must have had the rare talent, and the valuable one, of riddling -books--that is, of skimming over them--with such wonderfully quick -exercise of wit and judgment as to segregate the valuable from the -valueless parts. ’Tis not a bad quality; nor is it necessarily (as many -suppose) attended by superficiality. The superficial man does indeed skim -things; but he pounces as squarely and surely upon the bad as upon the -good; he works by mechanical process and progression--here a sentence and -there a sentence; but the man who can race through a book well (as did Dr. -Johnson and Landor), carries to the work--in his own genius for -observation and quick discernment--a chemical mordant that bites and shows -warning effervescence, and a signal to stay, only where there is something -strong to bite. - - -_Landor’s Domesticities._ - -Meanwhile, we have a sorry story to tell of Landor’s home belongings. -There is a storm brewing in that beautiful villa of Fiesole. Children have -been born to the house, and he pets them, fondles them--seems to love them -absorbingly. Little notelets which pass when they are away, at Naples, at -Rome, are full of pleasantest paternal banter and yearning. But those -children have run wild and are as vagrant as the winds. - -The home compass has no fixed bearings and points all awry--the mother, -never having sympathy with the work which had tasked Landor in those -latter years, has, too, her own outside vanities and a persistent -petulance, which breaks out into rasping speech when Jupiter flings his -thunder-bolts. So Landor, in a strong rage of determination, breaks away: -turns his back on wife and children--providing for them, however, -generously--and goes to live again at Bath, in England. - -For twenty-three years he stays there, away from his family (remembering, -perhaps, in self-exculpating way, how Shakespeare had once done much the -same), rambling over his old haunts, writing new verse, revamping old -books, petting his Pomeranian dog, entertaining admiring guests, fuming -and raving when crossed. He was more dangerously loud, too, than of old; -and at last is driven away, to escape punishment for some scathing libels -into which a storm of what he counted righteous rage has betrayed him. It -must have been a pitiful thing to see this old, white-haired man--past -eighty now--homeless, as good as childless, skulking, as it were, in -London, just before sailing for the Continent,--appearing suddenly at -Forster’s house, seated upon his bed there, with Dickens in presence, -mumbling about Latin poetry and its flavors! - -He finds his way to Genoa, then to Florence, then to the Fiesole Villa -once more; but it would seem as if there were no glad greetings on either -side; and in a few days estrangement comes again, and he returns to -Florence. Twice or thrice more those visits to Fiesole are repeated, in -the vague hope, it would seem, floating in the old man’s mind, that by -some miracle of heaven, aspects would change there--or perhaps in him--and -black grow white, and gloom sail away under some new blessed gale from -Araby. But it does never come; nor ever the muddied waters of that home -upon the Florentine hills flow pure and bright again. - - -_Final Exile and Death._ - -He goes back--eighty-five now--toothless, and trembling under weight of -years and wranglings, to the Via Nunziatina, in Florence; he has no means -now--having despoiled himself for the benefit of those living at his -Villa of Fiesole, who will not live with him, or he with them; he is -largely dependent upon a brother in England. He passes a summer, in these -times, with the American sculptor Story. He receives occasional wandering -friends; has a new pet of a dog to fondle. - -There is always a trail of worshipping women and poetasters about him to -the very last; but the bad odor of his Bath troubles has followed him; -Normanby, the British Minister, will give him no recognition; but there is -no bending, no flinching in this great, astute, imperious, headstrong, -ill-balanced creature. Indeed, he carries now under his shock of white -hair, and in his tottering figure, a stock of that coarse virility which -has distinguished him always--which for so many has its charm, and which -it is hard to reconcile with the tender things of which he was -capable;--for instance, that interview of Agamemnon and Iphigenia--so -cunningly, delicately, and so feelingly told--as if the story were all his -own, and had no Greek root--other than what found hold in the greensward -of English Warwickshire. And I close our talk of Landor, by citing this: -Iphigenia has heard her doom (you know the story); she must die by the -hands of the priest--or, the ships, on which her father’s hopes and his -fortunes rest, cannot sail. Yet, she pleads;--there may have been mistakes -in interpreting the cruel oracle,--there may be hope still,-- - - “The Father placed his cheek upon her head - And tears dropt down it; but, the king of men - Replied not: Then the maiden spoke once more,-- - ‘O, Father, says’t thou nothing? Hear’st thou not - _Me_, whom thou ever hast, until this hour, - Listened to--fondly; and awakened me - To hear my voice amid the voice of birds - When it was inarticulate as theirs, - And the down deadened it within the nest.’ - He moved her gently from him, silent still: - And this, and this alone, brought tears from her - Although she saw fate nearer: then, with sighs,-- - ‘I thought to have laid down my hair before - Benignant Artemis, and not have dimmed - Her polisht altar with my virgin blood; - I thought to have selected the white flowers - To please the Nymphs, and to have asked of each - By name, and with no sorrowful regret, - Whether, since both my parents willed the change, - I might at Hymen’s feet bend my clipt brow, - And--(after those who mind us girls the most) - Adore our own Athena, that she would - Regard me mildly with her azure eyes; - But--Father! to see you no more, and see - Your love, O Father! go, ere I am gone.’ - Gently he moved her off, and drew her back, - Bending his lofty head far over hers, - And the dark depths of nature heaved and burst: - He turned away: not far, but silent still: - She now first shuddered; for in him--so nigh, - So long a silence seemed the approach of death - And like it. Once again, she raised her voice,-- - ‘O Father! if the ships are now detained - And all your vows move not the Gods above - When the knife strikes me, there will be one prayer - The less to them; and, purer can there be - Any, or more fervent, than the daughter’s prayer - For her dear father’s safety and success?’ - A groan that shook him, shook not his Resolve. - An aged man now entered, and without - One word, stept slowly on, and took the wrist - Of the pale maiden. She looked up and saw - The fillet of the priest, and calm cold eyes: - Then turned she, where her parent stood and cried,-- - ‘O, Father! grieve no more! the ships can sail!’” - -When we think of Landor, let us forget his wrangles--forget his wild -impetuosities--forget his coarsenesses, and his sad, lonely death; -and--instead--keep in mind, if we can, that sweet picture I have given -you. - - -_Prose of Leigh Hunt._ - -It was some two years before George IV. came to the Regency, and at nearly -the same date with the establishment of Murray’s _Quarterly_, that Mr. -Leigh Hunt,[50] in company with his brother John Hunt, set up a paper -called the _Examiner_--associated in later days with the strong names of -Fonblanque and Forster. This paper was of a stiffly Whiggish and radical -sort, and very out-spoken--so that when George IV., as Regent, seemed to -turn his back on old Whig friends, and show favors to the Tories (as he -did), Mr. Leigh Hunt wrote such sneering and abusive articles about the -Regent that he was prosecuted, fined, and clapped into prison, where he -stayed two years. They were lucky two years for him--making reputation for -his paper and for himself; his friends and family dressed up his prison -room with flowers (he loved overmuch little luxuries of that sort); -Byron, Moore, Godwin, and the rest all came to see him; and there he -caught the first faint breezes of that popular applause which blew upon -him in a desultory and rather languid way for a good many years -afterward--not wholly forsaking him when he had grown white-haired, and -had brought his delicate, fine, but somewhat feeble pen into the modern -courts of criticism. - -I do not suppose that anybody in our day goes into raptures over the -writings of Leigh Hunt; nevertheless, we must bring him upon our -record--all the more since there was American blood in him. His father, -Isaac Hunt, was born in the Barbadoes, and studied in Philadelphia; in the -latter city, Dr. Franklin and Tom Paine used to be visitors at his -grandfather’s house. At the outbreak of the Revolution, Hunt’s father, -who--notwithstanding his Philadelphia wife--was a bitter loyalist, went to -England--his departure very much quickened by some threats of punishing -his aggressive Toryism. He appears in England as a clergyman--ultimately -wedded to Unitarian doctrines; finding his way sometimes to the studio of -Benjamin West--talking over Pennsylvania affairs with that famous artist, -and encountering there, as it chanced, John Trumbull, a student in -painting--who in after years bequeathed an art-gallery to Yale College. It -happens, too, that this Colonel Trumbull, in 1812, when the American war -was in progress, was suspected as a spy, and escaped grief mainly by the -intervention of Isaac Hunt. - -The young Hunt began early to write--finding his way into journalism of -all sorts; his name associated sooner or later with _The News_, and -dramatic critiques; with the _Examiner_, the _Reflector_, the _Indicator_, -the _Companion_, and the _Liberal_--for which latter he dragged his family -down into Italy at the instance of Byron or Shelley, or both. That -_Liberal_ was intended to astonish people and make the welkin ring; but -the Italian muddle was a bad one, the _Liberal_ going under, and an ugly -quarrel setting in; Hunt revenging himself afterward by writing _Lord -Byron and his Contemporaries_,--a book he ultimately regretted: he was -never strong enough to make his bitterness respected. Honeyed words became -him better; and these he dealt out--wave upon wave--on all sorts of -unimportant themes. Thus, he writes upon “Sticks”; and again upon -“Maid-servants”; again on “Bees and Butterflies” (which is indeed very -pretty); and again “Upon getting up of a cold morning”--in which he -compassionates those who are haled out of their beds by “harpy-footed -furies”--discourses on his own experience and sees his own breath rolling -forth like smoke from a chimney, and the windows frosted over. - - “Then the servant comes in: ‘It is very cold this morning, is it - not?’ ‘Very cold, sir.’ ‘Very cold, indeed, isn’t it?’ ‘Very cold, - indeed, sir.’ ‘More than usually so, isn’t it, even for this - weather?’ ‘Why, sir, I think it _is_, sir.’… And then the hot water - comes: ‘And is it quite hot? And isn’t it too hot?’ And what ‘an - unnecessary and villainous custom this is of shaving.’” - -Whereupon he glides off, in words that flow as easily as water from a -roof--into a disquisition upon flowing beards--instancing Cardinal Bembo -and Michelangelo, Plato and the Turks. Listen again to what he has to say -in his _Indicator_ upon “A Coach”:-- - - “It is full of cushions and comfort; elegantly colored inside and - out; rich yet neat; light and rapid, yet substantial. The horses - seem proud to draw it. The fat and fair-wigged coachman lends his - sounding lash, his arm only in action, and that but little; his body - well set with its own weight. The footman, in the pride of his - nonchalance, holding by the straps behind, and glancing down - sideways betwixt his cocked hat and neckcloth, standing swinging - from East to West upon his springy toes. The horses rush along - amidst their glancing harness. Spotted dogs leap about them, barking - with a princely superfluity of noise. The hammer cloth trembles - through all its fringe. The paint flashes in the sun.” - -Nothing can be finer--if one likes that sort of fineness. We follow such a -writer with no sense of his having addressed our intellectual nature, but -rather with a sense of pleasurable regalement to our nostrils by some high -wordy perfume. - -Hawthorne, in _Our Old Home_, I think, tells us that even to extreme age, -the boyishness of the man’s nature shone through and made Hunt’s speech -like the chirp of a bird; he never tired of gathering his pretty roses of -words. It is hard to think of such a man doing serious service in the role -of radical journalist--as if he _could_ speak dangerous things! And yet, -who can tell? They say Robespierre delighted in satin facings to his -coat, and was never without his _boutonnière_. - -We all know the figure of Harold Skimpole, in Dickens’s _Bleak House_, -with traits so true to Leigh Hunt’s, that the latter’s friends held up a -warning finger, and said: “For shame!” to the novelist. Indeed, I think -Dickens felt relentings in his later years, and would have retouched the -portrait; but a man who paints with flesh and blood pigments cannot -retouch. - -Certain it is that the household of Hunt was of a ram-shackle sort, and he -and his always very much out at ends. Even Carlyle, who was a neighbor at -Chelsea, was taken aback at the easy way in which Hunt confronted the -butcher-and-baker side of life; and the kindly Mrs. Carlyle drops a -half-querulous mention of her shortened larder and the periodic borrowings -of the excellent Mrs. Hunt. - - -_Hunt’s Verse._ - -But over all this we stretch a veil now, woven out of the little poems -that he has left. He wrote no great poems, to be sure; for here, as in -his prose, he is earnestly bent on carving little baskets out of -cherry-stones--little figures on cherry-stones--dainty hieroglyphics, but -always on cherry-stones! - -His “Rimini,” embodying that old Dantesque story about Giovanni and Paolo -and Francesca, is his longest poem. There are exceedingly pretty and -delicate passages in it; I quote one or two: - - “For leafy was the road with tall array - On either side of mulberry and bay, - And distant snatches of blue hills between; - And there the alder was, with its bright green, - And the broad chestnut, and the poplar’s shoot - That, like a feather, waves from head to foot; - With ever and anon majestic pines; - And still, from tree to tree, the early vines - Hung, garlanding the way in amber lines. - … - And then perhaps you entered upon shades, - Pillowed with dells and uplands ’twixt the glades - Through which the distant palace, now and then, - Looked forth with many windowed ken-- - A land of trees which, reaching round about, - In shady blessing stretched their old arms out - With spots of sunny opening, and with nooks - To lie and read in--sloping into brooks, - Where at her drink you started the slim deer, - Retreating lightly with a lovely fear. - And all about the birds kept leafy house, - And sung and sparkled in and out the boughs, - And all about a lovely sky of blue - Clearly was felt, or down the leaves laughed through.” - -And so on--executed with ever so much of delicacy--but not a sign or a -symbol of the grave and melancholy tone which should equip, even to the -utmost hem of its descriptive passages, that tragic story of Dante. - -Those deft, little feathery touches--about deer, and birds, and leafy -houses, are not scored with the seriousness which in every line and pause -should be married with the intensity of the story. The painting of Mr. -Watts, of the dead Francesca--ghastly though it be--has more in it to -float one out into the awful current of Dante’s story than a world of the -happy wordy meshes of Mr. Hunt. A greater master would have brought in, -maybe, all those natural beauties of the landscape--the woods, the -fountains, the clear heaven--but they would all have been toned down to -the low, tragic movement, which threatens, and creeps on and on, and which -dims even the blue sky with forecast of its controlling gloom. - -There is no such inaptness or inadequacy where Leigh Hunt writes of -crickets and grasshoppers and musical boxes. In his version of the old -classic story of “Hero and Leander,” however, the impertinence (if I may -be pardoned the language) of his dainty wordy dexterities is even more -strikingly apparent. _His_ Hero, waiting for her Leander, beside the -Hellespont, - - “Tries some work, forgets it, and thinks on, - Wishing with perfect love the time were gone, - And lost to the green trees with their sweet singers, - Taps on the casement-ledge with idle fingers.” - -No--this is not a Greek maiden listening for the surge of the water before -the stalwart swimmer of Abydos; it is a London girl, whom the poet has -seen in a second-story back window, meditating what color she shall put to -the trimming of her Sunday gown! - -Far better and more beautiful is this fathoming of the very souls of the -flowers: - - “We are the sweet Flowers, - Born of sunny showers, - Think, whene’er you see us, what our beauty saith: - Utterance mute and bright, - Of some unknown delight, - We feel the air with pleasure, by our simple breath; - All who see us, love us; - We befit all places; - Unto sorrow we give smiles; and unto graces, graces. - - “Mark our ways--how noiseless - All, and sweetly voiceless, - Though the March winds pipe to make our passage clear; - Not a whisper tells - Where our small seed dwells, - Nor is known the moment green, when our tips appear. - We tread the earth in silence, - In silence build our bowers, - And leaf by leaf in silence show, ’till we laugh atop, sweet Flowers! - - … - - “Who shall say that flowers - Dress not Heaven’s own bowers? - Who its love, without them, can fancy--or sweet floor? - Who shall even dare - To say we sprang not there, - And came not down that Love might bring one piece of heav’n the more? - Oh, pray believe that angels - From those blue Dominions - Brought us in their white laps down, ’twixt their golden pinions.” - -No poet of this--or many a generation past--has said a sweeter or more -haunting word for the flowers. - -We will not forget the “Abou-ben-Adhem;” nor shall its commonness forbid -our setting this charmingly treated Oriental fable, at the end of our -mention of Hunt--a memorial banderole of verse:-- - - “Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) - Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, - And saw within the moonlight in his room, - Making it rich and like a lily in bloom, - An Angel, writing in a book of gold. - Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold; - And to the presence in the room, he said,-- - ‘What writest thou?’ The Vision raised its head, - And with a look made of all sweet accord - Answered, ‘The names of those who love the Lord.’ - ‘And is mine one?’ said Abou. ‘Nay, not so;’ - Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low, - But cheerly still; and said, ‘I pray thee, then, - Write me as one that loves his fellow-men.’ - The Angel wrote and vanished. The next night - It came again, with a great wakening light, - And showed the names whom love of God had blessed, - And lo!--Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest!” - - -_An Irish Poet._ - -Among those who paid their visits of condolence to Leigh Hunt in the days -of his prisonhood, was Moore[51] the author of _Lalla Rookh_ and of _The -Loves of the Angels_. He was not used to paying visits in such quarters, -for he had an instinctive dislike for all uncanny things and disagreeable -places; nor was he ever a great friend of Hunt; but he must have had a -good deal of sympathy with him in that attack upon the Prince Regent which -brought about Hunt’s conviction. Moore, too, had his gibes at the -Prince--thinking that great gentleman had been altogether too neglectful -of the dignities of his high estate; but he was very careful that his -gibes should be so modulated as not to put their author in danger. - -_Lalla Rookh_ may be little read nowadays; but not many years have passed -since this poem and others of the author’s used to get into the finest of -bindings, and have great currency for bridal and birthday gifts. Indeed, -there is a witching melody in Moore’s Eastern tales, and a delightful -shimmer and glitter of language, which none but the most cunning of our -present craft-masters in verse could reach. - -Moore was born in Dublin, his father having kept a wine-shop there; and -his mother (he tells us) was always anxious about the quality of his -companions, and eager to build up his social standing--an anxiety which -was grafted upon the poet himself, and which made him one of the wariest, -and most coy and successful of society-seekers--all his life. - -He was at the Dublin University--took easily to languages, and began -spinning off some of _Anacreon’s_ numbers into graceful English, even -before he went up to London--on his old mother’s savings--to study law at -the Temple. He was charmingly presentable in those days; very small, to be -sure, but natty, courteous, with a pretty modesty, and a voice that -bubbled over into music whenever he recited one of his engaging snatches -of melody. He has letters to Lords, too, and the most winning of tender -speeches and smiles for great ladies. He comes to an early interview with -the Prince of Wales--who rather likes the graceful Irish singer, and -flatters him by accepting the dedication of _Anacreon_ with smiles of -condescension--which Mr. Moore perhaps counted too largely upon. Never -had a young literary fellow of humble birth a better launch upon London -society. His Lords’ letters, and his pretty conciliatory ways, get him a -place of value (when scarce twenty-four) in Bermuda. But he is not the man -to lose his hold on London; so he goes over seas only to put a deputy in -place, and then, with a swift run through our Atlantic cities, is back -again. It is rather interesting to read now what the young poet says of us -in those green days:--In Philadelphia, it appears, the people quite ran -after him: - - “I was much caressed while there.… and two or three little poems, of - a very flattering kind, some of their choicest men addressed to me.” - [And again.] “Philadelphia is the only place in America which can - boast any literary society.” [Boston people, I believe, never - admired Moore overmuch.] - -Here again is a bit from his diary at Ballston--which was the Saratoga of -that day:-- - - “There were about four hundred people--all stowed in a miserable - boarding-house. They were astonished at our asking for basons and - towels in our rooms; and thought we might condescend to come down to - the Public Wash, with the other gentlemen, in the morning.” - -Poor, dainty, Moore! But he is all right when he comes back to London, and -gives himself to old occupations of drawing-room service, and to the -coining of new, and certainly very sweet and tender, Irish melodies. He -loved to be tapped on the shoulder by great Dowagers, sparkling in -diamonds, and to be entreated--“Now, dear Mr. Moore, _do_ sing us one more -song.” - -And it was pretty sure to come: he delighted in giving his very feeling -and musical voice range over the heads of fine-feathered women. The -peacock’s plumes, the shiver of the crystal, the glitter of Babylon, -always charmed him. - -Nor was it all only tinkling sound that he gave back. For proof I cite one -or two bits:-- - - “Then I sing the wild song, ’twas once such a pleasure to hear, - When our voices commingling breathed, like one, on the ear; - And, as Echo far off thro’ the vale, my sad orison rolls, - I think, O my love! ’tis thy voice from the Kingdom of Souls - Faintly answering still the notes that once were so dear.” - -And again:-- - - “Dear Harp of my Country! farewell to thy numbers, - This sweet wreath of song is the last we shall twine. - Go sleep, with the Sunshine of Fame on thy slumbers, - Till touched by some hand less unworthy than mine. - - “If the pulse of the patriot, soldier, or lover - Have throbbed at our lay, ’tis thy glory alone; - I was _but_ as the wind, passing heedlessly over, - And all the wild sweetness I wak’d was thy own.” - -This is better than dynamite to stir Ireland’s best pulses, even now. - - -_Lalla Rookh._ - -Mr. Moore had his little country vacations--among them, that notable stay -up in the lovely county of Derbyshire, near to Ashbourne and Dovedale, and -the old fishing grounds of Walton and of Cotton--where he wrote the larger -part of his first considerable poem, _Lalla Rookh_--which had amazing -success, and brought to its author the sum of £3,000. But I do not think -that what inspiration is in it came to him from the hollows or the heights -of Derbyshire; I should rather trace its pretty Oriental confusion of -sound and scenes to the jingle of London chandeliers. Yet the web, the -gossamer, the veils and the flying feet do not seem to touch ground -anywhere in England, but shift and change and grow out of his Eastern -readings and dreams. - -Moore married at thirty-two--after he was known for the Irish melodies, -but before the publication of _Lalla Rookh_; and in his _Letters and -Diary_ (if you read them--though they make an enormous mass to read, and -frighten most people away by their bulk), you will come upon very -frequent, and very tender mention of “Dear Bessie”--the wife. It is true, -there were rumors that he wofully neglected her, but hardly well founded. -Doubtless there was many a day and many a week when she was guarding the -cottage and the children at Sloperton; and he bowing and pirouetting his -way amongst the trailing robes of their ladyships who loved music and -literature in London; but how should he refuse the invitations of his -Lordship this or that? Or how should she--who has no robes that will stand -alone--bring her pretty home gowns into that blazon of the salons? Always, -too (if his letters may be trusted), he is eager to make his escape -between whiles--wearied of this _tintamarre_--and to rush away to his -cottage at Sloperton[52] for a little slippered ease, and a romp with the -children. Poor children--they all drop away, one by one--two only reaching -maturity--then dying. The pathetic stories of the sickening, the danger -and the hush, come poignantly into his Diary, and it does seem that the -winning clatter of the world gets a hold upon his wrenched heart -over-quickly again. But what right have you or I to judge in such matters? - -There are chirrupy little men--and women, too,--on whom grief does not -seem to take a hard grip; all the better for them! Moore, I think, was -such a one, and was braced up always and everywhere by his own healthy -pulses, and, perhaps, by a sense of his own sufficiency. His vanities are -not only elastic, but--by his own bland and child-like admissions--they -seem sometimes almost monumental. He writes in his _Diary_, “Shiel -(that’s an Irish friend) says I am the first poet of the day, and join the -beauty of the Bird-of-Paradise’s plumes to the strength of the eagle’s -wing.” Fancy a man copying that sort of thing into his own _Diary_, and -regaling himself with it! - -Yet he is full of good feeling--does not cherish resentments--lets who -will pat him on the shoulder (though he prefers a lord’s pat). Then he -forgives injuries or slights grandly; was once so out with Jeffrey that a -duel nearly came of it; but afterward was his hail-fellow and good friend -for years. Sometimes he shows a magnanimous strain--far more than his -artificialities of make-up would seem to promise. Thus, being at issue -with the publisher, John Murray (a long-dated difference), he determines -on good advisement to be away with it; and so goes smack into the den of -the great publisher and gives him his hand: such action balances a great -deal of namby-pambyism. - -But what surprises more than all about Moore, is the very great reputation -that he had in his day. We, in these latter times, have come to reckon him -(rather rashly, perhaps) only an arch gossipper of letters--a butterfly of -those metropolitan gardens--easy, affable, witty, full of smiles, full of -good feeling, full of pretty little rhythmical utterances--singing songs -as easy as a sky-lark (and leaving the sky thereafter as empty); planting -nothing that lifts great growth, or tells larger tale than lies in his own -lively tintinnabulation of words. - -Yet Byron said of him: “There is nothing Moore may not do, if he sets -about it.” Sydney Smith called him “A gentleman of small stature, but full -of genius, and a steady friend of all that is honorable.” Leigh Hunt says: -“I never received a visit from him, but I felt as if I had been talking -with Prior or Sir Charles Sedley.” It is certain that he must have been a -most charming companion. Walter Scott says: “It would be a delightful -addition to life if Thomas Moore had a cottage within two miles of me.” -Indeed, he was always quick to scent anything that might amuse, and to -store it up. His diaries overflow with these bright specks and bits of -talk, which may kindle a laugh, but do not nestle in the memory. - -But considered as a poet whose longish work ought to live and charm the -coming generations, his reputation certainly does not hold to the old -illuminated heights. Poems of half a century ago, which _Lalla Rookh_ -easily outshone, have now put the pretty orientalisms into shade. Nor can -we understand how so many did, and do, put such twain of verse-makers as -Byron and Moore into one leash, as if they were fellows in power. In the -comparison the author of the _Loves of the Angels_ seems to me only a -little important-looking, kindly pug--nicely combed, with ribbons about -the neck--in an embroidered blanket, with jingling bells at its corners; -and Byron--beside him--a lithe, supple leopard, with a tread that -threatens and a dangerous glitter in the eye. Milk diet might sate that -other; but this one, if occasion served, would lap blood. - -In the pages that follow we shall, among others, more or less notable, -encounter again that lithe leopard in some of his wanton leaps--into -verse, into marriage, into exile, and into the pit of death at -Missolonghi. - - - - -CHAPTER V. - - -We opened our budget in the last chapter with the _Quarterly Review_, -which was just getting upon its legs through the smart, keen, and hard -writing of Mr. William Gifford. It throve afterward under the coddling of -the most literary of the Tory gentlemen in London, and its title has -always been associated with the names of John Wilson Croker, of Dr. -Southey, and of Mr. Lockhart. It is a journal, too, which has always been -tied by golden bonds to the worship of tradition and of vested privilege, -and which has always been ready with its petulant, impatient bark of -detraction at reform or reformers, or at any books which may have had a -scent of Liberalism. Leigh Hunt, of course, came in for periodic -scathings--some of them deserved; some not deserved. Indeed, I am -half-disposed to repent what may have seemed a too flippant mention of -this very graceful poet and essayist. Of a surety, there is an abounding -affluence of easy language--gushing and disporting over his pages--which -lures one into reading and into dreamy acquiescence; but read as much as -we may, and as long as we will, we shall go away from the reading with a -certain annoyance that there is so little to keep out of it all--so little -that sticks to the ribs and helps. - -As for the poet Moore, of whom also we may have spoken in terms which may -seem of too great disparagement to those who have loved to linger in his - - “Vale of Cashmere - With its roses, the brightest that earth ever gave. - Its temples, and grottos, and fountains as clear - As the love-lighted eyes that hang over their wave,” - -no matter what may become of these brilliant orientalisms, or of his life -of Byron, or of his diaries, and his “Two-penny Post Bag,” it is certain -that his name will be gratefully kept alive by his sparkling, patriotic, -and most musical Irish melodies; and under that sufficient monument we -leave him. - -As for Landor--surely the pages in which we dealt with him were not too -long: a strange, strong bit of manhood--as of one fed on collops of bear’s -meat; a big animal nature, yet wonderfully transfused by a vivid -intellectuality--fine and high--that pierced weighty subjects to their -core; and yet--and yet, singing such heart-shivering tributes as that to -Rose Aylmer: coarse as the bumpkins on the sheep wolds of Lincoln, and yet -with as fine subtleties in him as belonged to the young Greeks who -clustered about the writer of the _Œdipus Tyrannus_. - - -_The “First Gentleman.”_ - -King George IV. was an older man than any of those we have commented on; -indeed, he was a prematurely old man at sixty-five--feeling the shivers -and the stings of his wild life: I suppose no one ever felt the approaches -of age more mortifyingly. He had counted so much on being the fine -gentleman to the last--such a height, such a carriage, such a grace! It -was a dark day for him when his mirror showed wrinkles that his cosmetics -would not cover, and a stoop in the shoulders which his tailors could not -bolster out of sight. Indeed, in his later years he shrunk from exposure -of his infirmities, and kept his gouty step out of reach of the curious, -down at Windsor, where he built a cottage in a wood; and arranged his -drives through the Park so that those who had admired this Apollo at his -best should never know of his shakiness. Thither went his conclave of -political advisers--sometimes Canning, the wonderful orator--sometimes the -Duke of Wellington, with the honors of Waterloo upon him--sometimes young -Sir Robert Peel, just beginning to make his influence felt; oftener yet, -Charles Greville, whose memoirs are full of piquant details about the -royal household--not forgetting that army of tailors and hair-dressers who -did their best to assuage the misery and gratify the vanities of the gouty -king. And when he died--which he hated exceedingly to do--in 1830, there -came to light such a multitude of waistcoats, breeches, canes, -snuff-boxes, knee-buckles, whips, and wigs, as I suppose were never -heaped before around any man’s remains. The first gentleman in Europe -could not, after all, carry these things with him. His brother, William -IV., who succeeded him, was a bluff old Admiral--with not so high a sense -of the proprieties of life as George; but honester even in his badnesses -(which were very many) and, with all his coarseness and vulgarity, -carrying a brusque, sailor-like frankness that half redeemed his -peccadilloes. In those stormy times which belonged to the passage of the -Reform Bill of 1832, he showed nerve and pluck, and if he split the air -pretty often with his oaths, he never offended by a wearying -dilettanteism, or by foppery. In the year 1837 he died; and then and there -began--within the memory of a good many of us old stagers--that reign of -his young niece Victoria, daughter of his brother, the Duke of Kent (who -had died seventeen years before)--which reign still continues, and is -still resplendent with the virtues of the Sovereign and the well-being of -her people. - -Under these several royal hands, the traditional helpfulness to men of -letters had declared itself in pensions and civil appointments; Southey -had come to his laureateship, and his additional pension; we found the -venerable Wordsworth making a London pilgrimage for a “kissing of hands,” -and the honor of a royal stipend; Walter Scott had received his baronetcy -at the hands of George IV., and that dilettante sovereign would have taken -Byron (whom we shall presently encounter) patronizingly by the hand, -except the fiery poet--scenting slights everywhere--had flamed up in that -spirit of proud defiance, which afterward declared itself with a fury of -denunciation in the _Irish Avatar_ (1821). - - -_Hazlitt and Hallam._ - -Another noticeable author of this period, whose cynicism kept him very -much by himself, was William Hazlitt;[53] he was the son of a clergyman -and very precocious--hearing Coleridge preach in his father’s pulpit at -Wem in Shropshire, and feeling his ambition stirred by the notice of that -poet, who was attracted by the shrewd speech and great forehead of the -boy. Young Hazlitt drifts away from such early influences to Paris and to -painting--he thinking to master that art. But in this he does nothing -satisfying; he next appears in London, to carve a way to fame with his -pen. He is an acute observer; he is proud; he is awkward; he is shy. -Charles Lamb and sister greatly befriend him and take to him; and he, with -his hate of conventionalisms, loves those Lamb chambers and the whist -parties, where he can go, in whatever slouch costume he may choose; poor -Mary Lamb, too, perceiving that he has a husband-ish hankering after a -certain female friend of hers--blows hot and cold upon it, in her quaint -little notelets, with a delighted and an undisguised sense of being a -party to their little game. It ended in a marriage at last; not without -its domestic infelicities; but these would be too long, and too dreary for -the telling. Mr. Hazlitt wrote upon a vast variety of topics--upon art, -and the drama, upon economic questions, upon politics--as wide in his -range as Leigh Hunt; and though he was far more trenchant, more shrewd, -more disputatious, more thoughtful, he did lack Hunt’s easy pliancy and -grace of touch. Though a wide reader and acute observer, Hazlitt does not -contend or criticise by conventional rules; his law of measurement is not -by old syntactic, grammatic, or dialectic practices; there’s no imposing -display of critical implements (by which some operators dazzle us), but he -cuts--quick and sharp--to the point at issue. We never forget his -strenuous, high-colored personality, and the seething of his -prejudices--whether his talk is of Napoleon (in which he is not reverent -of average British opinion), or of Sir Joshua Reynolds, or of Burke’s -brilliant oratorical apostrophes. But with fullest recognition of his -acuteness, and independence, there remains a disposition (bred by his -obstinacies and shortcomings) to take his conclusions _cum grano salis_. -He never quite disabuses our mind of the belief that he is a paid -advocate; he never conquers by calm; and, upon the whole, impresses one as -a man who found little worth the living for in this world, and counted -upon very little in any other. - -The historian, Henry Hallam,[54] on the other hand, who was another -notable literary character of this epoch, was full of all serenities of -character--even under the weight of such private griefs as were appalling. -He was studious, honest, staid--with a great respect for decorum; he would -have gravitated socially--as he did--rather to Holland House than to the -chambers where Lamb presided over the punch-bowl. In describing the man -one describes his histories; slow, calm, steady even to prosiness, yet -full; not entertaining in a gossipy sense; not brilliant; scarce ever -eloquent. If he is in doubt upon a point he tells you so; if there has -been limitation to his research, there is no concealment of it; I think, -upon the whole, the honestest of all English historians. In his search for -truth, neither party, nor tradition, nor religious scruples make him -waver. None can make their historic journey through the Middle Ages -without taking into account the authorities he has brought to notice, and -the path that he has scored. - -And yet there is no atmosphere along that path as he traces it. People and -towns and towers and monarchs pile along it, clearly defined, but in dead -shapes. He had not the art--perhaps he would have disdained the art--to -touch all these with picturesque color, and to make that page of the -world’s history glow and palpitate with life. - -Among those great griefs which weighed upon the historian, and to which -allusion has been made, I name that one only with which you are perhaps -familiar--I mean the sudden death of his son Arthur, a youth of rare -accomplishments--counted by many of more brilliant promise than any young -Englishman of his time--yet snatched from life, upon a day of summer’s -travel, as by a thunderbolt. He lies buried in Clevedon Church, which -overhangs the waters of Bristol Channel; and his monument is Tennyson’s -wonderful memorial poem. - -I will not quote from it; but cite only the lines “out of which” (says Dr. -John Brown), “as out of the well of the living waters of Love, flows -forth all _In Memoriam_.” - - “Break--break--break - At the foot of thy crags, O sea: - But the tender grace of a day that is dead - Will never come back to me. - And the stately ships go on - To their haven under the hill; - But O, for the touch of a vanished hand - And the sound of a voice that is still.” - -I have purposely set before you two strongly contrasted types of English -literary life in that day--in William Hazlitt and Henry Hallam--the first -representing very nearly what we would call the Bohemian element--ready -to-day for an article in the _Edinburgh Review_, and to-morrow for a gibe -in the _Examiner_, or a piece of diablerie in the _London Magazine_; -Hallam, on the other hand, representing the sober and orderly traditions, -colored by the life and work of such men as Hume, Roscoe, and Gibbon. - - -_Queen of a Salon._ - -Another group of literary people, of a very varied sort, we should have -found in the salons of my Lady Blessington,[55] who used to hold court on -the Thames--now by Piccadilly, and again at Gore House--in the early part -of this century. She was herself a writer; nor is her personal history -without its significance, as an outgrowth of times when George IV. was -setting the pace for those ambitious of social distinction. - -She was the quick-witted daughter of an Irish country gentleman of the -Lucius O’Trigger sort--nicknamed Beau Power. He loved a whip and fast -horses--also dogs, powder, and blare. He wore white-topped boots, with -showy frills and ruffles; he drank hard, swore harder--wasted his fortune, -abused his wife, but was “very fine” to the end. He was as cruel as he was -fine; shot a peasant once, in cold blood, and dragged him home after his -saddle beast. He worried his daughter, Marguerite (Lady Blessington), into -marrying, at fifteen, a man whom she detested. It gave relief, however, -from paternal protection, until the husband proved worse than the father, -and separation ensued--made good (after some years of tumultuous, uneasy -life) by the violent and providential death of the recreant husband. -Shortly after, she married Lord Blessington, a rich Irish nobleman, very -much blasé, seven years her senior, but kind and always generous with her. -Then came travel in a princely way over the Continent, with long stays in -pleasant places, and such lavish spendings as put palaces at their -disposal--of all which a readable and gossipy record is given in her -_Idler in Italy_ and _Idler in France_--books well known, in their day, in -America. Of course she encountered in these ramblings Landor, Shelley, -Byron, and all notable Englishmen, and when she returned to London it was -to establish that brilliant little court already spoken of. She was -admirably fitted for sovereign of such a court; she was witty, ready, -well-instructed; was beautiful, too, and knew every art of the -toilet.[56] - -More than this, she was mistress of all the pretty and delicate arts of -conciliation; had amazing aptitude for accommodating herself to different -visitors--flattering men without letting them know they were -flattered--softening difficulties, bringing enemies together, magnetizing -the most obstinate and uncivil into acquiescence with her rules of -procedure. Withal she had in large development those Irish traits of -generosity and cheer, with a natural, winning way, which she studied to -make more and more taking. One of those women who, with wit, prettiness, -and grace, count it the largest, as it is (to them) the most agreeable -duty of life, to be forever making social conquests, and forever reaping -the applause of drawing-rooms. And if we add to the smiles and the witty -banter and the persuasive tones of our lady, the silken hangings, the -velvet carpets, the mirrors multiplying inviting alcoves, with paintings -by Cattermole or Stothard, and marbles, maybe by Chantrey or Westmacott, -and music in its set time by the best of London masters, and cooking in -its season as fine as the music,--and we shall be at no loss to measure -the attractions of Gore House, and to judge of the literary and social -aspects which blazed there on the foggy banks of the Thames. No wonder -that old Samuel Rogers, prince of epicures, should love to carry his -pinched face and his shrunk shanks into such sunny latitudes. Moore, too, -taking his mincing steps into those regions, would find banquets to remind -him of the Bowers of Bendemeer. Possibly, too, the Rev. Sydney Smith, -without the fear of Lady Holland in his heart or eyes, may have pocketed -his dignity as Canon of St. Paul’s and gone thither to taste the delights -of the table or of the talk. Even Hallam, or Southey (on his rare visits -to town), may have gone there. Lady Blessington was always keenly awake -for such arrivals. Even Brougham used to take sometimes his clumsy -presence to her brilliant home; and so, on occasion, did that younger -politician, and accomplished gentleman, Sir Robert Peel. Procter--better -known as Barry Cornwall--the song-writer, was sure to know his way to -those doors and to be welcomed; and Leigh Hunt was always eager to play -off his fine speeches amid such surroundings of wine and music. - -The Comte d’Orsay, artist and man of letters, who married (1827) a -daughter of Lord Blessington (step-daughter of the Countess), was a -standing ornament of the house; and rivalling him in their cravats and -other millinery were two young men who had long careers before them. These -were Benjamin Disraeli and Edward Lytton Bulwer. - - -_Young Bulwer and Disraeli._ - -It was some years before the passage of the Reform bill, and before the -death of George IV., that Bulwer[57] blazed out in _Pelham_ (1828), _The -Disowned_, and _Devereux_, making conquest of the novel-reading town, at a -time when _Quentin Durward_ (1823) was not an old book, and _Woodstock_ -(1826) still fresh. And if Pelhamism had its speedy subsidence, the same -writer put such captivating historic garniture and literary graces about -the Italian studies of _Rienzi_, and of the _Last Days of Pompeii_, as -carry them now into most libraries, and insure an interested -reading--notwithstanding a strong sensuous taint and sentimental -extravagances. - -He had scholarship; he had indefatigable industry; he had abounding -literary ambitions and enthusiasms, but he had no humor; I am afraid he -had not a very sensitive conscience; and he had no such pervading -refinement of literary taste as to make his work serve as the exemplar for -other and honester workers. - -Benjamin Disraeli[58] in those days overmatched him in cravats and in -waistcoats, and was the veriest fop of all fop-land. No more beautiful -accessory could be imagined to the drawing-room receptions over which Lady -Blessington presided, and of which the ineffable Comte d’Orsay was a -shining and a fixed light, than this young Hebraic scion of a great Judean -house--whose curls were of the color of a raven’s wing, and whose satin -trumpery was ravishing! - -And yet--this young foppish Disraeli, within fifty years, held the -destinies of Great Britain in his hand, and had endowed the Queen with the -grandest title she had ever worn--that of Empress of India. Still further, -in virtue of his old friendship for his fellow fop Bulwer, he sends the -son of that novelist (in the person of the second Lord Lytton) to preside -over a nation numbering two hundred millions of souls. Whoever can -accomplish these ends with such a people as that of Great Britain must -needs have something in him beyond mere fitness for the pretty salons of -my Lady Blessington. - -And what was it? Whatever you may count it, there is surely warrant for -telling you something of his history and his antecedents: Three or more -centuries ago--at the very least--a certain Jew of Cordova, in Spain, -driven out by the terrors of the Inquisition, went to Venice--established -himself there in merchandise, and his family throve there for two hundred -years. A century and a half ago,--when the fortunes of Venice were plainly -on the wane--the head of this Jewish family--Benjamin Disraeli -(grandfather of the one of whom we speak) migrated to England. This first -English Benjamin met with success on the Exchange of London, and owing to -the influences of his wife (who hated all Jewry) he discarded his -religious connection with Hebraism, went to the town of Enfield, a little -north of London--with a good fortune, and lived there the life of a -retired country gentleman. He had a son Isaac, who devoted himself to the -study of literature, and showed early strong bookish proclivities--very -much to the grief of his father, who had a shrewd contempt for all such -follies. Yet the son Isaac persisted, and did little else through a long -life, save to prosecute inquiries about the struggles of authors and the -lives of authors and the work of authors--all ending in that agglomeration -which we know as the _Curiosities of Literature_--a book which sixty years -since used to be reckoned a necessary part of all well-equipped -libraries; but which--to tell truth--has very little value; being without -any method, without fulness, and without much accuracy. It is very rare -that so poor a book gets so good a name, and wears it so long. - -Oddly enough, this father, who had devoted a life to the mere gossip of -literature, as it were, warns his son Benjamin against literary pursuits -(he wrote three or four novels indeed,[59] but they are never heard of), -and the son studied mostly under private tutors; there is no full or -trustworthy private biography of him: but we know that in the years -1826-1827--only a short time before the Lady Blessington coterie was in -its best feather--he wrote a novel called _Vivian Grey_,--the author being -then under twenty-two--which for a time divided attention with _Pelham_. -In club circles it made even more talk. It is full of pictures of people -of the day; Brougham and Wilson Croker, and Southey, and George Canning, -and Mrs. Coutts and Lady Melbourne (Caroline Lamb), all figure in it. He -never gave over, indeed, putting portraits in his books--as Goldwin Smith -can tell us. The larger Reviews were coy of praise and coy of -condemnation: indeed ’twas hard to say which way it pointed--socially or -politically; but, for the scandal-mongers, there was in it very appetizing -meat. He became a lion of the salons; and he enjoyed the lionhood vastly. -Chalon[60] painted him in that day--a very Adonis--gorgeous in velvet coat -and in ruffled shirt. - -But he grew tired of England and made his trip of travel; it followed by -nearly a score of years after that of Childe Harold, and was doubtless -largely stimulated by it; three years he was gone--wandering over all the -East, as well as Europe. He came back with an epic (published 1834), -believing that it was to fill men’s minds, and to conquer a place for him -among the great poets of the century. In this he was dismally mistaken; so -he broke his lyre, and that was virtually the last of his poesy. There -came, however, out of these journeyings, besides the poem, the stories of -_Contarini Fleming_, of _The Young Duke_, and _The Wondrous Tale of -Alroy_. These kept his fame alive, but seemed after all only the work of a -man playing with literature, rather than of one in earnest. - -With ambition well sharpened now, by what he counted neglect, he turned to -politics; as the son of a country gentleman of easy fortune, it was not -difficult to make place for himself. Yet, with all the traditions of a -country gentleman about him, in his first moves he was not inclined to -Toryism; indeed, he startled friends by his radicalism--was inclined to -shake hands at the outset with the arch-agitator O’Connell; but not -identifying himself closely with either party; and so, to the last it -happened that his sympathies were halved in most extraordinary way; he had -the concurrence of the most staid, Toryish, and conservative of country -voters; and no man could, like himself, bring all the jingoes of England -howling at his back. Indeed, nothing is more remarkable in his career than -his shrewd adaptation of policy to meet existing, or approaching tides of -feeling; he does not avow great convictions of duty, and stand by them; -but he toys with convictions; studies the weakness, as he does the power, -of those with him or against him; shifts his ground accordingly; rarely -lacking poise, and the attitude of seeming steadfastness; whipping with -his scourge of a tongue the little lapses of his adversaries till they -shrill all over the kingdom; and putting his own triumphs--great or -small--into such scenic combination, with such beat of drum, and blare of -trumpet, as to make all England break out into bravos.[61] There was not -that literary quality in his books, either early or late, which will give -to them, I think, a very long life; but there was in the man a quality of -shrewdness and of power which will be long remembered--perhaps not always -to his honor. - -I do not yield to any in admiration for the noble and philanthropic -qualities which belong to the venerable, retired statesman of Hawarden; -yet I cannot help thinking that if such a firm and audacious executive -hand as belonged to Lord Beaconsfield, had--in the season of General -Gordon’s stress at Khartoum--controlled the fleets and armies of Great -Britain, there would have been quite other outcome to the sad imbroglio in -the Soudan. When war is afoot, the apostles of peace are the poorest of -directors. - -I go back for a moment to that Blessington Salon--in order to close her -story. There was a narrowed income--a failure of her jointure--a -shortening of her book sales; but, notwithstanding, there was a long -struggle to keep that brilliant little court alive. One grows to like so -much the music and the fêtes and the glitter of the chandeliers, and the -unction of flattering voices! But at last the ruin came; on a sudden the -sheriffs were there; and clerks with their inventories in place of the -“Tokens” and “annuals”--with their gorgeous engravings by Finden & -Heath--which the Mistress had exploited; and she hurried off--after the -elegant D’Orsay--to Paris, hoping to rehabilitate herself, on the Champs -Elysées, under the wing of Louis Napoleon, just elected President. I -chanced to see her in her coupé there, on a bright afternoon early in -1849--with elegant silken wraps about her and a shimmer of the old kindly -smile upon her shrunken face--dashing out to the Bois; but within three -months there was another sharp change; she--dead, and her pretty -_decolleté_ court at an end forever. - - -_The Poet of Newstead._ - -The reminiscences and conversations of Lord Byron, which we have at the -hands of Lady Blessington, belong to a time, of course, much earlier than -her series of London triumphs, and date with her journeys in Italy. A -score of years at least before ever the chandeliers of her Irish ladyship -were lighted in Gore House, Byron[62] had gone sailing away from England -under a storm of wrath; and he never came back again. Indeed it is not a -little extraordinary that one of the most typical of English poets, -should--like Landor, with whom he had many traits in common--have passed -so little of his active life on English ground. Like Landor, he loved -England most when England was most behind him. Like Landor, he was gifted -with such rare powers as belonged to few Englishmen of that generation. In -Landor these powers, so far as they expressed themselves in literary form, -were kept in check by the iron rulings of a scrupulous and exacting -craftsmanship; while in Byron they broke all trammels, whether of -craftsmanship or reason, and glowed and blazed the more by reason of their -audacities. Both were prone to great tempests of wrath which gave to both -furious joys, and, I think, as furious regrets. - -Byron came by his wrathfulness in good hereditary fashion--as we shall -find if we look back only a little way into the records of that Newstead -family. Newstead Abbey (more properly Priory, the archæologists tell us) -is the name of that great English home--half a ruin--associated with the -early years of the poet, but never for much time or in any true sense a -home of his own. It is some ten miles north of Nottingham, in an -interesting country, where lay the old Sherwood Forest, with its -traditions of Robin Hood; there is a lichened Gothic front which explains -the Abbey name; there are great rambling corridors and halls; there is a -velvety lawn, with the monument to “Boatswain,” the poet’s dog; but one -who goes there--with however much of Byronic reading in his or her -mind--will not, I think, warm toward the locality; and the curious -foot-traveller will incline to trudge away in a hunt for Annesley, and the -“Antique Oratory.” - -Well, in that ancient home, toward the end of the last century, there -lived, very much by himself, an old Lord Byron, who some thirty years -before, in a fit of wild rage, had killed a neighbor and kinsman of the -name of Chaworth; there was indeed a little show of a duel about the -murder--which was done in a London tavern, and by candle-light. His -peerage, however, only saved this “wicked lord,” as he was called, from -prison; and at Newstead his life smouldered out in 1798, under clouds of -hate, and of distrust. His son was dead before him; so was his grandson, -the last heir in direct line; but he had a younger brother, John, who was -a great seaman--who published accounts of his voyages,[63] which seem -always to have been stormy, and which lend, maybe, some realistic touches -to the shipwreck scenes in “Don Juan.” A son of this voyager was the -father of the poet, and was reputed to be as full of wrath and turbulence -as his uncle who killed the Chaworth; and his life was as thick with -disaster as that of the unlucky voyager. His first marriage was a runaway -one with a titled lady, whose heart he broke, and who died leaving that -lone daughter who became the most worthy Lady Augusta Leigh. For second -wife he married Miss Gordon, a Scotch heiress, the mother of the poet, -whose fortune he squandered, and whose heart also he would have broken--if -it had been of a breaking quality. With such foregoers of his own name, -one might look for bad blood in the boy; nor was his mother saint-like; -she had her storms of wrath; and from the beginning, I think, gave her boy -only cruel milk to drink. - -His extreme boyhood was passed near to Aberdeen, with the Highlands not -far off. How much those scenes impressed him, we do not know; but that -some trace was left may be found in verses written near his death:-- - - “He who first met the Highland’s 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.” - -When the boy was ten, the wicked lord who had killed the Chaworth died; -and the Newstead inheritance fell to the young poet. We can imagine with -what touch of the pride that shivers through so many of his poems, this -lad--just lame enough to make him curse that unlucky fate--paced first -down the hall at Newstead--thenceforth master there--a Peer of England. - -But the estate was left in sorry condition; the mother could not hold it -as a residence; so they went to Nottingham--whereabout the boy seems to -have had his first schooling. Not long afterward we find him at Harrow, -not far out of London, where he makes one or two of the few friendships -which abide; there, too, he gives first evidence of his power over -language. - -It is at about this epoch, also, that on his visits to Nottingham--which -is not far from the Chaworth home of Annesley--comes about the spinning of -those little webs of romance which are twisted afterward into the -beautiful Chaworth “Dream.” It is an old story to tell, yet how -everlastingly fresh it keeps! - - “The maid was on the eve of womanhood; - The boy had fewer summers, but his heart - Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye - There was but one beloved face on earth, - And that was shining on him; he had looked - Upon it till it could not pass away; - He had no breath, nor being, but in hers, - She was his voice … upon a tone, - A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow, - And his cheek change tempestuously--his heart - Unknowing of its cause of agony.” - -As a matter of fact, Miss Chaworth was two years older, and far more -mature than he; she was gentle too, and possessed of a lady-like calm, -which tortured him--since he could not break it down. Indeed, through all -the time when he was sighing, she was looking over his head at Mr. -Musters--who was bluff and hearty, and who rode to the hounds, and was an -excellent type of the rollicking, self-satisfied, and beef-eating English -squire--whom she married. - - -_Early Verse and Marriage._ - -After this episode came Cambridge, and those _Hours of Idleness_ which -broke out into verse, and caught the scathing lash of Henry Brougham--then -a young, but well-known, advocate, who was conspiring with Sydney Smith -and Jeffrey (as I have told you) to renovate the world through the pages -of the _Edinburgh Review_. - -But this lashing brought a stinging reply; and the clever, shrewd, witty -couplets of Byron’s satire upon the Scottish Reviewers (1809), convinced -all scholarly readers that a new and very piquant pen had come to the -making of English verse. Nor were Byron’s sentimentalisms of that day all -so crude and ill-shapen as Brougham would have led the public to suppose. -I quote a fragment from a little poem under date of 1808--he just twenty: - - “The dew of the morning - Sunk chill on my brow - It felt like the warning - Of what I feel now, - Thy vows are all broken - And light is thy fame; - I hear thy name spoken, - And share in its shame. - - “They name thee before me, - A knell to mine ear; - A shudder comes o’er me-- - Why wert thou so dear? - They know not I knew thee, - Who knew thee too well; - Long, long shall I rue thee - Too deeply to tell.” - -Naturally enough, our poet is beaming with the success of his satire, -which is widely read, and which has made him foes of the first rank; but -what cares he for this? He goes down with a company of fellow roisterers, -and makes the old walls of Newstead ring with the noisy celebration of his -twenty-first birthday; and on the trail of that country revel, and with -the sharp, ringing couplets of his “English Bards” crackling on the public -ear, he breaks away for his first joyous experience of Continental travel. -This takes him through Spain and to the Hellespont and among the isles of -Greece--seeing visions there and dreaming dreams, all which are braided -into that tissue of golden verse we know as the first two cantos of -_Childe Harold_. - -On his return, and while as yet this poem of travel is on the eve of -publication, he prepares himself for a new _coup_ in Parliament--being not -without his oratorical ambitions. It was in February of 1812 that he made -his maiden speech in the House of Lords--carefully worded, calm, not -without quiet elegancies of diction--but not meeting such reception as his -extravagant expectation demanded; whatever he does, he wishes met with a -tempest of approval; a dignified welcome, to his fiery nature, seems cold. - -But the publication of _Childe Harold_, only a short time later, brings -compensating torrents of praise. His satire had piqued attention without -altogether satisfying it; there was little academic merit in it--none of -the art which made _Absalom and Achitophel_ glow, or which gleamed upon -the sword-thrusts of the _Dunciad_; but its stabs were business-like; its -couplets terse, slashing, and full of truculent, scorching _vires iræ_. -This other verse, however, of _Childe Harold_--which took one upon the -dance of waves and under the swoop of towering canvass to the groves of -“Cintra’s glorious Eden,” and among those Spanish vales where Dark -Guadiana “rolls his power along;” and thence on, by proud Seville, and -fair Cadiz, to those shores of the Egean, where - - “Still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields,--”[64] - -was of quite another order. There is in it, moreover, the haunting -personality of the proud, broken-spirited wanderer, who tells the tale and -wraps himself in the veil of mysterious and piquant sorrows: Withal there -is such dash and spirit, such mastery of language, such marvellous -descriptive power, such subtle pauses and breaks, carrying echoes beyond -the letter--as laid hold on men and women--specially on women--in a way -that was new and strange. And this bright meteor had flashed athwart a sky -where such stars as Southey, and Scott, and Rogers, and the almost -forgotten Crabbe, and Coleridge, and Wordsworth had been beaming for many -a day. Was it strange that the doors of London should be flung wide open -to this fresh, brilliant singer who had blazed such a path through Spain -and Greece, and who wore a coronet upon his forehead? - -He was young, too, and handsome as the morning; and must be mated--as all -the old dowagers declared. So said his friends--his sister chiefest among -them; and the good Lady Melbourne (mother-in-law of Lady Caroline -Lamb)--not without discreet family reasons of her own--fixed upon her -charming niece, Miss Milbanke, as the one with whom the new poet should be -coupled, to make his way through the wildernesses before him. And there -were other approvals; even Tom Moore--who, of all men, knew his habits -best--saying a reluctant “Yes”--after much hesitation. And so, through a -process of coy propositions and counter-propositions, the marriage was -arranged at last, and came about down at Seaham House (near -Stockton-on-Tees), the country home of the father, Sir Ralph Milbanke. - - “Her face was fair, but was not that which made - The starlight of his boyhood; as he stood - Even at the altar, o’er his brow there came - The self-same aspect, and the quivering shock - That in the Antique Oratory shook - His bosom in its solitude; and then-- - As in that hour--a moment o’er his face - The tablet of unutterable thoughts - Was traced; and then it faded as it came, - And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke - The fitting vows, but heard not his own words, - And all things reeled around him.”[65] - -Yet the service went on to its conclusion; and the music pealed, and the -welcoming shouts broke upon the air, and the adieux were spoken; and -together, they two drove away--into the darkness. - - - - -CHAPTER VI. - - -Our last chapter brought us into the presence of that vivacious specimen -of royalty, George IV., who “shuffled off this mortal coil” in the year -1830, and was succeeded by that rough-edged, seafaring brother of his, -William IV. This admiral-king was not brilliant; but we found -brilliancy--of a sort--in the acute and disputatious essayist, William -Hazlitt; yet he was far less companionable than acute, and contrasted most -unfavorably with that serene and most worthy gentleman, Hallam, the -historian. We next encountered the accomplished and showy Lady -Blessington--the type of many a one who throve in those days, and who had -caught somewhat of the glitter that radiated from the royal trappings of -George the Fourth. We saw Bulwer, among others, in her salon; and we -lingered longer over the wonderful career of that Disraeli, who died as -Lord Beaconsfield--the most widely known man in Great Britain. - -We then passed to a consideration of that other wonderful adventurer--yet -the inheritor of an English peerage--who had made his futile beginning in -politics, and a larger beginning in poetry. To his career, which was left -half-finished, we now recur. - - -_Lord Byron a Husband._ - -As we left him--you will remember--there was a jangle of marriage-bells; -and a wearisome jangle it proved. Indeed Byron’s marriage-bells were so -preposterously out of tune, and lent their discord in such disturbing -manner to the whole current of his life, that it may be worth our while to -examine briefly the conditions under which the discord began. It is -certain that all the gossips of London had been making prey of this match -of the poetic hero of the hour for much time before its consummation. - -Was he seeking a fortune? Not the least in the world; for though the -burden of debt upon his estates was pressing him sorely, and his -extravagances were reckless, yet large sums accruing from his -swift-written tales of the “Corsair,” “Lara,” and “Bride of Abydos” were -left untouched, or lavishly bestowed upon old or new friends; his -liberality in those days was most exceptional; nor does it appear that he -had any very definite notion of the pecuniary aid which his bride might -bring to him. She had, indeed, in her own right, what was a small sum -measured by their standards of living; and her expectancies, that might -have justified the title of heiress (which he sometimes gives to her in -his journal), were then quite remote. - -As for social position, there could be by such marriage no gain to him, -for whom already the doors of England were flung wide open. Did he -seek the reposeful dignity of a home? There may have been such fancies -drifting by starts through his mind; but what crude fancies they must -have been with a man who had scarcely lived at peace with his own -mother, and whose only notion of enjoyment in the house of his ancestors -was in the transport to Newstead of a roistering company of boon -companions--followed by such boisterous revels there, and such unearthly -din and ghostly frolics, as astounded the neighborhood! - -The truth is, he marched into that noose of matrimony as he would have -ordered a new suit from his tailor. When this whim had first seized him, -he had written off formal proposals to Miss Milbanke--whom he knew at that -time only slightly; and she, with very proper prudence, was non-committal -in her reply--though suggesting friendly correspondence. In his journal of -a little later date we have this entry: - - “November 30, 1813 [some fourteen months before the marriage]. - Yesterday a very pretty letter from Annabella [the full name was - Anna Isabella], which I answered. What an odd situation and - friendship is ours! Without one spark of love on either side. She is - a very superior woman, and very little spoiled … a girl of twenty, - an only child and a _savante_, who has always had her own way.” - -This evidently does not promise a very ardent correspondence. Nay, it is -quite possible that the quiet reserve he encounters here, does offer a -refreshing contrast to the heated gush of which he is the subject in that -Babel of London; maybe, too, there is something in the reserve and the -assured dignity which reminds him of that earlier idol of his -worship--Miss Chaworth of Annesley. - -However, three months after this last allusion to Miss Milbanke, we have -another entry in his journal, running thus: - - “January 16, 1814. A wife would be my salvation. I am getting rather - into an admiration for C----, youngest sister of F----. [This is not - Miss Milbanke--observe.] That she won’t love me is very probable, - nor shall I love her. The business would probably be arranged - between the papa and me.” - -Perhaps it was in allusion to this new caprice that he writes to Moore, a -few months later: - - “Had Lady ---- appeared to wish it, or even not to oppose it, I - would have gone on, and very possibly married, with the same - indifference which has frozen over the Black Sea of almost all my - passions.… Obstacles the slightest even, stop me.” (_Moore’s Byron_, - p. 255.) - -And it is in face of some such obstacle, lifting suddenly, that he flashes -up, and over, into new proposals to Miss Milbanke; these are quietly -accepted--very likely to his wonderment; for he says, in a quick ensuing -letter to Moore: - - “I certainly did not dream that she was attached to me, which it - seems she has been for some time. I also thought her of a very cold - disposition, in which I was also mistaken; it is a long story, and I - won’t trouble you with it. As to her virtues, and so on, you will - hear enough of them (for she is a kind of _pattern_ in the north) - without my running into a display on the subject.” - -A little over two months after the date of this they were married, and he -writes to Murray in the same week: - - “The marriage took place on the 2d inst., so pray make haste and - congratulate away.” [And to Moore, a few days later.] “I was married - this day week. The parson has pronounced it; Perry has announced it, - and the _Morning Post_, also, under head of ‘Lord Byron’s - marriage’--as if it were a fabrication and the puff direct of a new - stay-maker.” - -A month and a half later, in another Moore letter, alluding to the death -of the Duke of Dorset (an old friend of his), he says: - - “There was a time in my life when this event would have broken my - heart; and all I can say for it now is--that it isn’t worth - breaking.” - -Two more citations, and I shall have done with this extraordinary record. -In March, 1815 (the marriage having occurred in January), he writes to -Moore from the house of his father-in-law, Sir Ralph Milbanke--a little -northward of the Tees, in County Durham: - - “I am in such a state of sameness and stagnation, and so totally - occupied in consuming the fruits, and sauntering, and playing dull - games at cards, and yawning, and trying to read old _Annual - Registers_ and the daily papers, and gathering shells on the shore, - and watching the growth of stunted gooseberries in the garden, that - I have neither time nor sense to say more than yours ever--B.” - - -_A Stay in London._ - -On leaving the country for a new residence in London, his growing cheer -and spirits are very manifest: - - “I have been very comfortable here. Bell is in health, and unvaried - good humor. But we are all in the agonies of packing.… I suppose by - this hour to-morrow I shall be stuck in the chariot with my chin - upon a band-box. I have prepared, however, another carriage for the - abigail, and all the trumpery which our wives drag along with them.” - -Well, there follows a year or more of this coupled life--with what -clashings we can imagine. Old Ralph Milbanke is not there to drawl through -his after-dinner stories, and to intrude his restraining presence. The -poet finds things to watch about the clubs and the theatres--quite other -than the stunted gooseberries that grew in his father-in-law’s garden. -Nothing is more sure than that the wilful audacities, and selfishness, and -temper of the poet, put my lady’s repose and dignities and perfection to -an awful strain. Nor is it to be wondered at, if the mad and wild -indiscretions of the husband should have provoked some quiet and galling -counter indiscretions on the part of her ladyship. - -It is alleged, for instance, that on an early occasion--and at the -suggestion of a lady companion of the august mistress--there was an -inspection of my lord’s private papers, and a sending home to their -writers of certain highly perfumed notelets found therein; and we can -readily believe that when this instance of wifely zeal came to his -lordship’s knowledge he broke into a strain of remark which was _not_ -precisely that of the “Hebrew Melodies.” Doubtless he carries away from -such encounter a great reserve of bottled wrath--not so much against her -ladyship personally, as against the stolid proprieties, the unbending -scruples, the lady-like austerities, and the cool, elegant -dowager-dignities she represents. Fancy a man who has put such soul as he -has, and such strength and hope and pride as he has, into those swift -poems, which have taken his heart’s blood to their making--fancy him, -asked by the woman who has set out to widen his hopes and life by all the -helps of wifehood, “_When--pray--he means to give up those versifying -habits of his?_” No, I do not believe he resented this in language. I -don’t believe he argued the point; I don’t believe he made defence of -versifying habits; but I imagine that he regarded her with a dazed look, -and an eye that saw more than it seemed to see--an eye that discerned -broad shallows in her, where he had hoped for pellucid depths. I think he -felt then--if never before--a premonition that their roads would not lie -long together. And yet it gave him a shock--not altogether a pleasant one, -we may be sure--when Sir Ralph, the father-in-law, to whose house she had -gone on a visit, wrote him politely to the effect that--“she would never -come back.” Such things cannot be pleasant; at least, I should judge not. - -And so, she thinks something more of marriage than as some highly reckoned -conventionality--under whose cover bickerings may go on and spend their -force, and the decent twin masks be always worn. And in him, we can -imagine lingering traces of a love for the feminine features in her--for -the grace, the dignity, the sweet face, the modesties--but all closed over -and buckled up, and stanched by the everlasting and all encompassing -buckram that laces her in, and that has so little of the compensating -instinctive softness and yieldingness which might hold him in leash and -win him back. The woman who cannot--on occasions--put a weakness into her -forgiveness, can never put a vital strength into her persuasion. - -But they part, and part forever; the only wonder is they had not parted -before; and still another wonder is, that there should have been zealous -hunt for outside causes when so many are staringly apparent within the -walls of home. I do not believe that Byron would have lived at peace with -one woman in a thousand; I do not believe that Lady Byron would have lived -at peace with one man in a hundred. The computation is largely in her -favor; although it does not imply necessity for his condemnation as an -utter brute. Even as he sails away from England--from which he is hunted -with hue and cry, and to whose shores he is never again to return--he -drops a farewell to her with such touches of feeling in it, that one -wonders--and future readers always will wonder--with what emotions the -mother and his child may have read it: - - “Fare thee well and if for ever,[66] - Still for ever--fare thee well! - Even tho’ unforgiving--never - ’Gainst thee shall my heart rebel. - … - Love may sink by slow decay - But, by sudden wrench, believe not - Hearts can thus be torn away. - And when thou would’st solace gather, - When our child’s first accents flow, - Wilt thou teach her to say ‘Father’ - Though his care she must forego? - When her little hands shall press thee, - When her lip to thine is prest, - Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee; - Think of him thy love has blessed. - Should her lineaments resemble - Those thou never more may’st see, - Then thy heart will softly tremble - With a pulse yet true to me; - All my faults perchance thou knowest, - All my madness none can know, - All my hopes where’er thou goest - Wither--yet, with thee they go. - Every feeling hath been shaken; - Pride which not a world could bow, - Bows to thee--by thee forsaken, - Even my soul forsakes me now. - But ’tis done, all words are idle; - Words from _me_ are vainer still; - But the thoughts we cannot bridle - Force their way, without the will. - Fare thee well! thus disunited, - Torn from every nearer tie, - Seared in heart and lone, and blighted-- - More than this, I scarce can die.” - -I should have felt warranted in giving some intelligible account of the -poet’s infelicities at home were it only to lead up to this exhibit of -his wondrous literary skill; but I find still stronger reasons in the fact -that the hue and cry which followed upon his separation from his wife -seemed to exalt the man to an insolent bravado, and a challenge of all -restraint--under which his genius flamed up with new power, and with a -blighting splendor. - - -_Exile._ - -It was on the 25th of April, 1816 (he being then in his twenty-eighth -year), that he bade England adieu forever, and among the tenderest of his -leave-takings was that from his sister, who had vainly sought to make -smooth the difficulties in his home, and who (until Lady Byron had fallen -into the blindness of dotage) retained her utmost respect. I cannot -forbear quoting two verses from a poem addressed to this devoted sister: - - “Though the rock of my last hope is shivered - And its fragments are sunk in the wave, - Though I feel that my soul is delivered - To pain--it shall _not_ be its slave; - There is many a pang to pursue me; - They may crush--but they shall not contemn, - They may torture, but shall not subdue me, - ’Tis of _thee_ that I think--not of them. - - “From the wreck of the past, which hath perished, - Thus much I at least may recall, - It hath taught me that what I most cherished - Deserved to be dearest of all; - In the desert a fountain is springing, - In the wide waste, there still is a tree, - And a bird in the solitude singing - Which speaks to my spirit of _thee_.” - -Never was a man pelted away from his native shores with more anathemas; -never one in whose favor so few appealing voices were heard. It was not so -much a memory of his satirical thrusts, as a jealousy begotten by his late -extraordinary successes, which had alienated nearly the whole literary -fraternity. Only Rogers, Moore, and Scott were among the better known ones -who had forgiven his petulant verse, and were openly apologetic and -friendly; while such kind wishers as Lady Holland and Lady Jersey were -half afraid to make a show of their sympathies. Creditors, too, of that -burdened estate of his, had pushed their executions one upon another--in -those days when his torments were most galling--into what was yet called -with poor significance his home; only his title of peer, Moore tells us, -at one date saved him from prison. - -Yet when he lands in Belgium, he travels--true to his old -recklessness--like a prince; with body servants and physician, and a -lumbering family coach, with its showy trappings. Waterloo was fresh then, -and the wreck and the blood, and the glory of it were all scored upon his -brain, and shortly afterward by his fiery hand upon the poem we know so -well, and which will carry that streaming war pennon in the face of other -generations than ours. Then came the Rhine, with its castles and -traditions, glittering afresh in the fresh stories that he wove; and after -these his settlement for a while upon the borders of Lake Geneva--where, -in some one of these talks of ours we found the studious Gibbon, under his -acacia-trees, and where Rousseau left his footprints--never to be -effaced--at Clarens and Meillerie. One would suppose that literature could -do no more with such outlooks on lake and mountain, as seem to mock at -language. - -And yet the wonderful touch of Byron has kindled new interest in scenes on -which the glowing periods of Rousseau had been lavished. Even the -guide-books can none of them complete their record of the region without -stealing descriptive gems from his verse; and his story of the _Prisoner -of Chillon_ will always--for you and for me--lurk in the shadows that lie -under those white castle walls, and in the murmur of the waters that ebb -and flow--gently as the poem--all round about their foundations. I may -mention that at the date of the Swiss visit, and under the influences and -active co-operation of Madame de Staël--then a middle-aged and invalid -lady residing at her country seat of Coppet, on the borders of Geneva -Lake--Byron did make overtures for a reconciliation with his wife. They -proved utterly without avail, even if they were not treated with scorn. -And it is worthy of special note that while up to this date all mention of -Lady Byron by the poet had been respectful, if not relenting and -conciliatory--thereafter the vials of his wrath were opened, and his -despairing scorn knew no bounds. Thus, in the “Incantation”--thrust into -that uncanny work of _Manfred_--with which he was then at labor--he says: - - “Though thou seest me not pass by, - Thou shalt feel me with thine eye, - As a thing that, though unseen, - Must be near thee, and hath been; - And when, in that secret dread, - Thou hast turned around thy head, - Thou shalt marvel I am not - As thy shadow on the spot; - And the power which thou dost feel - Shall be what thou must conceal.” - - -_Shelley and Godwin._ - -Another episode of Byron’s Swiss life was his encounter there, for the -first time, with the poet Shelley.[67] He, too, was under ban, for reasons -that I must briefly make known. Like his brother poet, Shelley was born to -a prospective inheritance of title and of wealth. His father was a -baronet, shrewd and calculating, and living by the harshest and baldest -of old conventionalisms; this father had given a warm, brooding care to -the estate left him by Sir Bysshe Shelley (the grandfather of the poet), -who had an American bringing up--if not an American birth--in the town of -Newark,[68] N. J. The boy poet had the advantages of a place at -Eton[69]--not altogether a favorite there, it would seem; “passionate in -his resistance to an injury, passionate in his love.” He carried thence to -Oxford a figure and a beauty of countenance that were almost effeminate; -and yet he had a capacity for doubts and negations that was wondrously -masculine. His scholarship was keen, but not tractable; he takes a wide -range outside the established order of studies; he is a great and -unstinted admirer of the French philosophers, and makes such audacious -free-thinking challenge to the church dignitaries of Oxford that he is -expelled--like something venomous. His father, too, gives him the cold -shoulder at this crisis, and he drifts to London. There he contrives -interviews with his sisters, who are in school at Clapham; and is decoyed -into a marriage--before he is twenty--with a somewhat pretty and over-bold -daughter of a coffee-house keeper, who has acted as a go-between in -communications with his sisters. The prudent, conventional father is now -down upon him with a vengeance. - -But the boy has pluck under that handsome face of his. He sets out, with -his wife--after sundry wanderings--to redeem Ireland; but they who are -used to blunderbusses, undervalue Shelley’s fine periods, and his fine -face. He is some time in Wales, too (the mountains there fastening on his -thought and cropping out in after poems); he is in Edinboro’, in York, in -Keswick--making his obeisance to the great Southey (but coming to -over-hate of him in after years). Meantime he has children. Sometimes -money comes from the yielding father--sometimes none; he is abstemious; -bread and water mostly his diet; his home is without order or thrift or -invitingness--the lapses of the hoydenish girl-wife stinging him over and -over and through and through. - -But Shelley has read Godwin’s _Political Justice_--one of those many fine -schemes for the world’s renovation, by tearing out and burning up most of -the old furniture, which make their appearance periodically--and in virtue -of his admiration of Godwin, Shelley counts him among the demi-gods of the -heaven which he has conjured up. In reality Godwin[70] was an oldish, -rather clumsy, but astute and clever dissenting minister, who had left -preaching, and had not only written _Political Justice_, but novels--among -them one called _Caleb Williams_; by which you will know him better--if -you know him at all. This gave him great reputation in its time. There -were critics who ranked him with, or above, Scott--even in fiction. This -may tempt you to read _Caleb Williams_;[71] and if you read it--you will -not forget it. It pinches the memory like a vice; much reading of it -might, I should think, engender, in one of vivid imagination, such -nightmare stories as “_Called Back_” or “_A Dark Day_.” - -But Mr. Godwin had a daughter, Mary (whose mother was that Mary -Wollstonecraft, promoted now to a place amongst famous women), and our -Shelley going to see Godwin, saw also the daughter Mary--many times over; -and these two--having misty and mystic visions of a new order of -ethics--ran away together. - -It must be said, however, to the credit of Shelley (if credit be the word -to use), that when this first wife killed herself--as she did some -eighteen months afterward[72] (whether from grief or other cause is -doubtful)--he married Miss Godwin; and it was during the summer preceding -this second marriage that Byron (1816) encountered Shelley on the shores -of Lake Leman. Shelley had already written that wild screed of _Queen Mab_ -(privately printed, 1813), giving poetic emphasis to the scepticism of his -Oxford days. He had published that dreamy poem of _Alastor_--himself its -poet hero, as indeed he was in a large sense of every considerable poem he -wrote. I cite a fragment of it, that you may see what waking and beguiling -voice belonged to the young bard, who posed there on the Geneva lake -beside the more masculine Byron. He has taken us into forest depths: - - “One vast mass - Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence - A narrow vale embosoms. - The pyramids - Of the tall cedar, overarching, frame - Most solemn domes within; and far below, - Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky, - The ash and the acacia floating, hang - Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents clothed - In rainbow and in fire, the parasites - Starred with ten thousand blossoms flowed around - The gray trunks; and as gamesome infants’ eyes, - With gentle meanings and most innocent wiles - Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love, - These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs. - … the woven leaves - Make net-work of the dark blue lights of day - And the night’s noontide clearness, mutable - As shapes in the weird clouds. - One darkest glen - Sends from its woods of musk-rose twined with jasmine - A soul-dissolving odor, to invite - To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell - Silence and twilight here, twin sisters, keep - Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades - Like vaporous shapes half seen.” - -And such mysteries and vaporous shapes run through all his poetic world. -He wanders, with that rarely fine gift of rhythmic speech, as wide away -from the compact sordid world--upon which Byron always sets foot with a -ringing tread--as ever Spenser in his chase of rainbow creations. Yet -there were penetrative sinuous influences about that young poet--defiant -of law and wrapt in his pursuit of mysteries--which may well have given -foreign touches of color to Byron’s _Manfred_ or to his _Prometheus_. At -any rate, these two souls lay quietly for a time, warped together--like -two vessels windbound under mountain shelter. - - -_Byron in Italy._ - -Byron next goes southward, to riotous life in Venice; where--whether in -tradesmen’s houses or in palaces upon the Grand Canal, or in country -villas upon the Euganean hills--he defies priests and traditions, and -order, and law, and decency. - -To this period belongs, probably, the conception, if not the execution, of -many of those dramas[73]--as non-playable as ever those of -Tennyson--unequal, too, but with passages scattered here and there of -great beauty; masterly aggregation of words smoking with passion, and full -of such bullet-like force of expression as only he could command; but -there is no adequate blending of parts to make either stately or -well-harmonized march of events toward large and definite issues. - -Out of the Venetian welter came, too, the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_ -and the opening parts of _Don Juan_. The mocking, rollicking, marvellous -_Vision of Judgment_, whose daring license staggered even Murray and -Moore, and which scarified poor Southey, belongs to a later phase of his -Italian career. It is angry and bitter--and has an impish laughter in -it--of a sort which our friend Robert Ingersoll might write, if his genius -ran to poetry. _Cain_ had been of a bolder tone--perhaps loftier; with -much of the argument that Milton puts into the mouth of Satan, amplified -and rounded, and the whole illuminated by passages of wonderful poetic -beauty. - -His scepticism, if not so out-spoken and full of plump negatives as that -of Shelley, is far more mocking and bitter. If Shelley was rich in -negations--so far as relates to orthodox belief--he was also rich in dim, -shadowy conceptions of a mysterious eternal region, with faith and love -reigning in it--toward which in his highest range of poetic effusion he -makes approaches with an awed and a tremulous step. But with Byron--even -where his words carry full theistic beliefs--the awe and the tremulous -approaches are wanting. - - -_Shelley Again._ - -Shelley went back from Switzerland to a home for a year or more, beyond -Windsor, near to Bisham--amid some of the loveliest country that borders -upon the Thames. Here he wrote that strange poem of _Laon and Cythna_ (or -_Revolt of Islam_, as it was called on its re-issue), which, so far as one -can gather meaning from its redundant and cumulated billows of rich, -poetic language, tells how a nation was kindled to freedom by the -strenuous outcry of some young poet-prophet--how he seems to win, and his -enemies become like smoking flax--how the dreadful fates that beset us, -and crowd all worldly courses from their best outcome, did at last trample -him down; not him only, but the one dearest to him--who is a willing -victim--and bears him off into the shades of night. Throughout, Laon the -Victim is the poet’s very self; and the very self appears again--with what -seems to the cautious, world-wise reader a curious indiscretion--in the -pretty jumping metre of “Rosalind and Helen”:-- - - “Joyous he was; and hope and peace - On all who heard him did abide, - Raining like dew from his sweet talk, - As where the evening star may walk - Along the brink of the gloomy seas, - Liquid mists of splendid quiver. - His very gestures touched to tears - The unpersuaded tyrant, never - So moved before.… - Men wondered, and some sneered, to see - One sow what he could never reap; - For he is rich, they said, and young, - And might drink from the depths of luxury. - If he seeks Fame, Fame never crowned - The champion of a trampled creed; - If he seeks Power, Power is enthroned - ’Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed - Which hungry wolves with praise and spoil, - Those who would sit near Power must toil.” - -It was in 1818, four years before his death, that Shelley sailed away from -English shores forever. There was not much to hold him there; those -children of the Westbrook mother he cannot know or guide.[74] The -Chancellor of England has decided that question against him; and Law, -which he has defied, has wrought him this great pain; nay, he has wild, -imaginary fears, too, that some Lord Chancellor, weaving toils in that web -of orderly British custom, may put bonds on these other and younger -children of the Godwin blood. Nor is it strange that a world of more -reasonable motives should urge this subtle poet--whose head is carried of -purpose, and by love, among the clouds--to turn his back on that grimy, -matter-of-fact England, and set his face toward those southern regions -where Art makes daily food, and where he may trail his robes without the -chafings of law or custom. But do not let me convey the impression that -Shelley then or ever lived day by day wantonly lawless, or doing violence -to old-fashioned proprieties; drunkenness was always a stranger to him, to -that new household--into which he had been grafted by Godwinian ethics--he -is normally true; he would, if it were possible, bring into the lap of -his charities those other estrays from whom the law divides him; his -generosities are of the noblest and fullest; he even entertains at one -time the singular caprice of “taking orders,” as if the author of _Queen -Mab_ could hold a vicarage! It opens, he said, so many ways of doing -kindly things, of making hearts joyful; and--for doctrine, one can always -preach Charity! With rare exceptions, it is only in his mental attitudes -and forays that he oversteps the metes and bounds of the every-day -moralities around him. Few poets, even of that time, can or do so measure -him as to enjoy him or to give him joy. Leigh Hunt is gracious and kindly; -but there are no winged sandals on his feet which can carry him into -regions where Shelley walks. Southey is stark unbeliever in the mystic -fields where Shelley grazes. Wordsworth is conquered by the Art, but has -melancholy doubts of the soul that seems caught and hindered in the meshes -of its own craftsmanship. Landor, of a certainty, has detected with his -keen insight the high faculties that run rampant under the mazes of the -new poet’s language; but Landor, too, is in exile--driven hither and -thither by the same lack of steady home affinities which has overset and -embroiled the domesticities of the younger poet. - - -_John Keats._ - -Yet another singer of these days, in most earnest sympathy with the -singing moods of Shelley--for whom I can have only a word now, was John -Keats;[75] born within the limits of London smoke, and less than -three-quarters of a mile from London Bridge--knowing in his boy days only -the humblest, work-a-day ranges of life; getting some good Latinity and -other schooling out of a Mr. Clarke (of the Cowden Clarke family)--reading -Virgil with him, but no Greek. And yet the lad, who never read Homer save -in Chapman, when he comes to write, as he does in extreme youth, crowds -his wonderful lines with the delicate trills and warblings which might -have broken out straight from Helicon--with a susurrus from the Bees of -Hymettus. This makes a good argument--so far as it reaches--in disproof -of the averments of those who believe that, for conquest of Attic -felicities of expression, the Greek vocables must needs be torn forth root -by root, and stretched to dry upon our skulls. - -He published _Endymion_ in the very year when Shelley set off on his final -voyagings--a gushing, wavy, wandering poem, intermeshed with flowers and -greenery (which he lavishes), and with fairy golden things in it and -careering butterflies; with some bony under-structure of Greek -fable--loose and vague--and serving only as the caulking pins to hold -together the rich, sensuous sway, and the temper and roll of his language. - -I must snatch one little bit from that book of _Endymion_, were it only to -show you what music was breaking out in unexpected quarters from that -fact-ridden England, within sound of the murmurs of the Thames, when -Shelley was sailing away:-- - - “On every morrow are we wreathing - A flowery band to bind us to the earth - Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth - Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, - Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways - Made for our searching; yes, in spite of all, - Some shape of beauty moves away the pall - From our dark spirits. Such--the sun, the moon, - Trees--old and young, sprouting a shady boon - For simple sheep; and such are daffodils - With the green world they live in; and clear rills - That for themselves a cooling covert make - ’Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake - Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms; - And such, too, is the grandeur of the dooms - We have imagined for the mighty dead; - All lovely tales that we have heard or read.” - -I might cite page on page from Keats, and yet hold your attention; there -is something so beguiling in his witching words; and his pictures are -finished--with only one or two or three dashes of his pencil. Thus we come -upon-- - - “Swelling downs, where sweet air stirs - Blue harebells lightly, and where prickly furze - Buds lavish gold.” - -And again our ear is caught with-- - - “Rustle of the reapéd corn, - And sweet birds antheming the morn.” - -Well, this young master of song goes to Italy, too--not driven, like -Byron, by hue and cry, or like Shelley, restless for change (from -Chancellor’s courts) and for wider horizons--but running from the disease -which has firm grip upon him, and which some three years after Shelley’s -going kills the poet of the _Endymion_ at Rome. His ashes lie in the -Protestant burial-ground there--under the shadow of the pyramid of Caius -Cestius. Every literary traveller goes to see the grave, and to spell out -the words he wanted inscribed there: - - “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” - -Upon that death, Shelley, then living in Pisa, blazed out in the -_Adonais_--the poem making, with the _Lycidas_ of Milton, and the _In -Memoriam_ of Tennyson, a triplet of laurel garlands, whose leaves will -never fade. Yet those of Shelley have a cold rustle in them--shine as they -may:-- - - “Oh, weep for Adonais--he is dead! - Wake, melancholy mother, wake and weep! - Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed - Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep - Like his--a mute and uncomplaining sleep. - For he is gone where all things wise and fair - Descend. Oh, dream not that the amorous deep - Will yet restore him to the vital air; - Death feeds on his mute voice and laughs at our despair. - - “Oh, weep for Adonais! The quick dreams, - The passion-winged ministers of thought - Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams - Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught - The Love which was its music, wander not-- - Wander no more from kindling brain to brain, - But droop there whence they sprung; and mourn their lot - Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain, - They ne’er will gather strength, or find a home again.” - -The weak place in this impassioned commemorative poem lies in its waste of -fire upon the heads of those British critics, who--as flimsy, pathetic -legends used to run--slew the poet by their savagery. Keats did not range -among giants; but he was far too strong a man to die of the gibes of the -_Quarterly_, or the jeers of _Blackwood_. Not this; but all along, -throughout his weary life--even amid the high airs of Hampstead, where -nightingales sang--he sang, too,-- - - “I have been half in love with easeful Death, - Called him soft names in many a muséd rhyme, - To take into the air my quiet breath.”[76] - - -_Buried in Rome._ - -Keats died in 1821. In that year Shelley was living between Lirici, on the -gulf of Spezia, and Pisa. While in this latter city, he was planted for a -time at the old Lanfranchi palace, where in the following season very much -at the instance and urgence of Shelley, Leigh Hunt came with his six -riotous young children, and sometimes made a din--that was new to Byron -and most worrisome--in the court of the Lanfranchi house. Out of this Hunt -fraternizing and co-working (forecast by the kindly Shelley) was to be -built up the success of that famous “Liberal” Journal, dear to the hearts -of Shelley and Hunt, of which I have already spoken, and which had -disastrous failure; out of this aggregation of disorderly poetic elements -grew also the squabbles that gave such harsh color to the _Reminiscences_ -of Leigh Hunt.[77] - -But other and graver disaster was impending. Shelley loved the sea, and -carried with him to the water the same reckless daring which he put into -his verse. Upon a summer day of July, 1822, he went with a friend and one -boatman for a sail upon the bay of Spezia, not heeding some cautions that -had been dropped by old seamen, who had seen portents of a storm; and his -boat sailed away into the covert of the clouds. Next day there were no -tidings, nor the next, nor the next. Finally wreck and bodies came to the -shore. - -Trelawney, Byron’s friend, tells a grim story of it all--how the dismal -truth was carried to the widowed wife, how the body of the drowned poet -was burned upon the shore, with heathen libations of oil and wine; how -Byron and Hunt both were present at the weird funeral--the blue -Mediterranean lapping peacefully upon the beach and the black smoke -lifting in great clouds from the pyre and throwing lurid shadows over the -silent company. The burial--such as there was of it--took place in that -same Protestant graveyard at Rome--just out of the Porta San Paolo--where -we were just now witnesses at the burial of Keats. - -Shelley made many friendships, and lasting ones. He was wonderfully -generous; he visited the sick; he helped the needy; putting himself often -into grievous straits for means to give quickly. As he was fine of figure -and of feature, so his voice was fine, delicate, penetrative, yet in -moments of great excitement rising to a shrillness that spoiled melody and -rasped the ear; so his finer generosities and kindnesses sometimes passed -into a rasping indifference or even cruelty toward those nearest him, he -feeling that first Westbrook _mesalliance_, on occasions, like a -torture--specially when the presence of the tyrannic, coarse, aggravating -sister-in-law was like a poisonous irritant; he--under the teachings of a -conscientious father, in his young days--was scarce more than half -responsible for his wry life; running to badnesses--on occasions--under -good impulses; perhaps marrying that first wife because she wanted to -marry him; and quitting her--well--because “she didn’t care.” -Intellectually, as well as morally, he was pagan; seeing things in their -simplest aspects, and so dealing with them; intense, passionate, borne -away in tempests of quick decision, whose grounds he cannot fathom; always -beating his wings against the cagements that hem us in; eager to look into -those depths where light is blinding and will not let us look; seeming at -times to measure by some sudden reach of soul what is immeasurable; but -under the vain uplifts, always reverent, with a dim hope shining fitfully; -contemptuous of harassing creeds or any jugglery of forms--of whatever -splendid fashionings of mere material, whether robes or rites--and -yearning to solve by some strong, swift flight of imagination what is -insoluble. There are many reverent steps that go to that little Protestant -cemetery--an English greenery upon the borders of the Roman -Campagna--where the ashes of Shelley rest and where myrtles grow. And from -its neighborhood, between Mount Aventine and the Janiculan heights, one -may see reaches of the gleaming Tiber, and the great dome of St. Peter’s -lifting against the northern sky, like another tomb, its cross almost -hidden in the gray distance. - - -_Pisa and Don Juan._ - -No such friendship as that whose gleams have shot athwart these latter -pages could have been kindled by Byron. No “Adonais” could have been writ -for him; he could have melted into no “Adonais” for another; old pirate -blood, seething in him, forbade. No wonder he chafed at Hunt’s squalling -children in the Lanfranchi palace; _that_ literary partnership finds quick -dissolution. He sees on rare occasions an old English friend--he, who has -so few! Yet he is in no mood to make new friends. The lambent flames of -the Guiccioli romance hover and play about him, making the only -counterfeit of a real home which he has ever known. The proud, -independent, audacious, lawless living that has been his so long, whether -the early charms lie in it or no--he still clings by. His pen has its old -force, and the words spin from it in fiery lines; but to pluck the flowers -worth the seeking, which he plants in them now, one must go over quaking -bogs, and through ways of foulness. - -The _Childe Harold_ has been brought to its conclusion long before; its -cantos, here and there splendidly ablaze with Nature--its storms, its -shadows, its serenities; and the sentiment--now morbid, now jubilant--is -always his own, though it beguiles with honeyed sounds, or stabs like a -knife. - -There have been a multitude of lesser poems, and of dramas which have had -their inception and their finish on that wild Continental -holiday--beginning on _Lac Leman_ and ending at Pisa and Genoa; but his -real selfhood--whether of mind or passion--seems to me to come out plainer -and sharper in the _Don Juan_ than elsewhere. There may not be lifts in -it, which rise to the romantic levels of the “Pilgrimage;” there may be -lack of those interpolated bits of passion, of gloom, of melancholy, which -break into the earlier poem. But there is the blaze and crackle of his own -mad march of flame; the soot, the cinders, the heat, the wide-spread -ashes, and unrest of those fires which burned in him from the beginning -were there, and devastated all the virginal purities of his youth (if -indeed there were any!) and welded his satanic and his poetic qualities -into that seamy, shining, wonderful residue of dirty scoriæ, and of -brilliant phosphorescence, which we call _Don Juan_. From a mere literary -point of view there are trails of doggerel in it, which the poet was too -indolent to mend, and too proud to exclude. Nor can it ever be done; a -revised Byron would be not only a Byron emasculated, but decapitated and -devastated. ’Twould lack the links that tie it to the humanities which -coil and writhe tortuously all up and down his pages. His faults of -prosody, or of ethics, or of facts--his welter, at intervals, through a -barren splendor of words--are all typical of that fierce, proud, -ungovernable, unconventional nature. This leopard will and should carry -all his spots. We cannot shrive the man; no chanters or churches can do -this; he disdains to be shriven at human hands, or, it would seem, any -other hands. The impact of that strong, vigorous nature--through his -poems--brings, to the average reader, a sense of force, of brilliancy, of -personality, of humanity (if gone astray), which exhilarates, which dashes -away a thousand wordy memories of wordy verses, and puts in their place -palpitating phrases that throb with life. An infinite capability for -eloquent verse; an infinite capability for badnesses! We cannot root out -the satanry from the man, or his books, any more than we can root out -Lucifer from Milton’s Eden. But we can lament both, and, if need be, fight -them. - -Whether closer British influence (which usually smote upon him, like sleet -on glass)--even of that “Ancient Oratory” of Annesley--would have served -to whiten his tracks, who shall say? Long ago he had gone out from them, -and from parish church and sermon; his hymns were the _Ranz des Vaches_ on -the heights of the _Dent de Jaman_, and the preachments he heard were the -mellowed tones of convent bells--filtering through forest boughs--maybe -upon the ear of some hapless Allegra, scathed by birth-marks of a sin that -is not her own--conning her beads, and listening and praying! - - -_Missolonghi._ - -It was in 1823, when he was living in Genoa--whither he had gone from Pisa -(and before this, Ravenna)--that his sympathies were awakened in behalf of -the Greeks, who since 1820 had been in revolt against their Turkish -taskmasters. He had been already enrolled with those Carbonari--the -forerunners of the Mazzinis and the Garibaldis--who had labored in vain -for the independence and unity of Italy; and in many a burst of his -impassioned song he had showered welcoming praises upon a Greece that -should be free, and with equal passion attuned his verse to the -lament--that - - “Freedom found no champion and no child - Such as Columbia saw arise when she - Sprung forth a Pallas, armed and undefiled.” - -How much all this was real and how much only the romanticism of the poet, -was now to be proven. And it was certainly with a business-like air that -he cut short his little _agaceries_ with the Lady Blessington, and -pleasant dalliance with the Guiccioli, for a rallying of all his -forces--moneyed or other--in the service of that cause for which the brave -Marco Bozzaris had fallen, fighting, only three months before. It was in -July that he embarked at Genoa for Greece--in a brig which he had -chartered, and which took guns and ammunition and $40,000 of his own -procurement, with a retinue of attendants--including his trusty -Fletcher--besides his friends Trelawney and the Count Gamba. They skirted -the west coast of Italy, catching sight of Elba--then famous for its -Napoleonic associations--and of Stromboli, whose lurid blaze, reflected -upon the sea, startled the admiring poet to a hinted promise--that those -fires should upon some near day reek on the pages of a Fifth Canto of -_Childe Harold_. - -Mediterranean ships were slow sailers in those days, and it was not until -August that they arrived and disembarked at Cephalonia--an island near to -the outlet of the Gulf of Corinth, and lying due east from the Straits of -Messina. There was a boisterous welcome to the generous and eloquent peer -of England; but it was a welcome that showed factional discords. Only -across a mile or two of water lay the Isle of Ithaca, full of vague, -Homeric traditions, which under other conditions he would have been -delighted to follow up; but the torturing perplexities about the -distribution of moneys or ammunition, the jealousies of quarrelsome -chieftains, the ugly watch over drafts and bills of exchange, and the -griping exactions of local money-changers, made all Homeric fancies or -memories drift away with the scuds of wind that blew athwart the Ionian -seas. - -He battled bravely with the cumulating difficulties--sometimes maddened to -regret--other times lifted to enthusiasm by the cordial greeting of such a -chieftain as Mavrocordatos, or the street cheers of a band of Suliotes. -So months passed, until he embarked again, in equipage of his own, with -his own fittings, for Missolonghi, where final measures were to be taken. -Meantime he is paying for his ships, paying for his Suliotes, paying for -delays, and beset by rival chieftains for his interest, or his stimulating -presence, or his more stimulating moneys. On this new but short sea -venture he barely escapes capture by a Turkish frigate--is badly piloted -among the rocky islets which stud the shores; suffers grievous -exposure--coming at last, wearied and weakened, to a new harborage, where -welcomes are vociferous, but still wofully discordant. He labors wearily -to smooth the troubled waters, his old, splendid allegiance to a free and -united Greece suffering grievous quakes, and doubts; and when after months -of alternating turbulence and rest there seems promise of positive action, -he is smitten by the fever of those low coasts--aggravated by his always -wanton exposures. The attack is as sudden as a shot from a gun--under -which he staggers and falls, writhing with pain, and I know not what -convulsional agonies. - -There is undertaken an Italian regimen of cupping and leeching about the -brow and temples, from which the bleeding is obstinate, and again and -again renewed. But he rallies; attendants are assiduous in their care. -Within a day or two he has recovered much of the old _vires vitæ_, when on -a sudden there is an alarm; a band of mutinous Suliotes, arms in hand, -break into his lordship’s apartments, madly urging some trumpery claim for -back-pay. Whereupon Byron--showing the old savagery of his -ancestors--leaps from his bed, seizes whatever weapon is at hand, and -gory--with his bandaged head still trickling blood--he confronts the -mutineers; his strength for the moment is all his own again, and they are -cowered into submission, their yataghans clinking as they drop to the -tiled flooring of his room. - -’Twas a scene for Benjamin West to have painted in the spirit of Death on -the Pale Horse, or for some later artist--loving bloody “impressions.” -However, peace is established. Quiet reigns once more (we count by days -only, now). There is a goodly scheme for attack upon the fortress which -guards the Gulf of Lepanto (Corinth); the time is set; the guards are -ready; the Suliotes are under bidding; the chieftains are (for once) -agreed, when, on the 18th, he falters, sinks, murmurs some last -words--“Ada--daughter--love--Augusta--” barely caught; doubtfully caught; -but it is all--and the poet of _Childe Harold_ is gone, and that -turbulent, brilliant career hushed in night. - -It was on April 19, 1824, that he died. His body was taken home for -burial. I said _home_; ’twere better to have said to England, to the -family vault, in which his mother had been laid; and at a later day, his -daughter, Ada, was buried there beside him, in the old Hucknall-Torkard -church. The building is heavy and bald, without the winning -picturesqueness that belongs to so many old country churches of Yorkshire. -The beatitudes that are intoned under its timbered arch are not born of -any rural beatitudes in the surroundings. The town is small, straggly, -bricky,[78] and neither church nor hamlet nor neighbors’ houses are -suffused with those softened tints which verdure, and nice keeping, and -mellow sunshine give to so many villages of southern England. -Hucknall-Torkard is half way between Nottingham and Newstead, and lies -upon that northern road which pushes past Annesley into the region of -woods and parks where Sherwood forest once flung its shadows along the -aisles in which the bugle notes of master Robin Hood woke the echoes. - -But Hucknall-Torkard church is bald and tame. Mr. Winter, in his pleasant -descriptive sketch,[79] does indeed give a certain glow to the “grim” -tower, and many a delightful touch to the gray surroundings; but even he -would inhibit the pressure of the noisy market-folk against the -church-yard walls, and their rollicking guffaw. And yet, somehow, the -memory of Byron does not seem to me to mate well with either home or -church quietudes, and their serenities. Is it not proper and fitting after -all that the clangor of a rebellious and fitful world should voice itself -near such a grave? Old mossy and ivied towers in which church bells are -a-chime, and near trees where rooks are cawing with home-sounds, do not -marry happily with our memories of Byron. - -Best of all if he had been given burial where his heart lies, in that -Ætolian country, upon some shaggy fore-land from which could have been -seen--one way, Ithaca and the Ionian seas, and to the southward, across -the Straits of Lepanto, the woody depths of the Morea, far as Arcadia. - -But there is no mending the matter now; he lies beside his harsh Gordon -mother in the middle of the flat country of stockings, lace curtains, and -collieries. - -Another poet, William Lisle Bowles, in a quaint sonnet has versed this -Gordon mother’s imaginary welcome to her dead son:-- - - “Could that mother speak, - In thrilling, but with hollow accent weak, - She thus might give the welcome of the dead: - ‘Here rest, my son, with me; the dream is fled; - The motley mask, and the great stir is o’er. - Welcome to me, and to this silent bed, - Where deep forgetfulness succeeds the roar - Of life, and fretting passions waste the heart no more!’” - - - - -CHAPTER VII. - - -For many a page now we have spoken intermittently of that extraordinary -man and poet--full of power and full of passion, both uncontrolled--whose -surroundings we found in that pleasantly undulating Nottingham country -where Newstead Abbey piled above its lawn and its silent tarns--half a -ruin, and half a home.[80] Nor did Byron ever know a home which showed no -ruin--nor ever know a ruin, into which his verse did not nestle as into a -home. - -We traced him from the keeping of that passionate mother--who smote him -through and through with her own wrathful spirit--to the days when he -uttered the “Idle” songs--coined in the courts of Cambridge--and to those -quick succeeding days, when his mad verse maddened English bards and -Scotch reviewers. Then came the passages of love--with Mary Chaworth, -which was real and vain; with a Milbanke, which was a mockery and ended in -worse than mockery; all these experiences whetting the edge of that sword -of song with which he carved a road of romance for thousands of after -journeymen to travel, through the old Iberian Peninsula, and the vales of -Thessaly. Then there was the turning away, in rage, from the shores of -England, the episode with the Shelley household on the borders of Lake -Leman, with its record of “crag-splitting” storms and sunny siestas; and -such enduring memorials as the ghastly _Frankenstein_ of Mrs. Shelley, the -Third Canto of _Childe Harold_, and the child-name of--Allegra. - -Next came Venice, where the waves lapped murmurously upon the door-steps -of the palaces which “Mi-lord” made noisy with his audacious revelry. To -this succeeded the long stay at Ravenna, with its pacifying and -lingering, reposeful reach of an attachment, which was beautiful in its -sincerity, but as lawless as his life. After Ravenna came Pisa with its -Hunt-Lanfranchi coruscations of spleen, and its weird interlude of the -burning of the body of his poor friend Shelley upon the Mediterranean -shores. Song, and drama, and tender verselets, and bagnio-tainted pictures -of Don Juan, gleamed with fervid intensity through the interstices of this -Italian life; but they all came to a sudden stay when he sailed for -Greece, and with a generosity as strong as his wilder passions, flung away -his fortune and his life in that vortex of Suliote strifes and deadly -miasmas, which was centred amid the swamplands of Missolonghi. - -The Cretans of to-day (1897), and the men of Thessaly, and of the Morea, -and Albanians all, may find a lift of their ambitions and a spur to their -courage in Byron’s sacrifice to their old struggle for liberty, and in his -magnificent outburst of patriotic song. So, too, those who love real -poetry will never cease to admire his subtle turns of thought, and his -superb command of all the resources of language. But the households are -few in which his name will be revered as an apostle of those cheering -altitudes of thought which encourage high endeavor, or of those tenderer -humanities which spur to kindly deeds, and give their glow to the -atmosphere of homes. - - -_King William’s Time._ - -The last figure that we dealt with among England’s kings was that bluff, -vulgar-toned sailor, William IV., whom even the street-folk criticise, -because he spat from his carriage window when driving on some State -ceremonial.[81] Nor was this the worst of his coarsenesses; he swore--with -great ease and pungency. He forgot his dignity; he insulted his ministers; -he gave to Queen Adelaide, who survived him many years as dowager, many -most uncomfortable half-hours; and if he read the new sea-stories of -Captain Marryat--though he read very little--I suspect he loved more the -spicier condiments of _Peregrine Pickle_ and of _Tom Jones_. - -Yet during the period of his short reign--scarce seven years--events -happened--some through his slow helpfulness, and none suffering grievously -from his obstructiveness--which gave new and brighter color to the -political development and to the literary growth of England. There was, -for instance, the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832 (of which I have -already spoken, in connection with Sydney Smith)--not indeed accomplishing -all its friends had hoped; not inaugurating a political millennium; not -doing away with the harsh frictions of state-craft; no reforms ever do or -can; but broadening the outlook and range of all publicists, and stirring -quiet thinkers into aggressive and kindling and hopeful speech. Very -shortly after this followed the establishment of that old society for the -“Diffusion of Useful Knowledge” which came soon to the out-put--under the -editorship of Charles Knight--of the _Penny Cyclopædia_ and the _Penny -Magazine_.[82] - -I recall distinctly the delight with which--as boys--we lingered over the -pictured pages of that magazine--the great forerunner of all of our -illustrated monthlies. - -To the same period belong those _Tracts for the Times_, in which John -Keble, the honored author of the _Christian Year_, came to new notice, -while his associates, Dr. Pusey and Cardinal Newman, gave utterance to -speech which is not without reverberating echoes, even now. Nor was it -long after this date that British journalism received a great lift, and a -great broadening of its forces, by a reduction of the stamp-tax--largely -due to the efforts of Bulwer Lytton--whereby British newspapers increased -their circulation, within two years, by 20,000,000 annually.[83] - -All these things had come about in the reign of William IV.; but to none -of them had he given any enthusiastic approval, or any such urgence of -attention as would have dislocated a single one of his royal dinners. - -In 1837 he died--not very largely sighed over; least of all by that -sister-in-law, the Duchess of Kent, whom he had hated for her starched -proprieties, whom he had insulted again and again, and who now, in her -palace of Kensington, prepared her daughter Victoria for her entrance upon -the sovereignty. - - -_Her Majesty Victoria._ - -The girl was only eighteen--well taught, discreet, and modest. Greville -tells us that she was consumed with blushes when her uncles of Sussex and -of Cumberland came, with the royal council, to kneel before her, and to -kiss her hand in token of the new allegiance. - -The old king had died at two o’clock of the morning; and by eleven o’clock -on the same day the duties of royalty had begun for the young queen, in -receiving the great officers of state. Among the others she meets on that -first regal day in Kensington Palace, are Lansdowne, the fidgety Lord -Brougham, the courtly Sir Robert Peel, and the spare, trim-looking old -Duke of Wellington, who is charmed by her gracious manner, and by her -self-control and dignity. He said he could not have been more proud of -her if she had been his own daughter. - -Nearer to the young queen than all these--by old ties of friendship, that -always remained unshaken--was the suave and accomplished Lord -Melbourne--First Minister--who has prepared the queen’s little speech for -her, which she reads with charming self-possession; to him, too, she looks -for approval and instruction in all her progress through the new -ceremonials of Court, and the ordering of a royal household. And Melbourne -is admirably suited to that task; he was not a great statesman; was never -an orator, but possessed of all the arts of conciliation--adroit and full -of tact, yet kindly, sympathetic, and winning. Not by any means a man -beyond reproach in his private life, but bringing to those new offices of -political guardianship to the young queen only the soundest good-sense and -the wisest of advice--thus inspiring in her a trust that was never -forfeited. - -Indeed, it was under Melbourne’s encouragements, and his stimulative -commendation (if stimulus were needed), that the young princess formed -shortly after that marriage relation which proved altogether a happy -one--giving to England and to the world shining proof that righteous -domesticities were not altogether clean gone from royal houses. And if the -good motherly rulings have not had their best issues with some of the male -members of the family, can we not match these wry tendencies with those -fastening upon the boys of well-ordered households all around us? It is -not in royal circles only that his satanic majesty makes friends of nice -boys, when the girls escape him--or seem to! - -Well, I have gone back to that old palace of Kensington, which still, with -its mossy brick walls, in the west of London, baffles the years, and the -fogs--the same palace where we went to find William III. dying, and the -gracious Queen Anne too; and where now the Marquis of Lorne and the -Princess Louise have their home. I have taken you again there to see how -the young Victoria bore herself at the news of her accession--with the -great councillors of the kingdom about her--not alone because those whom -we shall bring to the front, in this closing chapter, have wrought during -her reign; but because, furthermore, she with her household have been -encouragers and patrons of both letters and of art in many most helpful -ways; and yet, again, because this queen, who has within this twelve-month -(1897) made her new speech to Parliament--sixty years after that first -little speech at Kensington--is herself, in virtue of certain modest -book-making, to be enrolled with all courtesy in the Guild of Letters. And -though the high-stepping critics may be inclined to question the literary -judgment or the scrupulous finish of her book-work, we cannot, I think, -deny to it a thoroughly humane tone, and a tender realism. We greet her -not only by reason of her queenship proper, but for that larger -sovereignty of womanhood and of motherhood which she has always dignified -and adorned. - -I once caught such glimpse of her--as strangers may--in the flush of her -early wedded life; not beautiful surely, but comely, kindly, and radiant, -in the enjoyment of--what is so rare with sovereigns--a happy home-life; -and again I came upon other sight of her eight years later, when the -prince was a rollicking boy, and the princess a blooming maiden; these -and lesser rosy-cheeked ones were taking the air on the terrace at -Windsor, almost in the shadow of the great keep, which has frowned there -since the days of Edward III. - - -_Macaulay._ - -In the early days of Queen Victoria’s reign--when Sir Robert Peel was -winning his way to the proud position he later held--when American and -English politicians were getting into the toils of the “Maine Boundary” -dispute (afterward settled by Ashburton and Webster), and when the -Countess of Blessington was making “Gore House” lively with her little -suppers, and the banker Rogers entertaining all _beaux esprits_ at his -home near the Green Park, there may have been found as guest at one of the -banker’s famous breakfasts--somewhere we will say in the year 1838--a man, -well-preserved, still under forty--with a shaggy brow, with clothes very -likely ill-adjusted and ill-fitting, and with gloves which are never -buttoned--who has just come back from India, where he has held lucrative -official position. He is cogitating, it is said, a history of England, -and his talk has a fulness and richness that seem inexhaustible. - -You know to whom I must refer--Thomas Babington Macaulay[84]--not a new -man at Rogers’s table, not a new man to bookish people; for he had won his -honors in literature, especially by a first paper on Milton, published in -the year 1825 in the _Edinburgh Review_. This bore a new stamp and had -qualities that could not be overlooked. There are scores of us who read -that paper for the first time in the impressionable days of youth, who are -carried back now by the mere mention of it to the times of the old Puritan -poet. - - “We can almost fancy that we are visiting him in his small lodging; - that we see him sitting at the old organ beneath the faded green - hangings; that we can catch the quick twinkle of his eyes, rolling - in vain to find the day; that we are reading in the lines of his - noble countenance the proud and mournful history of his glory and - his affliction!” - -Macaulay came of good old Scotch stock--his forefathers counting up -patriarchal families in Coll and Inverary; but his father, Zachary -Macaulay, well known for his anti-slavery action and influence, and for -his association with Wilberforce, married an English Quaker girl from -Bristol--said to have been a _protégée_ of our old friend, Mistress Hannah -More. Of this marriage was born, in 1800, at the charming country house of -an aunt, named Babington, in the pleasant county of Leicestershire, the -future historian. - -The father’s first London home was near by Lombard Street, where he -managed an African agency under the firm name of Macaulay & Babington; and -the baby Macaulay used to be wheeled into an open square near by, for the -enjoyment of such winter’s sunshine as fell there at far-away intervals. -His boyish memories, however, belonged to a later home at Clapham, then a -suburban village. There, was his first schooling, and there he budded -out--to the wonderment of all his father’s guests--into young poems and -the drollest of precocious talk. His pleasant biographer (Trevelyan) tells -of a visit the bright boy made at Strawberry Hill--Walpole’s old -showplace. There was a spilling of hot drink of some sort, during the -visitation, which came near to scalding the lad; and when the sympathizing -hostess asked after his suffering: “Thank you, madam,” said he, “the agony -is abated!” The story is delightfully credible; and so are other pleasant -ones of his reciting some of his doggerel verses to Hannah More and -getting a gracious and approving nod of her gray curls and of her mob-cap. - -At Cambridge, where he went at the usual student age, he studied what he -would, and discarded what he would--as he did all through his life. For -mathematics he had a distinguished repugnance, then and always; and if -brought to task by them in those student days--trying hard to twist their -certainties into probabilities, and so make them subject to that world of -“ifs and buts” which he loved to start buzzing about the ears of those who -loved the exact sciences better than he. He missed thus some of the -University honors, it is true; yet, up and down in those Cambridge -coteries he was a man looked for, and listened to, eagerly and bravely -applauded. Certain scholastic honors, too, he did reap, in spite of his -lunges outside the traces; there was a medal for his poem of _Pompeii_; -and a Fellowship, at last, which gave him a needed, though small -income--his father’s Afric business having proved a failure, and no home -moneys coming to him thereafter. - -The first writings of Macaulay which had public issue were printed in -_Knight’s Quarterly Magazine_--among them were criticisms on Italian -writers, a remarkable imaginary conversation between “Cowley and Milton,” -and the glittering, jingling battle verses about the War of the League and -stout “Henry of Navarre”--full to the brim of that rush and martial -splendor which he loved all his life, and which he brought in later years -to his famous re-heralding of the _Lays of Ancient Rome_. A few lines are -cited:-- - - “The King is come to marshal us, in all his armor drest; - And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest. - He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye; - He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high. - Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing - Down all our line a deafening shout, ‘God save our Lord the King!’ - And if my standard bearer fall, as fall full well he may, - For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray; - Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of war, - And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre!” - -On the year after this “Battle of Ivry” had sparkled into print appeared -the paper on Milton, to which I have alluded, and which straightway set -London doors open to the freshly fledged student-at-law. Crabb Robinson, -in his diary of those days, speaks patronizingly of a “young gentleman of -six or seven and twenty, who has emerged upon the dinner-giving public,” -and is astounding old habitués by his fulness and brilliancy of talk. He -had not, to be sure, those lighter and sportive graces of conversation -which floated shortly thereafter out from the open windows of Gore House, -and had burgeoned under the beaming smiles of Lady Blessington. But he -came to be a table match for Sydney Smith, and was honored by the -invitations of Lady Holland,[85] who allowed no new find of so brilliant -feather to escape her. - - -_In Politics and Verse._ - -Macaulay’s alliance with the Scottish Reviewers, and his known liberalism, -make him a pet of the great Whigs; and through Lansdowne, with a helping -hand from Melbourne, he found his way into Parliament: there were those -who prophesied his failure in that field; I think Brougham in those days, -with not a little of jealousy in his make up, was disposed to count him a -mere essayist. But his speeches in favor of the Reform bill belied all -such auguries. Sir Robert Peel declared them to be wonderful in their -grasp and eloquence; they certainly had great weight in furthering reform; -and his parliamentary work won presently for him the offer from Government -of a place in India. No Oriental glamour allured him, but the new position -was worth £10,000 per annum. He counted upon saving the half of this, and -returning after five years with a moderate fortune. He did better, -however--shortening his period of exile by nearly a twelve-month, and -bringing back £30,000. - -His sister (who later became Lady Trevelyan) went with him as the mistress -of his Calcutta household; and his affectionate and most tender relations -with this, as well as with his younger sister, are beautifully set forth -in the charming biography by his nephew, Otto Trevelyan. It is a biography -that everybody should read; and none can read it, I am sure, without -coming to a kindlier estimate of its subject. The home-letters with which -it abounds run over with affectionate playfulness. We are brought to no -ugly _post mortem_ in the book, and no opening of old sores. It is modest, -courteous, discreet, and full. - -Macaulay did monumental work in India upon the Penal Code. He also kept up -there his voracious habits of reading and study. Listen for a moment to -his story of this: - - “During the last thirteen months I have read Eschylus, twice; - Sophocles, twice; Euripides, once; Pindar, twice; Callimachus, - Apollonius Rhodius, Theocritus, twice; Herodotus, Thucydides, - almost all of Xenophon’s works, almost all of Plato, Aristotle’s - _Politics_, and a good deal of his _Organon_; the whole of - Plutarch’s Lives; half of Lucian; two or three books of Athenæus; - Plautus, twice; Terence, twice; Lucretius, twice; Catullus, - Propertius, Lucan, Statius, Silius Italicus, Livy, Velleius - Paterculus, Sallust, Cæsar, and lastly, Cicero.” - -This is his classical list. Of his modern reading he does not tell; yet he -was plotting the _History of England_, and the bouncing balladry of the -_Lays of Rome_ was even then taking shape in the intervals of his study. - -His father died while Macaulay was upon his voyage home from India--a -father wholly unlike the son, in his rigidities and his Calvinistic -asperities; but always venerated by him, and in the latter years of the -old gentleman’s life treated with a noble and beautiful generosity. - -A short visit to Italy was made after the return from India; and it was in -Rome itself that he put some of the last touches to the Lays--staying the -work until he could confirm by personal observation the relative sites of -the bridge across the Tiber and the home of Horatius upon the Palatine. - -You remember the words perhaps; if not, ’twere well you should,-- - - “Alone stood brave Horatius, - But constant still in mind; - Thrice thirty thousand foes before, - And the broad flood behind. - ‘Down with him!’ cried false Sextus, - With a smile on his pale face. - ‘Now yield thee,’ cried Lars Porsena, - ‘Now yield thee to our grace!’ - - Round turned he, as not deigning - Those craven ranks to see; - Nought spake he to Lars Porsena, - To Sextus nought spake he! - But he saw on Palatinus - The white porch of his home; - And he spake to the noble river - That rolls by the towers of Rome. - - ‘Oh, Tiber, father Tiber! - To whom the Romans pray, - A Roman’s life, a Roman’s arms, - Take thou in charge this day!’ - So he spake, and speaking sheathed - The good sword by his side, - And, with his harness on his back, - Plunged headlong in the tide.” - -This does not sound like those verses of Shelley, which we lately -encountered. Those went through the empyrean of song like Aurora’s -chariot of the morning, with cherubs, and garlands, and flashing torches. -This, in the comparison, is like some well-appointed dump-cart, with -sleek, well-groomed Percheron horses--up to their work, and accomplishing -what they are set to do absolutely well. - -It was not until 1842, a year or two after the Italian visit, that -Macaulay ventured to publish that solitary book of his verse; he very much -doubted the wisdom of putting his literary reputation in peril by such -overture in rhyme. It extorted, however, extravagant praise from that -muscular critic Christopher North; while the fastidious Hunt writes to him -(begging a little money--as was his wont), and regretting that the book -did not show more of the poetic aroma which breathes from the _Faerie -Queene_. But say what we may of its lack--there is no weakly maundering; -it is the work of a man full-grown, with all his wits active, and his -vision clear, and who loved plain sirloins better than the fricandeaux and -ragoûts of the artists. - -There is also a scholarly handling, with high, historic air blowing -through--as if he liked his Homer better than his Spenser; his prosody is -up to the rules; the longs and shorts are split to a hair’s -breadth--jingling and merry where the sense calls for it; and sober and -resonant where meaning is weighty; flashing, too, where need is--with -sword play and spear-heads that glitter and waver over marching men; but -nowhere--I think it must be said--the tremulous poetic _susurrus_, that -falters, and touches, and detains by its mystic sounds--tempting one into -dim border-lands where higher and more inspired singers find their way. -Christabel is not of his school, nor the star-shaped shadow of -Wordsworth’s Daisy. - - -_Parliamentarian and Historian._ - -Meantime occasional papers from Macaulay’s hand found their way into the -pages of the great Northern _Review_--but by no means so many as the Whig -managers could have wished; he had himself grown to think lightly of such -work; the History was calling for his best powers, and there were -parliamentary duties devolving upon him as member for Edinboro’. - -I remember catching sight of him somewhere between 1844 and 1846--in his -place in the House of Commons, and of listening to his brilliant -castigation of Sir Robert Peel, in the matter, I think, of the Maynooth -grant. He was well toward fifty then, but sturdy--with the firm tread of a -man who could do his three or four leagues of walking--if need were; -beetle-browed; his clothes ill-adjusted; his neck bundled in a big -swathing of cravat. There was silence when he rose; there was nothing -orator-like in his bearing; rather awkward in his pose; having scorn, too, -as would seem, for any of the graces of elocution. But he was clear, -emphatic, direct, with a great swift river of words all bearing toward -definite aim. Tory critics used to say he wrote his speeches and committed -them to memory. There was no need for that. Words tripped to his tongue as -easily as to his pen. But there were no delicate modulations of voice; no -art of pantomime; no conscious or unconscious assumption of graceful -attitudes; and when subject-matter enfevered and kindled him--as it did -on that occasion--there was the hurry and the over-strained voice of -extreme earnestness. - -It was not very long after this that he met with a notable repulse from -his old political supporters in Edinboro’ that touched him grievously. But -there were certain arts of the politician he could not, and would not -learn; he could not truckle; he could not hobnob with clients who made -vulgar claims upon him. He could not make domiciliary visits, to kiss the -babies--whether of patrons, or of editors; he could not listen to twaddle -from visiting committees, without breaking into a righteous wrath that -hurt his chances. Edinboro’, afterward, however, cleared the record, by -giving him before his death a triumphant return to Parliament. - -Meantime that wonderful History had been written, and its roll of -magniloquent periods made echo in every quarter of the literary world. Its -success was phenomenal. After the issue of its second couplet of volumes -the publishers sent to the author a check for £20,000 on account. Such -checks passing between publisher and author were then uncommon; -and--without straining a point--I think I may say they are now. With its -Macaulay endorsement, it makes a unique autograph, now in the possession -of the Messrs. Longmans--but destined to find place eventually among the -manuscript treasures of the British Museum. - -The great history is a partisan history, but it is the work of a bold and -out-spoken and manly partisan. The colors that he uses are intense and -glaring; but they are blended in the making of his great panorama of King -William’s times, with a marvellous art. We are told that he was an -advocate and not a philosopher; that he was a rhetorician and not a poet. -We may grant all this, and we may grant more--and yet I think we shall -continue to cherish his work. Men of greater critical acumen and nicer -exploration may sap the grounds of some of his judgments; cooler writers, -and those of more self-restraint, may draw the fires by which his -indignations are kindled; but it will be very long before the world will -cease to find high intellectual refreshment in the crackle of his -epigrams, in his artful deployment of testimony, in his picturesque array -of great historic characters and in the roll of his sonorous periods. - -Yet he is the wrong man to copy; his exaltations make an unsafe model. He -exaggerates--but he knows how to exaggerate. He paints a truth in colors -that flow all round the truth, and enlarge it. Such outreach of rhetoric -wants corresponding capacity of brain, and pen-strokes that never swerve -or tremble. Smallish men should beware how they copy methods which want -fulness of power and the besom of enthusiasm to fill out their compass. -Homer can make all his sea-waves iridescent and multitudinous--all his -women high-bosomed or blue-eyed--and all his mountains sweep the skies: -but _we_ should be modest and simple. - -It was not until Macaulay had done his last work upon the book (still -incomplete) which he counted his monument, that he moved away from his -bachelor quarters in the Albany (Piccadilly) and established himself at -Holly Lodge, which, under the new name (he gave it) of Oirlie Lodge, may -be found upon a winding lane in that labyrinth of city roads that lies -between Kensington Gardens and Holland House. There was a bit of green -lawn attached, which he came to love in those last days of his; though he -had been without strong rural proclivities. Like Gibbon, he never hunted, -never fished, rarely rode. But now and then--among the thorn-trees -reddening into bloom and the rhododendrons bursting their buds, the May -mornings were “delicious” to him. He enjoyed, too, overmuch, the modest -hospitalities he could show in a home of his own. There are joyfully -turned notes--in his journal or in his familiar letters--of “a goose for -Michaelmas,” and of “a chine and oysters for Christmas eve,” and -“excellent audit ale” on Lord Mayor’s day. There, too, at Holly Lodge, -comes to him in August, 1857, when he was very sad about India (as all the -world were), an offer of a peerage. He accepts it, as he had accepted all -the good things of life--cheerily and squarely, and was thenceforward -Baron Macaulay of Rothley. He appears from time to time on the benches of -the Upper House, but never spoke there. His speaking days were over. A -little unwonted fluttering of the heart warned him that the end was not -far off. - -A visit to the English lakes and to Scotland in 1859 did not--as was -hoped--give him access of strength. He was much disturbed, too (at this -crisis), by the prospect of a long separation from his sister, Lady -Trevelyan--whose husband had just now been appointed Governor of Madras. -“This prolonged parting,” he says, “this slow sipping of the vinegar and -the gall is terrible!” And the parting came earlier than he thought, and -easier; for on a day of December in the same year he died in his library -chair. His nephew and biographer had left him in the morning--sitting with -his head bent forward on his chest--an attitude not unusual for him--in a -languid and drowsy reverie. In the evening, a little before seven, Lady -Trevelyan was summoned, and the biographer says:--“As we drove up to the -porch of my uncle’s house, the maids ran crying into the darkness to meet -us; and we knew that all was over.” - -He was not an old man--only fifty-nine. The stone which marks his grave in -Westminster Abbey is very near to the statue of Addison. - -In estimating our indebtedness to Macaulay as a historian--where his fame -and execution were largest--we must remember that his method of close -detail forbade wide outlook or grasp of long periods of time. If he had -extended the same microscopic examination and dramatic exhibit of -important personages to those succeeding reigns, which he originally -intended to cover--coming down to the days of William IV.--he would have -required fifty volumes; and if he had attempted, in the same spirit, a -reach like that of Green or Hume, his rhetorical periods must have -overflowed more than two hundred bulky quartos! No ordinary man could read -such; and--thank Heaven!--no extraordinary man could write so many. - - -_Some Tory Critics._ - -Among those who sought with a delightsome pertinacity for flaws in the -historic work of Macaulay, in his own time, was John Wilson Croker, to -whom I have already alluded.[86] He was an older man than the historian; -Irish by birth, handsome, well-allied by marriage, plausible, fawning on -the great (who were of _his_ party) wearing easily and boastfully his -familiarity with Wellington, Lansdowne and Cumberland, airing daintily his -literary qualities at the tables of Holland or Peel; proud of his place in -Parliament, where he loved to show a satiric grace of speech, and the -curled lips of one used to more elegant encounters. In short, he was the -very man to light up the blazing contempt of such another as Macaulay; -more than all since Croker was identified with the worst form of Toryism, -and the other always his political antagonist. - -Such being the _animus_ of the parties, one can imagine the delight of -Croker in detecting a blunder of Macaulay, and the delight of Macaulay -when he was able to pounce upon the blunders in Croker’s edition of -_Boswell’s Johnson_. This was on many counts an excellent work and--with -its emendations--holds its ground now; but I think the slaps, and the -scourgings, and the derisive mockery which the critic dealt out to the -self-poised and elegant Croker have made a highly appetizing _sauce -piquante_ for the book these many a year. For my own part, I never enjoy -it half so much as when I think of Macaulay’s rod of discipline “starting -the dust out of the varlet’s [editor’s] jacket.” - -It is not a question if Croker deserved this excoriation; we are so taken -up with the dexterity and effectiveness with which the critical professor -uses the surgeon’s knife, that we watch the operation, and the exceeding -grace and ease with which he lays bare nerve after nerve, without once -inquiring if the patient is really in need of such heroic treatment. - -The Croker Papers[87]--two ponderous volumes of letters and diary which -have been published in these latter years--have good bits in them; but -they are rare bits, to be dredged for out from quagmires of rubbish. The -papers are interesting, furthermore, as showing how a cleverish man, with -considerable gifts of presence and of brain, with his re-actionary Toryism -dominant, and made a fetich of, can still keep a good digestion and go in -a respectable fashion through a long life--backwards, instead of “face to -the front.” - -In this connection it is difficult to keep out of mind that other Toryish -administrator of the _Quarterly_ bombardments of reform and of -Liberalists--I mean Lockhart (to whom reference has already been made in -the present volume), and who, with all of Croker’s personal gifts, added -to these a still larger scorn than that of his elder associate in the -Quarterly conclaves, for those whose social disabilities disqualified them -for breathing the rarefied air which circulated about Albemarle Street and -the courts of Mr. Murray. Even Mr. Lang in his apologetic but very -interesting story of Lockhart’s life,[88] cannot forbear quiet -reprehensive allusions to that critic’s odious way of making caustic -allusion to “the social rank” of political opponents; although much of -this he avers “is said in wrath.” Yet it is an unworthy wrath, always and -everywhere, which runs in those directions. Lockhart, though an acute -critic, and a very clever translator, was a supreme worshipper of -“conditions,” rather than of qualities. He never forgave Americans for -being Americans, and never preter-mitted his wrathy exposition of their -‘low-lived antecedents’ socially. The baronetcy of his father-in-law, Sir -Walter Scott, was I think, a perpetual and beneficent regalement to him. - - -_Two Gone-by Story Tellers._ - -Must it be said that the jolly story-teller of the sea and of the -sea-ports, who wrote for our uncles and aunts, and elder brothers, the -brisk, rollicking tales about _Midshipman Easy_, and _Japhet in Search of -a Father_, is indeed gone by? - -His name was Frederick Marryat,[89] the son of a well-to-do London -gentleman, who had served the little Borough of Sandwich as member of -Parliament (and was also author of some verses and political tractates), -but who did not wean his boy from an inborn love of the sea. To gratify -this love the boy had sundry adventurous escapades; but when arrived at -the mature age of fourteen, he entered as midshipman in the Royal -Navy--his first service, and a very active one, being with that brave and -belligerent Lord Cochrane, who later won renown on the west coast of South -America. Adventures of most hazardous and romantic qualities were not -wanting under such an officer, all of which were stored in the retentive -memory of the enthusiastic and observant midshipman, and thereafter, for -years succeeding, were strewn with a free hand over his tales of the sea. -These break a good many of the rules of rhetoric--and so do sailors; they -have to do with the breakage of nearly all the commandments--and so do -sailors. But they are breezy; they are always pushing forward; spars and -sails are all ship-shape; and so are the sailors’ oaths, and the rattle of -the chain-cables, and the slatting of the gaskets, and the smell of the -stews from the cook’s galley. - -There is also a liberal and _quasi_ democratic coloring of the links and -interludes of his novels. The trials of _Peter Simple_ grow largely out of -the cruel action of the British laws of primogeniture; nor does the jolly -midshipman--grandson, or nephew--forego his satiric raps at my lord -“Privilege.” Yet Marryat shows no special admiration for such evolutions -of the democratic problem as he encounters in America.[90] - -Upon the whole, one finds no large or fine literary quality in his books; -but the _fun_ in them is positive, and catching--as our aunts and uncles -used to find it; but it is the fun of the tap-room, and of the for’castle, -rather than of the salon, or the library. For all this, scores and scores -of excellent old people were shaking their sides--in the early part of -this century--over the pages of Captain Marryat--in the days when other -readers with sighs were bemoaning the loss of the “Great Magician’s” power -in the dreary story of _Count Robert of Paris_, or kindling into a new -worship as they followed Ainsworth’s[91] vivid narrative of Dick Turpin’s -daring gallop from London to York. - -A nearer name to us, and one perhaps more familiar, is that of G. P. R. -James,[92] an excellent, industrious man, who drove his trade of -novel-making--as our engineers drive wells--with steam, and pistons, and -borings, and everlasting clatter. - -Yet,--is this sharp, irreverent mention, wholly fair to the old gentleman, -upon whose confections, and pastries, so many of us have feasted in times -past? What a delight it was--not only for youngsters, but for white-haired -judges, and country lawyers--to listen for the jingle of the spurs, when -one of Mr. James’s swarthy knights--“with a grace induced by habits of -martial exercise”--came dashing into old country quietudes, with his visor -up; or, perhaps in “a Genoa bonnet of black velvet, round which his rich -chestnut hair coiled in profusion”--making the welkin ring with his--“How -now, Sir Villain!” - -I caught sight of this great necromancer of “miniver furs,” and -mantua-making chivalry--in youngish days, in the city of New York--where -he was making a little over-ocean escape from the multitudinous work that -flowed from him at home; a well-preserved man, of scarce fifty years, -stout, erect, gray-haired, and with countenance blooming with mild uses of -mild English ale--kindly, unctuous--showing no signs of deep -thoughtfulness or of harassing toil. I looked him over, in boyish way, for -traces of the court splendors I had gazed upon, under his ministrations, -but saw none; nor anything of the “manly beauty of features, rendered -scarcely less by a deep scar upon the forehead,”--nor “of the gray cloth -doublets slashed with purple;” a stanch, honest, amiable, well-dressed -Englishman--that was all. - -And yet, what delights he had conjured for us! Shall we be ashamed to name -them, or to confess it all? Shall the modern show of new flowerets of -fiction, and of lilies--forced to the front in January--make us forget -utterly the old cinnamon roses, and the homely but fragrant pinks, which -once regaled and delighted us, in the April and May of our age? - -What incomparable siestas those were, when, from between half-closed -eyelids, we watched for the advent of the two horsemen--one in corselet of -shining silver, inlaid with gold, and the other with hauberk of bright -steel rings--slowly riding down the distant declivity, under the rays of a -warm, red sunset! Then, there were abundance of gray castle-walls--ever so -high, the ivy hanging deliciously about them; and there were clanging -chains of draw-bridges, that rattled when a good knight galloped over; and -there were stalwart gypsies lying under hedges, with charmingest of little -ones with flaxen hair (who are not gypsies at all, but only stolen); and -there is clash of arms; and there are bad men, who get punched with spear -heads--which is good for them; and there are jolly old burghers who drink -beer, and “troll songs”; and assassins who lurk in the shadows of long -corridors--where the moonbeams shine upon their daggers; and there are -dark-haired young women, who look out of casements and kiss their hands -and wave white kerchiefs,--and somebody sees it in the convenient edge of -the wood, and salutes in return, and steals away; and the assassin -escapes, and the gypsies are captured in the bush, and some bad king is -killed, and an old parchment is found, and the stars come out, and the -rivulet murmurs, and the good knight comes back; and the dark tresses are -at the casement, and she smiles, and the marriage bells ring, and they are -happy. And the school bell (for supper) rings, and we are happy! - - * * * * * - -As I close this book with these last shadowy glimpses of story-tellers, -who have told their pleasant tales, and have lived out their time, and -gone to rest, I see lifting over that fair British horizon, where Victoria -shows her queenly presence--the modest Mr. Pickwick, with his gaiters and -bland expanse of figure; Thackeray, too, with his stalwart form and -spectacled eyes is peering out searchingly upon all he encounters; the -refined face of Ruskin is also in evidence, and his easy magniloquence is -covering one phase of British art with new robes. A woman’s Dantesque -profile shows the striking qualities which are fairly mated by the -striking passages in _Adam Bede_ and _Daniel Deronda_; one catches sight, -too, of the shaggy, keen visage of the quarrel-loving Carlyle, and of -those great twin-brethren of poesy--Browning and Tennyson--the Angelo and -the Raphael of latter images in verse. Surely these make up a wonderful -grouping of names--not unworthy of comparison with those others whom we -found many generations ago, grouped around another great queen of England, -who blazed in her royal court, and flaunted her silken robes, and--is -gone. - - - - -FOOTNOTES - - -[1] Robert Southey, b. 1774; d. 1843. _Joan of Arc_ (pub.) 1796; -_Thalaba_, 1801; _A Vision of Judgment_, 1821; _Life of Nelson_, 1813; -_The Doctor_, 1834-47. _Life and Correspondence_, edited by Rev. Chas. -Cuthbert Southey, 1849-50. - -[2] In a letter to his friend Bedford (he being then aged fifty) he -writes: “I have taken again to my old coat and old shoes; dine at the -reasonable hour of four; enjoy, as I used to do, the wholesome indulgence -of a nap after dinner,” etc. - -[3] Letter to Bedford, under date of December, 1793.--_Life and -Correspondence_, p. 69. - -[4] In the _Imaginary Conversation_ between Southey and Porson, Landor -makes Porson say: “It is pleasant to find two poets [Southey and -Wordsworth] living as brothers, and particularly when the palm lies -between them, with hardly a third in sight.” - -Lamb, too, in a letter to Mr. Coleridge (p. 194, Moxon edition of 1832, -London), says: “On the whole, I expect Southey one day to rival Milton; I -already deem him equal to Cowper, and superior to all living poets -besides.” This is _apropos_ of _Joan of Arc_, which had then recently -appeared. He begins his letter: “With _Joan of Arc_ I have been delighted, -amazed; I had not presumed to expect anything of such excellence from -Southey.” - -[5] George IV. was appointed Regent in the year 1811, the old king, George -III., being then plainly so far bereft of his senses as to incapacitate -him even for intelligent clerical service. He died, as we shall find -later, in the year 1820, when the Regent succeeded, and reigned for ten -years. - -The _Croker Papers_ (1884), recently published, make mention of Mr. -Croker’s intervention in the matter of the bestowal of the Laureate-ship -upon Southey. Croker was an old friend of Southey, and a trusted -go-between in all literary service for the royal household. - -[6] The sixth and seventh volumes appeared after the poet’s death, in -1847. - -[7] Henry Crabb Robinson, b. 1775; d. 1867. _Diary, Reminiscences_, etc. -(ed. by Sadler), 1869. - -[8] Best edition is that of Macmillan, London, 1869. - -[9] Thomas De Quincey, b. 1785; d. 1859. _Confessions of an English Opium -Eater_, 1821. Complete edition of works, 1852-55. _Life and Writings_: H. -A. Page, 2 vols. London, 1877. - -[10] The entry is of 1812, p. 391, chap. xv. Macmillan’s edition. London, -1869. - -[11] Page 215; vol. ii., _Reminiscences_. Boston Edition. - -[12] John Wilson, b. 1785; d. 1854; better known as Christopher North, his -pseudonym in _Blackwood_. _The Isle of Palms_, 1811; _The City of the -Plague_, 1816; _Recreations of Christopher North_, 1842. In 1851 a -civil-list pension of £300 was conferred upon him. His younger brother -James Wilson was a well-known naturalist, and author of _The Rod and the -Gun_. - -[13] “Old North and Young North.” _Blackwood_, June, 1828. - -[14] Dorothy Wordsworth, under date of 1809, writes to her friend, Lady -Beaumont--“Surely I have spoken to you of Mr. Wilson, a young man of some -fortune, who has built a house in a very fine situation not far from -Bowness.… He has from boyhood been a passionate admirer of my brother’s -writings. [And again.] We all, including Mr. De Quincey and Coleridge, -have been to pay the Bachelor (Wilson) a visit, and we enjoyed ourselves -very much in a pleasant mixture of merriment, and thoughtful discourse.… -He is now twenty-three years of age.”--Coleorton _Letters_, vol. ii, p. -91. - -[15] John Gibson Lockhart, b. 1794; d. 1854. Connected with _Blackwood_, -1818; _Adam Blair_, 1822; with _Quarterly Review_, 1826-53; _Ancient -Spanish Ballads_, 1823; _Memoirs of Walter Scott_, 1836-38. Recent _Life -of Lockhart_, by Andrew Lang. 2 vols., 8vo. Nimmo, London. - -[16] Mrs. Gordon says, quoting from her mother’s record: Mr. Wilson is as -busy studying as possible; indeed, he has little time before him for his -great task; he says it will take one month at least to make out a -catalogue of the books he has to read and consult. I am perfectly appalled -when I go into the dining-room and see all the folios, quartos, and -duodecimos, with which it is literally filled; and the poor culprit -himself sitting in the midst, with a beard as long and red as an ancient -carrot; for he has not shaved for a fortnight. P. 215, _Memoir of John -Wilson_. We are sorry to see that Mr. Lang, in his recent _Life of -Lockhart_ (1897), pp. 135-6-7-8, has put some disturbing cross-coloring -(perhaps justly) upon the pleasant portrait which Mrs. Gordon has drawn of -Christopher North. - -[17] Mrs. Gordon’s _Memoir of John Wilson_, p. 222. The statement is -credited to the author of _The Two Cosmos_. Middleton, New York, 1863. - -[18] Thomas Campbell, b. 1777; d. 1844. _The Pleasures of Hope_, 1799; -_Gertrude of Wyoming_, 1809; _Life of Petrarch_, 1841; Dr. Beattie’s -_Life_, 1850. - -[19] _Maclise Portrait Gallery_, London, 1883 (which cites in -confirmation, _Notes and Queries_, December 13, 1862). - -[20] De Quincey says that he was the only man in all Europe who quoted -Wordsworth as early as 1802. Yet, _per contra_, the _Lyrical Ballads_ had -warm praises from Jeffrey (in _Monthly Review_) and from Southey (in -_Critical_)--showing that the finer ears had caught the new notes from -Helicon. - -[21] Walter Scott, b. 1771; d. 1832; _Lay of Last Minstrel_, 1805; -_Marmion_, 1808; _Lady of the Lake_, 1810; _Waverley_, 1814; _Woodstock_, -1826; _Life of Napoleon_, 1827; _Life_, by Lockhart, 1832-37. - -[22] He was clerk in Her Majesty’s Foreign Office in London. Carlyle says -in a letter (of date of 1842), “I have the liveliest impression of that -good honest Scotch face and character, though never in contact with the -young man but once.”--Lang’s _Lockhart_, p. 232, vol. ii. - -[23] For those readers who have a failing for genealogic quests, I give a -_résumé_ of the Scott family history and succession of heirs to -Abbotsford. The earlier items are from Scott’s black-letter Bible. - - Walter Scott, Senior, m. 1758 = Anne Rutherford. - | - +------------+ - | - Walter Scott, Bart., - b. 1771; d. 1832; m. 1797 = Margaret Charlotte - one of twelve children, | Carpenter, of French - of whom five | blood and birth. - reached maturity. | - | - +-----------------+---------+--------+-------------+ - | | | | - Charlotte Sophia, Walter, Br. Army, Anne, bapt. Charles, - bapt. 1799; d. bapt. 1801; m. 1803; d. bapt. 1805; d. - 1837; m. 1820 1825, Miss Jobson; unmarried unmarried 1841. - = J. G. Lockhart. d. s. p. 1847. 1833. - | - +----+----------------+---------------------+ - | | | - John Hugh, Walter Scott, Charlotte, b. 1828; d. 1858 - b. 1821; d. b. 1826; d. m. 1847, J. R. Hope, - 1831. unmarried later Hope Scott. - 1853. | - | - +--------------------------------+ - | - Mary Monica, b. 1852; now Mrs. Maxwell Scott, - of Abbotsford. - -[24] Chapter IV. _Queen Anne and the Georges._ - -[25] Lockhart’s _Life of Scott_, chapter viii., pp. 126-27, vol. iii., -Paris edition. - -[26] Henry Mackenzie, b. 1745; d. 1831. _Man of Feeling_, 1771; _The -Lounger_, 1785. - -[27] Rev. Sydney Smith, b. 1771; d. 1845. _Memoir_ by Lady Holland. - -[28] Francis Horner, b. 1778; d. 1817. _Memoirs and Correspondence_, 1843. - -[29] Henry Brougham (Lord Brougham and Vaux), b. 1778; d. 1868. _Collected -Speeches_, 1838. _Historic Sketches, etc._, 1839-43. Autobiography (edited -by a brother), published in 1871. - -[30] _Albert Lunel; or The Château of Languedoc._ Lowndes (Bohn) says--“3 -vols. post 8vo, 1844. This novel was suppressed on the eve of publication, -and it is said not above five copies of the original edition are extant.” -The _Maclise Portrait Gallery_ speaks of an issue in 1872. - -[31] _Life and Correspondence of Lord Jeffrey_, by Lord Cockburn, p. 283, -vol. i., Harper’s edition. - -[32] A grandniece of the great marplot John Wilkes of George III.’s time, -and a near connection (if I am not mistaken) of Captain Wilkes of the -South Sea Expedition and of the Mason and Slidell seizure. - -[33] Cited from recollection; but very close to his own utterance, in a -letter to a friend. - -[34] This was arranged through Lord Grey, in exchange for a place in -Bristol Cathedral, which had been bestowed by his Tory friend Lyndhurst. -To the same friend he was indebted for his living at Combe Fleurey. - -[35] _Life and Times of Rev. Sydney Smith_, by STUART J. REID, p. 226, -1885. - -[36] James Mackintosh, b. 1765; d. 1832; _Vindiciæ Gallicæ_ (reply to -Burke), 1791; _Memoirs_, by his son, 1835. - -[37] _History of the Revolution in England in 1688, Comprising a View of -the Reign of James II. from his Accession to the Enterprise [sic] of the -Prince of Orange_, London, 1834. - -[38] Smith, Jeffrey, Brown, Horner, and Brougham. Stephens: _Hours in a -Library_, iii., 140. - -The “Brown” alluded to as one of the founders, was Dr. Thomas Brown, a -distinguished physician and psychologist (b. 1778; d. 1820), who after -issue of third number of the _Review_, had differences with Jeffrey -(virtual editor) which led him to withdraw his support. _Life_, by Welsh, -p. 79 _et seq._ - -[39] I cannot forbear giving--though only in a note--one burst of his -fervid oratory, when his powers were at their best: - -“It was the boast of Augustus--it formed part of the glare in which the -perfidies of his earlier years were lost--that he found Rome of brick, and -left it of marble--a praise not unworthy of a great prince, and to which -the present reign [George IV.] has its claim also. But how much nobler -will be our Sovereign’s boast, when he shall have it to say, that he found -law dear and left it cheap; found it a sealed book, and left it a living -letter; found it the patrimony of the rich, left it the inheritance of the -poor; found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppression, left it the -staff of honesty and the shield of innocence.” Speech, on _Present State -of the Law_, February 7, 1828. - -[40] William Gifford, b. 1757; d. 1826. I give the birth-date named by -himself in his autobiography, though the new _National Dictionary of -Biography_ gives date of 1756. Gifford--though not always the best -authority--ought to have known the year when he was born. - -Ed. _Quarterly Review_, 1809-1824; _Juvenal_, 1802; _Ben Jonson_, 1816. - -Some interesting matter concerning the early life of Gifford may be found -in Memoirs of _John Murray_, vol. 1, pp. 127 _et seq._ - -[41] John Wilson Croker, b. 1780; d. 1857, wrote voluminously for the -_Quarterly Review_; _Life of Johnson_ (ed.), 1831; his _Memoirs_ and -_Correspondence_, 1885. - -[42] Very much piquant talk about George IV. and his friends may be found -in the _Journal of Mary Frampion from 1779 until 1846_. London: Sampson -Low & Co., 1885. - -[43] _English Lands and Letters_, vol. iii., pp. 168-70. - -[44] Queen Charlotte, d. 1818. - -[45] W. S. Landor, b. 1775; d. 1864. _Gebir_, 1798; _Imaginary -Conversations_, 1824; Foster’s _Life_, 1869. - -[46] P. 465. _Last Fruit from an Old Tree._ - -[47] Colvin cites this from unpublished verses. - -[48] In his _Last Fruits from an Old Tree_, p. 334, Moxon Edition, Landor -writes: “Southey could grasp great subjects and master them; Coleridge -never attempted them; Wordsworth attempted it and failed.” This is -strongly _ex parte_! - -[49] I would strongly urge, however, the reading and purchase, if may be, -of Colvin’s charming little _Golden Treasury_ collection from Landor. - -[50] Leigh Hunt, b. 1784; d. 1859. _Francesca da Rimini_, 1816; -_Recollections of Byron_, 1828; _The Indicator_, 1819-21; _Autobiography_, -1850. - -[51] Thomas Moore, b. 1779; d. 1852. _Lalla Rookh_, 1817. _Life of Byron_, -1830. _Alciphron_, 1839. - -[52] Sloperton was near the centre of Wiltshire, a little way northward -from the old market-town of Devizes. Mr. William Winter, in his _Gray Days -and Gold_, has given a very charming account of this home of Moore’s and -of its neighborhood--so full of English atmosphere, and of the graces and -benignities of the Irish poet, as to make me think regretfully of my tamer -mention. - -[53] William Hazlitt, b. 1778; d. 1830. _Characters of Shakespeare_, 1817; -_Table Talk_, 1821; _Liber Amoris_, 1823; _Life of Napoleon_, 1828; _Life_ -(by Grandson), 1867; a later book of memoirs, _Four Generations of a -Literary Family_, appeared 1897. (It gave nothing essentially new, and was -quickly withdrawn from sale.) - -[54] Henry Hallam, b. 1777; d. 1859. _Middle Ages_, 1818. _Literature of -Europe_, 1837-39. Sketch of _Life_, by Dean Milman in _Transactions of -Royal Society_, vol. x. - -[55] Marguerite Power (Countess of Blessington), b. 1789; d. 1849; m. -Captain Farmer, 1804; m. Earl of Blessington, 1817. 1822-1829, travelling -on Continent. _Idler in Italy_, 1839-40 (first novel, about 1833). -_Conversations with Lord Byron_, 1834. Her special _reign_ in London, 1831 -to 1848. - -[56] There is a very interesting, but by no means flattered, account of -Lady Blessington and of her dinners and receptions in Greville’s _Journal -of the Reign of Queen Victoria_, chapter iv., p. 167, vol. i. - -[57] Edward L. Bulwer (Lord Lytton), b. 1803; d. 1873; _Pelham_, 1828; -_Rienzi_, 1835; _Caxton Novels_, 1849-53; _Richelieu_, 1839; his -_Biography_ (never fully completed) has been written by his son, the -second Lord Lytton. It is doubtful, however, if its developments, and -inevitable counter-developments, have brought any access of honor to the -elder Bulwer. - -[58] Benjamin Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), b. 1804; d. 1881. _Vivian -Grey_, 1826-27; _Contarini Fleming_, 1832; _Coningsby_, 1844; _Lothair_, -1870. Was Premier, 1867, 1874-80. Created Earl of Beaconsfield, 1876. - -[59] _Vaurien_, 1797; _Flim-Flams_, 1805; _Despotism_, or _Fall of the -Jesuits_, 1811. - -[60] A. E. Chalon, an artist much in vogue in the days of “Tokens,”--who -also painted Lady Blessington,--but of no lasting reputation. - -[61] In illustration of his comparatively humble position early, Greville -in his later _Journal_, Chapter XXIV., speaks of Disraeli’s once proposing -to Moxon, the publisher, to take him (Disraeli) into partnership; Greville -says Moxon told him this. - -[62] George Noel Gordon (Lord Byron), b. (London) 1788; d. (Greece) 1824. -_Hours of Idleness_, 1807; _English Bards, etc._, 1809; _Childe Harold_ (2 -cantos), 1812; _Don Juan_, 1819-24; Moore’s _Life_, 1830; Trelawney, -_Recollections, etc._, 1858. The first volume (Macmillan, 1897) has -appeared of a new edition of Byron’s works, with voluminous notes (in -over-fine print) by William Ernest Henley. The editorial stand-point may -be judged by this averment from the preface,--“the sole English poet bred -since Milton to live a master-influence in the world at large.” - -Another full edition of works, with editing by Earl of Lovelace (grandson -of Byron), is announced as shortly to appear from the press of Murray in -London, and of Scribners in New York. - -[63] Byron’s _Narrative_, published in the first volume of _Hawkesworth’s -Collection_. Hon. John Byron, Admiral, etc., was at one time Governor of -Newfoundland; b. 1723; d. 1786. - -[64] The short line is not enough. We must give the burden of that -apostrophe to the land of Hellas, though only in a note: - - “Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields; - Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled, - And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields. - There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, - The free-born wanderer of the mountain air; - Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds, - Still in his beams Mendeli’s marbles glare, - Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.” - -[65] I cite that part of the “Dream” which, though written much time -after, was declared by the poet, and by both friends and foes, to -represent faithfully his attitude--both moral and physical--on the -occasion of his marriage. - -[66] This poem appeared about the middle of April, 1816. The final break -in his relations with Lady Byron had occurred, probably, in early February -of the same year. On December 10, 1815, his daughter Ada was born; and on -April 25th, next ensuing, he sailed away from England forever. Byron -insisted that the poem (“Fare thee well”), though written in sincerity, -was published against his inclinations, through the over-zeal of a -friend.--_Moore’s Life_, p. 526, vol. i. - -[67] Percy Bysshe Shelley, b. 1792; d. (by drowning in Gulf of Spezia) -1822. _Queen Mab_, pub. 1821 (but privately printed 1813); _Alastor_, -1816; _Laon and Cythna_ (afterward _Revolt of Islam_), 1818; _Adonais_, -1821. _Life_, by Mrs. Shelley, 1845; Hogg’s _Life_, 1858; Rossetti’s, -1870. Besides which there is biographic material, more or less full, by -Forman, Trelawny, McCarthy, Leigh Hunt, Garnett, and Jeaffreson (_Real -Shelley_). _Life_, in _English Men of Letters_, by the late John Addington -Symonds; and in 1886, Professor Dowden’s work. - -[68] Rossetti, in _Ency. Britannica_, says, “in Christ Church, Newark”--as -to which item (repeated by Dowden) there has been some American -wonderment! - -[69] July, 1804, to July, 1810; _Athenæum_, No. 3,006, June, 1885. - -[70] William Godwin, b. 1756; d. 1836. _Political Justice_, 1793; _Caleb -Williams_, 1794. William Austen (author of _Peter Rugg_), in his _Letters -from London_, 1802-3, describes a visit to Godwin at his -cottage--Somerston; notices a portrait of “Mary” (Mrs. Shelley) hanging -over the mantel. - -[71] Miss Martineau (p. 304, vol. ii., _Autobiography_) says that Godwin -told her he wrote the first half of _Caleb Williams_ in three months, and -then stopped for six--finishing it in three more. “This pause,” she says, -“in the middle of a work so intense, seems to me a remarkable incident.” - -[72] Separation took place about the middle of June, 1814; she destroyed -herself, November 10, 1816. At one time there had been ugly rumors that -she was untrue to him; and there is some reason to believe that Shelley -once entertained this belief, but there is no adequate testimony to that -end; Godwin’s _dixit_ should not count for very much. Dowden leaves the -matter in doubt. - -[73] I am reminded that Macready’s impersonation of Werner was a noted and -successful one. _Sardanapalus_ and the _Two Foscari_ enlisted also the -fervor of this actor’s dramatic indorsement. But these all--needed a -Macready. - -[74] Very full account of the Chancery proceedings in respect to children -of Shelley may be found in Professor Dowden’s biography. By this it would -appear that by decision of Lord Eldon (July 25, 1818) Shelley was allowed -to see his children twelve times a year--if in the presence of their -regularly appointed guardians (Dr. and Mrs. Hume). - -[75] John Keats, b. 1795; d. 1821. First “collected” _Poems_, 1817; -_Endymion_, 1818; second volume of collected _Poems_, 1820; _Life and -Letters_--Lord Houghton (Milnes), 1848. - -[76] “Ode to a Nightingale,” vi. - -[77] In letter 573, to Murray (Halleck Col., date of Genoa, November, -1822), Byron says: “I see somebody represents the Hunts and Mrs. Shelley -as living in my house; it is a falsehood.… I do not see them twice a -month.” - -[78] Professor Hoppin, in his honest and entertaining _Old England_, -speaks of it (p. 258) as “a dull, dirty village,” and--of the church--as -“most forlorn.” - -[79] _Gray Days and Gold_; chapter viii. Macmillan, 1896. - -[80] This relates, of course, to the condition of the Abbey in the days of -Byron’s childhood. Colonel Wildman, a distinguished officer in the -Peninsular War, who succeeded to the ownership (by purchase) about 1817, -expended very large sums upon such judicious improvements as took away its -old look of desolation. - -[81] _Croker Papers_, chapter xviii. Closing of Session of 1833. Croker -would have spoken more gently of him in those latter days, when the king -turned his back on Reformers. - -[82] The _Penny Magazine_ appeared first in 1832; the _Cyclopædia_ in the -following year. - -[83] The reduction of tax from 4_d._ to 1_d._ took place in 1836. - -[84] Thomas Babington Macaulay, b. 1800; d. 1859. _History of England_, -1848-55-61. _Lays of Ancient Rome_, 1842. His _Essays_ (published in -America), 1840. Complete _Works_, London, 8 vols., 1866. _Life_, by -Trevelyan, 1876. - -[85] Greville (_Journal of Queen Victoria’s Time_, vol. i., p. 369) speaks -of a dinner at Lady Holland’s--Macaulay being present--when her ladyship, -growing tired of the eloquence of Speakers of the House of Commons and -Fathers of the Church, said: “Well, Mr. Macaulay, can you tell us anything -of dolls--when first named or used?” Macaulay was ready on the -instant--dilated upon Roman dolls and others--citing Persius, “_Veneri -donato a virgine puppæ_.” - -[86] See p. 116, _Ante_. - -[87] _Memoirs and Correspondence_, 1885. - -[88] Lang’s _Lockhart_, p. 42, vol. ii. - -[89] Frederick Marryat, b. 1792; d. 1848; R. N., 1806; Commander, 1815; -resigned, 1830. _Frank Mildmay_, 1829; _Midshipman Easy_, 1836; _Peter -Simple_, 1837; _Jacob Faithful_, 1838; _Life_, by his daughter, Florence, -1872. - -[90] _Diary in America_, by Captain F. Marryat, 1839. - -[91] William Harrison Ainsworth, b 1805; d. 1882. _Rookwood_, -1834--chiefly notable for its wonderful description of Dick Turpin’s -ride--upon Black Bess--from London to York. _Tower of London_, 1840. - -[92] G. P. R. James, b. 1801; d. 1860. _Richelieu_ (first novel), 1829; -_Darnley_, 1830; _One in a Thousand_, 1835; _Attila_, 1837. His books -count far above a hundred in number: Lowndes (Bohn) gives over seventy -titles of novels alone. What he might have done, with a modern type-writer -at command, it is painful to imagine. - - - - -INDEX. - - - Abbotsford, 66; - the author’s visit to, 67 _et seq._; 81. - - “Abou-ben-Adhem,” 152. - - “Adam Bede,” 287. - - “Adonais,” 232. - - Ainsworth, W. H., 283. - - “Alastor,” 221. - - Alison, Rev. Archibald, 84. - - “Anacreon,” Moore’s, 154. - - “Ancient Mariner, Rime of the,” 56. - - Arnold, Dr., his experience with the young princes, 118. - - Aylmer, Rose, 129. - - - “Battle of Blenheim, The,” 9. - - “Battle of Hohenlinden,” Campbell’s, 53. - - “Battle of Ivry, The,” 264. - - Beaconsfield, Lord. _See_ Disraeli. - - _Blackwood’s Magazine_, 42; 46; 52. - - Blessington, Lady, 174 _et seq._; - her many fascinations, 176; - her downfall, 186; 242; 259; 264. - - “Border Minstrelsy,” Scott’s, 60. - - Boswell, Gifford’s satire on, 115. - - Bowles, Caroline, 23. - - Bowles, William Lisle, 248. - - Brougham, Henry, 87; - his connection with the _Edinburgh Review_, 88; - becomes Lord Chancellor, 89; - his manner in Parliament, 90; - his fervid oratory, 108, note; - his many quarrels, 109; - his death, 110; 113; - his famous defence of Queen Caroline, 124; 177; - his criticism of Byron, 193; 255; 265. - - Brown, Dr. Thomas, his connection with the _Edinburgh Review_, 107, note. - - Browning, Robert, 288. - - Bulwer-Lytton, Edward L., 178; 254. - - Byron, Lord, 56; - his satire on Scott, 78; - Leigh Hunt’s quarrel with, 144; - his opinion of Moore, 161; - compared with Moore, 162; - his break with George IV., 168; - leaves England, 188; - his family history, 190; - his boyhood, 191; - his controversy with Brougham, 193; - his unfortunate marriage, 201 _et seq._; - in London, 206; - separates from his wife, 209; - leaves England, 212; - his foreign tour, 214; - meets Shelley, 216; - Shelley’s influence on, 222; - in Italy, 223; - his scepticism, 224; - at Shelley’s funeral, 235; - his character, 239, 240; - sails for Greece, 242; - his death, 246; 249. - - - “Caleb Williams,” 219. - - Campbell, Thomas, his primness, 52; - his first poem, 54; - his clear field in 1799, 56; - his work in prose and poetry, 58; - compared with Scott, 61; 82. - - Canning, George, 166. - - Carlyle, Thomas, his mildness towards Southey, 19; - his criticism of Scott’s work, 75; 288. - - Caroline, Queen, marries the Prince, 121; - separates from her husband, 122; - her trial, 124. - - Chalon, A. E., 183. - - Charlotte, Princess, 122. - - Chaworth, Mary, Byron’s poem to, 193; 250. - - “Childe Harold,” 195; 238. - - Cochrane, Lord, 282. - - Cockburn, Lord, his account of Jeffrey, 93. - - Coleridge, Hartley, his home, 4; - Southey’s letter to, 8. - - Coleridge, S. T., his separation from his wife, 8; - his intercourse with Southey, 11; - with Southey at Greta Hall, 15; - chafes at Southey’s odes, 18; - compared with Southey, 20; 56. - - “Confessions of an Opium Eater, The,” 34. - - Croker, John Wilson, 116; - his criticism of Macaulay, 277. - - “Croker Papers, The,” 18, note; 279. - - - “Daniel Deronda,” 287. - - De Quincey, Thomas, his home, 4; - Robinson’s description of, 28; - his early years, 29; - settles near Grasmere, 31; - his affection for Catharine Wordsworth, 32; - his marriage, 34; - his laudanum drinking, 35; - his “Reminiscences,” 37; - last years and death of, 38, 40; - his assertion as to the appreciation of Wordsworth in 1802, 56, note. - - Derwent Water, 2; 5; 6. - - “Devereux,” 178. - - Dickens, Charles, his caricature of Leigh Hunt, 147. - - “Disowned, The,” 178. - - Disraeli, Benjamin, his foppishness, 179; - his antecedents, 180 _et seq._; - his literary work, 182 _et seq._; - his ability as Lord Beaconsfield, 186; 201. - - “Doctor, The,” Southey’s, 20. - - “Don Juan,” 224, 239. - - D’Orsay, Comte, 178, 180, 186. - - Dwight, Timothy, 12. - - - _Edinburgh Review_, founded by Smith and Jeffrey, 86. - - “Endymion,” 230. - - Erskine, William, 80. - - _Examiner, The_, 142. - - - “First Gentleman of Europe, The,” 165. - - Fitzherbert, Mrs., 120 _et seq._ - - Fox, Charles, 96. - - _Francesca da Rimini_, Leigh Hunt’s, 148. - - “Frankenstein,” 250. - - Franklin, Benjamin, 143. - - - Gamba, Count, 242. - - “Gebir,” Landor’s, 129. - - George III., loses his reason, 17, note; - Scott’s allusions to, 77; 118. - - George IV., appointed Regent, 17; - his friendliness toward Sir Walter Scott, 78; - his later laxity, 119; - his unfortunate situation, 120; - ascends the throne, 123; - last days of, 165. - - “Gertrude of Wyoming,” 54; 57. - - Gifford, William, 114 _et seq._; 163. - - Godwin, Mary, elopes with Shelley, 220. - - Godwin, William, 219. - - Gordon, General, 186. - - Gore House, 177. - - Grasmere, 4. - - Greta Hall, 15. - - Greville, Charles, 166. - - - Hallam, Arthur, Tennyson’s lament for, 173. - - Hallam, Henry, his serenity, 171; - contrasted with Hazlitt, 172, 173; 177. - - Hawthorne, Nathaniel, his account of Leigh Hunt, 146. - - Hazlitt, William, his cynicism, 168; - his friendship with the Lambs, 169; - his strenuous personality, 170. - - Helvellyn, Mt., 4, 5. - - Holland, Lady, 96; 213; 264. - - Holland, Lord, 96. - - Horner, Francis, 86. - - “Hours of Idleness,” 193. - - Hucknall-Torkard, 247. - - Humphreys, David, 12. - - Hunt, Isaac, 143. - - Hunt, John, 142. - - Hunt, Leigh, imprisonment of, 142; - his American blood, 143; - his first writings, 144; - his pretty phrases, 145; - his easy methods of living, 147; - his poetry, 148 _et seq._; - his opinion of Moore, 161; 163; - compared with Hazlitt, 170; - compared with Shelley, 228; - his friendship for Shelley, 234; - at Shelley’s funeral, 235; 269. - - - “Idler in Italy, The,” Lady Blessington’s, 175. - - “Imaginary Conversations,” Landor’s, 16, note; 132. - - Ingersoll, Robert, 224. - - “In Memoriam,” 173; 232. - - “Irish Avatar, The,” Byron’s, 168. - - “Isle of Palms, The,” John Wilson’s, 42, 45. - - - James, G. P. R., 283. - - “Japhet in Search of a Father,” 281. - - Jeffrey, Francis, his association with Sydney Smith, 85, 86; - his criticism of Southey and Wordsworth, 92; - marries Miss Wilkes, 94; - becomes Lord Jeffrey, 95; 113. - - Jersey, Lady, 213. - - “_Julia de Roubigné_,” Mackenzie’s, 84. - - - Keats, John, his school days, 229; - publishes “Endymion,” 230; - goes to Italy, 231; - his death, 232, 233. - - Keble, John, 254. - - “Kehama, The Curse of,” Southey’s, 13. - - “Kenilworth,” 73. - - Keswick, 3; 8. - - Knight, Charles, 253. - - _Knight’s Quarterly Magazine_, 263. - - - “Lady of the Lake, The,” 65. - - Lake Country, The, 1 _et seq._ - - “Lalla Rookh,” 153; - great success of, 157. - - Lamb, Charles, 12; - his opinion of Southey, 16, note; - his friendship with Hazlitt, 169. - - Lamb, Mary, 169. - - Landor, Walter Savage, 16; 18; 20; 56; - his lack of popularity, 125 _et seq._; - his fondness for the country, 127, 128; - his “Gebir,” 129; - goes abroad, 131; - in Italy, 132 _et seq._; - his genius for skimming, 135; - his domestic troubles, 136, 137; - his old age and death, 139; - strange contrasts in, 165; - compared with Byron, 188; 228. - - Lang, Andrew, 71; 280. - - Lansdowne, Lord, 255; 265. - - “Laon and Cythna,” 225. - - “Last Days of Pompeii, The,” 179. - - “Lay of the Last Minstrel, The,” 60; - Byron’s satire on, 78. - - “Lays of Ancient Rome,” 263. - - Lockhart, J. G., his work on the _Quarterly Review_, 47; - quotation from Lang’s “Life” of, 71; - Scott’s dying words to, 81; 280. - - “Lycidas,” 232. - - Lytton, Lord, 180. _See also_ Bulwer-Lytton. - - - Macaulay, Thomas Babington, his ancestry, 260; - at the university, 262; - his first writings, 263; - supports the Reform Bill, 265; - finishes his “Lays of Ancient Rome,” 267; - in Parliament, 270; - his great History, 272; - elevated to the peerage, 275; - his death, 276. - - Macaulay, Zachary, 261. - - Mackenzie, Henry, 84. - - Mackintosh, Sir James, his political career, 104; - failure of his literary plans, 105 _et seq._ - - “Man of Feeling, The,” Mackenzie’s, 84. - - “Manfred,” 215. - - Markham, Dr., 118. - - “Marmion,” 61. - - Marryat, Frederick, goes to sea, 281; - his books, 282. - - Mavrocordatos, 243. - - Melbourne, Lord, 256; 265. - - “Midshipman Easy,” 281. - - Milbanke, Miss, 203, 204; 250. - - Milbanke, Sir Ralph, 206. - - Moore, Thomas, 56; 101; - his acquaintance with Leigh Hunt, 153; - his success in society, 154; - his impressions of America, 155; - his domestic relations, 158; - his great reputation, 160; - his melodious songs, 164; 177. - - More, Mrs. Hannah, 29, 261. - - “Murder as a Fine Art,” appears in _Blackwood’s_, 37. - - Murray, John, 78; - starts _The Quarterly_, 114; 160; 205. - - - _New Monthly Magazine, The_, 58. - - Newman, Cardinal, 254. - - Newspapers, marvellous increase in circulation of, from 1836 to - 1838, 254. - - Newstead Abbey, 189. - - “_Noctes Ambrosianæ_,” 31; 42. - - “North, Christopher,” 40 _et seq._, 269. - - - O’Connell, Daniel, 184. - - “Old Mortality,” 73. - - - Paine, Thomas, 143. - - Peel, Sir Robert, 166; 255; 259; 265; 271. - - “Pelham,” 178. - - _Penny Cyclopædia, The_, 253. - - _Penny Magazine, The_, 253. - - “Peter Bell,” Lamb’s and Robinson’s opinions of, 27. - - “Peter Simple,” 282. - - “Pleasures of Hope, The,” 54. - - “Political Justice,” 219. - - Pusey, Dr., 254. - - - _Quarterly, The_, founding of, 114. - - _Quarterly Review, The_, 16. - - “Queen Mab,” 221. - - - Reform Bill, The, 100; 253. - - “Revolt of Islam, The,” 225. - - “Rienzi,” 179. - - Robinson, Henry Crabb, his friendship with Southey, 23, 24; - his “Diary and Reminiscences,” 26; 264. - - “Roderick the Goth,” Southey’s, 14. - - Rogers, Samuel, 177. - - Ruskin, John, 287. - - Rydal, 3. - - - Scott, Anne, death of, 70. - - Scott, Charles, death of, 70. - - Scott, Sir Walter, 47; - his boyhood, 59; - his first poems appear, 60; - compared with Campbell, 61; - his marriage, 65; - genealogy of, 72, note; - the charm of his stories, 73 _et seq._; - his love of pageantry, 77; - his management of the Edinboro’ reception to the King, 79; - his visit to the Mediterranean, 80; - his death, 81; 82; - his opinion of Gifford, 116; - his admiration for Moore, 161; 168. - - Shelley, Percy Bysshe, his early life, 216; - his marriage and unhappiness, 218; - elopes with Mary Godwin, 220; - meets Byron, 221; - his influence on Byron, 222; - his scepticism, 224, 228; - his death and pagan burial, 235; - his character, 236. - - Smith, Goldwin, 65; 183. - - Smith, Sydney, settles in Edinboro’, 84; - assists in founding _The Edinburgh Review_, 86; - goes to London, 96; - his ministerial career, 97 _et seq._; - his famous “Dame Partington” simile, 100; - his wit, 102; - his praise of Moore, 161; 177; 264. - - Southey, Robert, 5 _et seq._; - his early life, 11 _et seq._; - settles at Keswick, 14; - appointed Poet Laureate, 18; - compared with Coleridge, 20; - refuses a baronetcy, 22; - death of, 24; 56; - meets Landor at Como, 131; 168; 177; - Shelley’s acquaintance with, 218; - Byron’s satire on, 224; 228. - - Staël, Madame de, 106; 215. - - Stamp Tax, The, effect of its reduction on the newspapers, 254. - - Stanley, Lord, 91. - - Stewart, Dugald, 48; 84. - - Story, W. W., Landor’s connection with, 139. - - Strawberry Hill, 261. - - Swan Inn, The, 4. - - - “Talisman, The,” 73. - - Tennyson, Lord, his grief at the death of Arthur Hallam, 172; - his dramas, 223; 288. - - Thackeray, W. M., 287. - - “Thalaba,” 13; - profits on, 15. - - Thrale, Madame, 115. - - “Tintern Abbey,” Wordsworth’s, 62. - - Trelawney, E. J., 235; 242. - - Trumbull, John, 144. - - - Victoria, Queen, beginning of her reign, 167; - her accession, 255; - her marriage, 257; 287. - - “Vision of Judgment, A,” 224. - - “Vivian Grey,” 182. - - - Wellington, Duke of, 166; 255. - - West, Benjamin, 144; 245. - - Wilkes, John, 94, note. - - William IV., 81; - his nerve and pluck, 167; - his lack of ceremony, 252; - some events of his time, 253, 254. - - “William and Helen,” Scott’s, 60. - - Wilson, James, 41, note. - - Wilson, John, 31; 36; - his character, 40, 41; - his writings in _Blackwood’s_, 42, 46; - his diaries, 44; - becomes a professor, 48; - his success, 50; 82. - - Windermere, 2 _et seq._ - - “Wishing Gate, The,” 4. - - Wollstonecraft, Mary, 220. - - Wordsworth, Catharine, 32. - - Wordsworth, Dorothy, 43, note. - - Wordsworth, William, his opposition to railways, 3; - his grave, 4; - his attitude toward Southey’s odes, 18; - his account of Southey’s last years, 23; 30; 31; 32; 56; - his unlikeness to Scott, 61 _et seq._; 168; 228. - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS: THE -LATER GEORGES TO VICTORIA*** - - -******* This file should be named 54143-0.txt or 54143-0.zip ******* - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/5/4/1/4/54143 - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it -under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this -eBook or online at <a -href="http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you are not -located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this ebook.</p> -<p>Title: English Lands Letters and Kings: The Later Georges to Victoria</p> -<p>Author: Donald Grant Mitchell</p> -<p>Release Date: February 9, 2017 [eBook #54143]</p> -<p>Language: English</p> -<p>Character set encoding: UTF-8</p> -<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS: THE LATER GEORGES TO VICTORIA***</p> -<p> </p> -<h4>E-text prepared by MWS<br /> - and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> - (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br /> - from page images generously made available by<br /> - Internet Archive<br /> - (<a href="https://archive.org">https://archive.org</a>)</h4> -<p> </p> -<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto; max-width: 100%;" cellpadding="10"> - <tr> - <td valign="top"> - Note: - </td> - <td> - Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - <a href="https://archive.org/details/englishlands04mitc"> - https://archive.org/details/englishlands04mitc</a> <br /> - Project Gutenberg has the other three volumes of this work.<br /> - <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54168/54168-h/54168-h.htm">I: From Celt to Tudor</a>: see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54168/54168-h/54168-h.htm<br /> - <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54142/54142-h/54142-h.htm">II: From Elizbeth to Anne</a>: see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54142/54142-h/54142-h.htm<br /> - <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37226/37226-h/37226-h.htm">III: Queen Anne and the Georges</a>: see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37226/37226-h/37226-h.htm - </td> - </tr> -</table> -<p> </p> -<hr class="full" /> -<p> </p> -<p> </p> -<p> </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[i]</a></span></p> - -<p class="titlepage larger">ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS<br /> -AND KINGS</p> - -<p class="titlepage gothic larger">The Later Georges to Victoria</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[ii]</a></span></p> - -<p class="center">ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS</p> - -<p class="center"><i>By Donald G. Mitchell</i></p> - -<table summary="Books in this series"> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">I.</td> - <td class="gothic">From Celt to Tudor</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">II.</td> - <td class="gothic">From Elizabeth to Anne</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">III.</td> - <td class="gothic">Queen Anne and the Georges</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">IV.</td> - <td class="gothic">The Later Georges to Victoria</td> - </tr> -</table> - -<p class="center"><i>Each 1 vol., 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.50</i></p> - -<p class="titlepage">AMERICAN LANDS AND LETTERS</p> - -<p class="center gothic">From the Mayflower to Rip Van Winkle</p> - -<p class="center"><i>1 vol., square 12mo, Illustrated, $2.50</i></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[iii]</a></span></p> - -<p class="titlepage larger">ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS<br /> -AND KINGS</p> - -<p class="titlepage gothic larger">The Later Georges to Victoria</p> - -<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br /> -<span class="smcap">Donald G. Mitchell</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 100px;"> -<img src="images/titlepage.jpg" width="100" height="120" alt="Three heads in profile" /> -</div> - -<p class="titlepage">NEW YORK<br /> -<span class="gothic">Charles Scribner’s Sons</span><br /> -MDCCCXCVII</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[iv]</a></span></p> - -<p class="titlepage smaller"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1897, by</span><br /> -CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS</p> - -<p class="titlepage smaller">TROW DIRECTORY<br /> -PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY<br /> -NEW YORK</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p> - -<h2><i>FORECAST.</i></h2> - -<p class="dropcap">The printers ask if there is to be prefatory -matter.</p> - -<p>There shall be no excuses, nor any defensive explanations: -and I shall only give here such forecast -of this little book as may serve as a reminder, -and appetizer, for the kindly acquaintances I meet -once more; and further serve as an illustrative -<em>menu</em>, for the benefit of those newer and more -critical friends who browse tentatively at the -tables of the booksellers.</p> - -<p>This volume—the fourth in its series of English -Lands and Letters—opens upon that always -delightful country of hills and waters, which is -known as the Lake District of England;—where -we found Wordsworth, stalking over the fells—and -where we now find the maker of those heavy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span> -poems of <cite>Thalaba</cite> and <cite>Madoc</cite>, and of the charming -little biography of Nelson. There, too, we find -that strange creature, De Quincey, full of a -tumult of thoughts and language—out of which -comes ever and anon some penetrating utterance, -whose barb of words fixes it in the mind, and -makes it rankle. Professor Wilson is his fellow, -among the hills by Elleray—as strenuous, and -weightier with his great bulk of Scottish manhood; -the <cite>Isle of Palms</cite> is forgotten; but not -“Christopher in his Shooting Jacket”—stained, -and bespattered with Highland libations.</p> - -<p>A Londoner we encounter—Crabb Robinson, -full of gossip and conventionalities; and also that -cautious, yet sometimes impassioned Scottish bard -who sang of <cite>Hohenlinden</cite>, and of <cite>Gertrude of -Wyoming</cite>. Next, we have asked readers to share -our regalement, in wandering along the Tweed -banks, and in rekindling the memories of the -verse, the home, and the chivalric stories of the -benign master of Abbotsford, for whom—whatever -newer literary fashions may now claim allegiance -and whatever historic <i lang="la">quid-nuncs</i> may say -in derogation—I think there are great multitudes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span> -who will keep a warm place in their hearts and -easily pardon a kindred warmth in our words.</p> - -<p>After Dryburgh, and its pall, we have in these -pages found our way to Edinboro’, and have -sketched the beginners, and the beginnings of -that great northern quarterly, which so long dominated -the realm of British book-craft, and which -rallied to its ranks such men as Jeffrey and the -witty Sydney Smith, and Mackintosh and the -pervasive and petulant Brougham—full of power -and of pyrotechnics. These great names and -their quarterly organ call up comparison with that -other, southern and distinctive Quarterly of Albemarle -Street, which was dressed for literary battle -by writers like Gifford, Croker, Southey, and -Lockhart.</p> - -<p>The Prince Regent puts in an appearance in -startling waistcoats and finery—vibrating between -Windsor and London; so does the bluff Sailor-King -William IV. Next, Walter Savage Landor -leads the drifting paragraphs of our story—a -great, strong man; master of classicism, and -master of language; now tender, and now virulent; -never quite master of himself.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span></p> - -<p>Of Leigh Hunt, and of his graceful, light-weighted, -gossipy literary utterance, there is indulgent -mention, with some delightful passages of -verse foregathered from his many books. Of -Thomas Moore, too, there is respectful and grateful—if -not over-exultant—talk; yet in these swift -days there be few who are tempted to tarry long in -the “rosy bowers by Bendemeer.”</p> - -<p>From Moore and the brilliant fopperies of “The -First Gentleman of Europe,” we slip to the disorderly, -but pungent and vivid essays of Hazlitt—to -the orderly and stately historic labors of -Hallam, closing up our chapter with the gay company -who used to frequent the brilliant salon of -the Lady Blessington—first in Seamore Place, and -later at Gore House. There we find Bulwer, -Disraeli (in his flamboyant youth-time), the -elegant Count d’Orsay, and others of that train-band.</p> - -<p>Following quickly upon these, we have asked -our readers to fare with us along the old and -vivid memories of Newstead Abbey—to track the -master-poet of his time, through his early days of -romance and marriage—through his journeyings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span> -athwart Europe, from the orange groves of Lisbon -to the olives of Thessaly—from his friendship -with Shelley, and life at Meillerie with its loud -joys and stains—through his wild revels of -Venice—his masterly verse-making—his quietudes -of Ravenna (where the Guiccioli shone)—through -his passionate zeal for Greece, and his -last days at Missolonghi, with one brief glimpse of -his final resting-place, beside his passionate Gordon -mother, under the grim, old tower of Hucknall-Torkard. -So long indeed do we dwell upon -this Byronic episode, as to make of it the virtual -<i lang="fr">pièce de résistance</i> in the literary <i lang="fr">menu</i> of these -pages.</p> - -<p>After the brusque and noisy King William there -trails royally into view that Sovereign Victoria, -over whose blanched head—in these very June -days in which I write—the bells are all ringing -a joyous Jubilee for her sixtieth year of reign. -But to our eye, and to these pages, she comes as -a girl in her teens—modest, yet resolute and -calm; and among her advisers we see the suave -and courtly Melbourne; and among those who -make parliamentary battle, in the Queen’s young<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[x]</a></span> -years, that famed historian who has pictured the -lives of her kinsfolk—William and Mary—in a -way which will make them familiar in the ages to -come.</p> - -<p>We have a glimpse, too, of the jolly Captain -Marryat cracking his for’castle jokes, and of the -somewhat tedious, though kindly, G. P. R. James, -lifting his chivalric notes about men-at-arms and -knightly adventures—a belated hunter in the -fields of ancient feudal gramarye.</p> - -<p>And with this pennant of the old times of -tourney flung to the sharp winds of these days, -and shivering in the rude blasts—where anarchic -threats lurk and murmur—we close our preface, -and bid our readers all welcome to the spread of—what -our old friend Dugald Dalgetty would -call—the <em>Vivers</em>.</p> - -<p class="right">D. G. M.</p> - -<p><span class="smcap">Edgewood</span>, June 24, 1897.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[xi]</a></span></p> - -<h2><i>CONTENTS.</i></h2> - -<table summary="Contents"> - <tr> - <td></td> - <td class="tdr smaller">PAGE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">The Lake Country,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_2">2</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Robert Southey,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_5">5</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">His Early Life,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Greta Hall,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">The Doctor and Last Shadows,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_20">20</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Crabb Robinson,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Thomas De Quincey,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Marriage and other Flights,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Christopher North,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Wilson in Scotland,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Thomas Campbell,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_52">52</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">A Minstrel of the Border,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_59">59</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">The Waverley Dispensation,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[xii]</a></span><span class="smcap">Glints of Royalty,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_77">77</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">A Start in Life,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_83">83</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Henry Brougham,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_87">87</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Francis Jeffrey,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_92">92</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Sydney Smith,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">A Highlander,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_103">103</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Rest at Cannes,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Gifford and His Quarterly,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_113">113</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">A Prince Regent,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">A Scholar and Poet,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Landor in Italy,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_132">132</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Landor’s Domesticities,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Final Exile and Death,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_138">138</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Prose of Leigh Hunt,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_142">142</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Hunt’s Verse,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_147">147</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">An Irish Poet,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Lalla Rookh,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">The “First Gentleman,”</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Hazlitt and Hallam,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_168">168</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Queen of a Salon,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_173">173</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Young Bulwer and Disraeli,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_178">178</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">The Poet of Newstead,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_187">187</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[xiii]</a></span><span class="smcap">Early Verse and Marriage,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_193">193</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Lord Byron a Husband,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_201">201</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">A Stay in London,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_206">206</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Exile,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_212">212</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Shelley and Godwin,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_216">216</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Byron in Italy,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_223">223</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Shelley Again,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_225">225</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">John Keats,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Buried in Rome,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_233">233</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Pisa and Don Juan,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_237">237</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Missolonghi,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_241">241</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">King William’s Time,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_252">252</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Her Majesty Victoria,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_255">255</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Macaulay,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_259">259</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">In Politics and Verse,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_265">265</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Parliamentarian and Historian,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_270">270</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Some Tory Critics,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_277">277</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Two Gone-by Story Tellers,</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_281">281</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[xiv]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> - -<h1><i>ENGLISH LANDS, LETTERS, -& KINGS.</i></h1> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</h2> - -<p class="dropcap">The reader will, perhaps, remember that we -brought our last year’s ramble amongst -British Lands and Letters to an end—in the -charming Lake District of England. There, we -found Coleridge, before he was yet besotted by -his opium-hunger; there, too, we had Church-interview -with the stately, silver-haired poet of -Rydal Mount—making ready for his last Excursion -into the deepest of Nature’s mysteries.</p> - -<p>The reader will recall, further, how this poet -and seer, signalized some of the later years of his -life by indignant protests against the schemes—which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span> -were then afoot—for pushing railways -among the rural serenities of Westmoreland.</p> - -<h3>The Lake Country.</h3> - -<p>It is no wonder; for those Lake counties are -very beautiful,—as if, some day, all the tamer -features of English landscape had been sifted out, -and the residue of picturesqueness and salient objects -of flood and mountain had been bunched -together in those twin regions of the Derwent -and of Windermere. Every American traveller is -familiar, of course, with the charming glimpses -of Lake Saltonstall from the Shore-line high-road -between New York and Boston; let them imagine -these multiplied by a score, at frequently recurring -intervals of walk or drive; not bald duplications; -for sometimes the waters have longer -stretch, and the hills have higher reach, and -fields have richer culture and more abounding -verdure; moreover, occasional gray church towers -lift above the trees, and specks of villages -whiten spots in the valleys; and the smoothest -and hardest of roads run along the margin of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span> -lakes; and masses of ivy cover walls, and go rioting -all over the fronts of wayside inns. Then, -mountains as high as Graylock, in Berkshire, pile -suddenly out of the quieter undulations of surface, -with high-lying ponds in their gulches; -there are deep swales of heather, and bald rocks, -and gray stone cairns that mark the site of ancient -Cumbrian battles.</p> - -<p>No wonder that a man loving nature and loving -solitude, as Wordsworth did love them, should -have demurred to the project of railways, and -have shuddered—as does Ruskin now—at the -whistling of the demon of civilization among those -hills. But it has come there, notwithstanding, -and come to stay; and from the station beyond -Bowness, upon the charmingest bit of Windermere, -there lies now only an early morning’s walk -to the old home of Wordsworth at Rydal. Immediately -thereabout, it is true, the levels are a little -more puzzling to the engineers, so that the -thirteen miles of charming country road which -stretch thence—twirling hither and yon, and up -and down—in a northwesterly direction to the -town of Keswick and the Derwent valley, remain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> -now in very much the same condition as when I -walked over them, in leisurely way, fifty odd years -ago this coming spring. The road in passing out -from Rydal village goes near the cottage where -poor Hartley Coleridge lived, and earlier, that -strange creature De Quincey (of whom we shall -have presently more to say); it skirts the very -margin of Grasmere Lake; this latter being at -your left, while upon the right you can almost see -among the near hills the famous “Wishing Gate;” -farther on is Grasmere village, and Grasmere -church-yard—in a corner of which is the grave -of the old poet, and a modest stone at its head -on which is graven only the name, William Wordsworth,—as -if anything more were needed! A -mile or two beyond, one passes the “Swan Inn,” -and would like to lodge there, and maybe clamber -up Helvellyn, which here shows its great hulk -on the right—no miniature mountain, but one -which would hold its own (3,000 feet) among the -lesser ones which shoulder up the horizon at -“Crawford’s,” in the White Mountains.</p> - -<p>Twirling and winding along the flank of Helvellyn, -the road comes presently upon the long<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> -Dunmail Rise, where a Cumbrian battle was -fought, and where, some six hundred feet above -the level of Rydal water, one plunges into mountain -savagery. All the while Helvellyn is rising -like a giant on the right, and on the left is the -lake of Thirlmere, with its shores of precipice. -An hour more of easy walking brings one to -another crest of hill from which the slope is -northward and westward, and from this point -you catch sight of the great mass of Skiddaw; -while a little hitherward is the white speckle of -Keswick town; and stretching away from it to -your left lies all the valley of Derwent Water—with -a cleft in the hills at its head, down which -the brooklet of Lodore comes—“splashing and -flashing.”</p> - -<h3>Robert Southey.</h3> - -<p>I have taken the reader upon this stroll through -a bit of the Lake country of England that we -might find the poet Dr. Southey<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> in his old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> -home at Keswick. It is not properly in the town, -but just across the Greta River, which runs southward -of the town. There, the modest but good-sized -house has been standing for these many -years upon a grassy knoll, in its little patch of -quiet lawn, with scattered show of trees—but -never so many as to forbid full view up the long -stretch of Derwent Water. His own hexameters -shall tell us something of this view:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">“I stood at the window beholding</div> -<div class="verse">Mountain and lake and vale; the valley disrobed of its verdure;</div> -<div class="verse">Derwent, retaining yet from eve a glassy reflection</div> -<div class="verse">Where his expanded breast, then still and smooth as a mirror,</div> -<div class="verse">Under the woods reposed; the hills that calm and majestic</div> -<div class="verse">Lifted their heads into the silent sky, from far Glaramara,</div> -<div class="verse">Bleacrag, and Maidenmawr to Grisedal and westernmost Wython,</div> -<div class="verse">Dark and distinct they rose. The clouds had gathered above them</div> -<div class="verse">High in the middle air, huge purple pillowy masses,</div> -<div class="verse">While in the West beyond was the last pale tint of the twilight,</div> -<div class="verse">Green as the stream in the glen, whose pure and chrysolite waters</div> -<div class="verse">Flow o’er a schistous bed.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>This may be very true picturing; but it has not the -abounding flow of an absorbing rural enthusiasm; -there is too sharp a search in it for the assonance,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> -the spondees and the alliteration—to say nothing -of the mineralogy. Indeed, though Southey -loved those country ways and heights, of which I -have given you a glimpse, and loved his daily walks -round about Keswick and the Derwent, and loved -the bracing air of the mountains—I think he -loved these things as the feeders and comforters -of his physical rather than of his spiritual nature. -We rarely happen, in his verse, upon such transcripts -of out-of-door scenes as are inthralling, -and captivate our finer senses; nor does he make -the boughs and blossoms tell such stories as filtered -through the wood-craft of Chaucer.</p> - -<p>Notwithstanding this, it is to that home of Southey, -in the beautiful Lake country, that we must -go for our most satisfying knowledge of the man. -He was so wedded to it; he so loved the murmur -of the Greta; so loved his walks; so loved the -country freedom; so loved his workaday clothes -and cap and his old shoes;<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> so loved his books—double-deep<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> -in his library, and running over into -hall and parlor and corridors; loved, too, the children’s -voices that were around him there—not his -own only, but those always next, and almost his -own—those of the young Coleridges. These were -stranded there, with their mother (sister of Mrs. -Southey), owing to the rueful neglect of their -father—the bard and metaphysician. I do not -think this neglect was due wholly to indifference. -Coleridge sidled away from his wife and left her -at Keswick in that old home of his own,—where -he knew care was good—afraid to encounter her -clear, honest, discerning—though unsympathetic—eyes, -while he was putting all resources and all -subterfuges to the feeding of that opiate craze -which had fastened its wolfish fangs upon his very -soul.</p> - -<p>And Southey had most tender and beautiful -care for those half-discarded children of the “Ancient -Mariner.” He writes in this playful vein -to young Hartley (then aged eleven), who is -away on a short visit:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Mr. Jackson has bought a cow, but he has had no calf -since you left him. Edith [his own daughter] grows like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> -a young giantess, and has a disposition to bite her arm, -which you know is a very foolish trick. Your [puppy] -friend Dapper, who is, I believe, your God-dog, is in good -health, though he grows every summer graver than the last. -I am desired to send you as much love as can be enclosed in -a letter. I hope it will not be charged double on that account -at the post-office. But there is Mrs. Wilson’s love, -Mr. Jackson’s, your Aunt Southey’s, your Aunt Lovell’s and -Edith’s; with a <em>purr</em> from Bona Marietta [the cat], an -open-mouthed kiss from Herbert [the baby], and three -wags of the tail from Dapper. I trust they will all arrive -safe. Yr. dutiful uncle.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>And the same playful humor, and disposition -to evoke open-eyed wonderment, runs up and down -the lines of that old story of Bishop Hatto and -the rats; and that other smart slap at the barbarities -of war—which young people know, or ought -to know, as the “Battle of Blenheim”—wherein -old Kaspar says,—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent6">“it was a shocking sight</div> -<div class="verse indent1">After the field was won;</div> -<div class="verse">For many thousand bodies here</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Lay rotting in the sun.</div> -<div class="verse">But things like that, you know, must be,</div> -<div class="verse">After a famous Victory.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Great praise the Duke of Marlboro’ won</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And our good Prince Eugene;</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> -<div class="verse">‘Why, ’twas a very wicked thing!’</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Said little Wilhelmine.</div> -<div class="verse">‘Nay—nay—my little girl,’ quoth he,</div> -<div class="verse">‘It was a famous Victory.’”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Almost everybody has encountered these Southeyan -verses, and that other, about Mary the -“Maid of the Inn,” in some one or other of the -many “collections” of drifting poetry. There -are very few, too, who have not, some day, read that -most engaging little biography of Admiral Nelson, -which tells, in most straightforward and simple -and natural way, the romantic story of a life full -of heroism, and scored with stains. I do not -know, but—with most people—a surer and more -lasting memory of Southey would be cherished by -reason of those unpretending writings already -named, and by knowledge of his quiet, orderly, -idyllic home-life among the Lakes of Cumberland—tenderly -and wisely provident of the mixed -household committed to his care—than by the -more ambitious things he did, or by the louder -life he lived in the controversialism and politics -of the day.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p> - -<h3>His Early Life.</h3> - -<p>To judge him more nearly we must give a slight -trace of his history. Born down in Bristol (in -whose neighborhood we found, you will remember, -Chatterton, Mistress More, Coleridge, and -others)—he was the son of a broken down linen-draper, -who could help him little; but a great -aunt—a starched woman of the Betsey Trotwood -stamp—could and did befriend him, until it -came to her knowledge, on a sudden, that he was -plotting emigration to the Susquehanna, and plotting -marriage with a dowerless girl of Bristol; -then she dropped him, and the guardian aunt -appears nevermore.</p> - -<p>An uncle, however, who is a chaplain in the -British service, helps him to Oxford—would have -had him take orders—in which case we should -have had, of a certainty, some day, Bishop -Southey; and probably a very good one. But he -has some scruples about the Creed, being over-weighted, -perhaps, by intercourse with young -Coleridge on the side of Unitarianism: “Every<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> -atom of grass,” he says, “is worth all the Fathers.”<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> -He, however, accompanies the uncle -to Portugal; dreams dreams and has poetic visions -there in the orange-groves of Cintra; projects, -too, a History of Portugal—which project -unfortunately never comes to fulfilment. He falls -in with the United States Minister, General Humphreys, -who brings to his notice Dwight’s “Conquest -of Canaan,” which Southey is good enough -to think “has some merit.”</p> - -<p>Thereafter he comes back to his young wife; is -much in London and thereabout; coming to know -Charles Lamb, Rogers, and Moore, with other -such. He is described at that day as tall—a -most presentable man—with dark hair and eyes, -wonderful arched brows; “head of a poet,” -Byron said; looking up and off, with proud foretaste -of the victories he will win; he has, too, -very early, made bold literary thrust at that old -story of Joan of Arc: a good topic, of large human -interest, but not over successfully dealt with by -him. After this came that extraordinary poem of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> -<cite>Thalaba</cite>, the first of a triad of poems which excited -great literary wonderment (the others being -the <cite>Curse of Kehama</cite> and <cite>Madoc</cite>). They are -rarely heard of now and scarcely known. Beyond -that fragment from <cite>Kehama</cite>, beginning</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“They sin who tell us Love can die,”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">hardly a page from either has drifted from the -high sea of letters into those sheltered bays where -the makers of anthologies ply their trade. Yet no -weak man could have written either one of these -almost forgotten poems of Southey; recondite -learning makes its pulse felt in them; bright -fancies blaze almost blindingly here and there; -old myths of Arabia and Welsh fables are galvanized -and brought to life, and set off with special -knowledge and cumbrous aids of stilted and redundant -prosody; but all is utterly remote from -human sympathies, and all as cold—however it -may attract by its glitter—as the dead hand</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Shrivelled, and dry, and black,”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">which holds the magic taper in the Dom Daniel -cavern of <cite>Thalaba</cite>.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span></p> - -<p>A fourth long poem—written much later in -life—<cite>Roderick the Goth</cite>, has a more substantial -basis of human story, and so makes larger appeal -to popular interest; but it had never a marked -success.</p> - -<p>Meantime, Southey has not kept closely by -London; there have been peregrinations, and -huntings for a home—for children and books -must have a settlement. Through friends of influence -he had come to a fairly good political appointment -in Ireland, but has no love for the bulls -and blunderbusses which adorn life there; nor will -he tutor his patron’s boys—which also comes -into the scale of his duties—so gives up that -chance of a livelihood. There is, too, a new trip -to Portugal with his wife; and a new reverent -and dreamy listening to the rustle of the shining -leaves of the orange-trees of Cintra. I do not -think those murmurous tales of the trees of Portugal, -burdened with old monastic flavors, ever -went out of his ears wholly till he died. But -finally the poet does come to settlement, somewhere -about 1803—in that Keswick home, where -we found him at the opening of our chapter.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p> - -<h3>Greta Hall.</h3> - -<p>Coleridge is for awhile a fellow-tenant with him -there, then blunders away to Grasmere—to London, -to Highgate, and into that over-strained, -disorderly life of which we know so much and -yet not enough. But Southey does not lack self-possession, -or lack poise: he has not indeed so -much brain to keep on balance; but he thinks -excellently well of his own parts; he is disgusted -when people look up to him after his Irish appointment—“as -if,” he said, “the author of -<cite>Joan of Arc</cite>, and of <cite>Thalaba</cite>, were made a great -man by scribing for the Chancellor of the Exchequer.”</p> - -<p>Yet for that poem of <cite>Thalaba</cite>, in a twelve-month -after issue, he had only received as his share -of profits a matter of £3 15s. Indeed, Southey -would have fared hardly money-wise in those -times, if he had not won the favor of a great many -good and highly placed friends; and it was only -four years after his establishment at Keswick, -when these friends succeeded in securing to him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> -an annual Government pension of £200. Landor -had possibly aided him before this time; he certainly -had admired greatly his poems and given -praise that would have been worth more, if he had -not spoiled it by rating Southey as a poet so much -above Byron, Scott, and Coleridge.<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p> - -<p>In addition to these aids the <cite>Quarterly Review</cite> -was set afoot in those days in London—of which -sturdy defender of Church and State, Southey -soon became a virtual pensioner. Moreover, with -his tastes, small moneys went a long way; he was -methodical to the last degree; he loved his old -coats and habits; he loved his marches and countermarches<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> -among the hills that flank Skiddaw -better than he loved horses, or dogs, or guns; a -quiet evening in his library with his books, was -always more relished than ever so good a place at -Drury Lane. New friends and old brighten that -retirement for him. He has his vacation runs to -Edinboro’—to London—to Bristol; the children -are growing (though there is death of one little -one—away from home); the books are piling up -in his halls in bigger and always broader ranks. -He writes of Brazil, of Spanish matters, of new -poetry, of Nelson, of Society—showing touches -of his early radicalism, and of a Utopian humor, -which age and the heavy harness of conventionalism -he has learned to wear, do not wholly destroy. -He writes of Wesley and of the Church—settled -in those maturer years into a comfortable routine-ordered -Churchism, which does not let too airy a -conscience prick him into unrest. A good, safe -monarchist, too, who comes presently, and rightly -enough—through a suggestion of George IV., -then Regent in place of crazy George III.<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a>—by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> -his position as Poet Laureate; and in that capacity -writes a few dismally stiff odes, which are his -worst work. Even Wordsworth, who walks over -those Cumberland hills with reverence, and with a -pious fondness traces the “star-shaped shadows on -the naked stones”—cannot warm to Southey’s -new gush over royalty in his New Year’s Odes. -Coleridge chafes; and Landor, we may be sure, -sniffs, and swears, with a great roar of voice, at -what looks so like to sycophancy.</p> - -<p>To this time belongs that ode whose vengeful -lines, after the fall of Napoleon, whip round the -Emperor’s misdeeds in a fury of Tory Anglicanism, -and call on France to avenge her wrongs:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">“By the lives which he hath shed,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">By the ruin he hath spread,</div> -<div class="verse">By the prayers which rise for curses on his head—</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> -<div class="verse indent2">Redeem, O France, thine ancient fame!</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Revenge thy sufferings and thy shame!</div> -<div class="verse">Open thine eyes! Too long hast thou been blind!</div> -<div class="verse">Take vengeance for thyself and for mankind!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">This seems to me only the outcry of a tempestuous -British scold; and yet a late eulogist has the -effrontery to name it in connection with the great -prayerful burst of Milton upon the massacre of -the Waldenses:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints whose bones</div> -<div class="verse">Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">No, no; Southey was no Milton—does not reach -to the height of an echo of Milton.</p> - -<p>Yet he was a rare and accomplished man of -books—of books rather than genius, I think. An -excellent type of the very clever and well-trained -professional writer, working honestly and steadily -in the service to which he has put himself. Very -politic, too, in his personal relations. Even -Carlyle—for a wonder—speaks of him without -lacerating him.</p> - -<p>In a certain sense he was not insincere; yet he -had none of that out-spoken exuberant sincerity -which breaks forth in declaratory speech, before -the public time-pieces have told us how to pitch<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> -our voices. Landor had this: so had Coleridge. -Southey never would have run away from his wife—never; -he might dislike her; but Society’s great -harness (if nothing more) would hold him in -check; there were conditions under which Coleridge -might and did. Southey would never over-drink -or over-tipple; there were conditions (not -rare) under which Coleridge might and did. Yet, -for all this, I can imagine a something finer in -the poet of the <cite>Ancient Mariner</cite>—that felt moral -chafings far more cruelly; and for real poetic -unction you might put <cite>Thalaba</cite>, and <cite>Kehama</cite>, -and <cite>Madoc</cite> all in one scale, and only <cite>Christabel</cite> -in the other—and the Southey poems would be -bounced out of sight. But how many poets of -the century can put a touch to verse like the -touch in <cite>Christabel</cite>?</p> - -<h3>The Doctor and Last Shadows.</h3> - -<p>I cannot forbear allusion to that curious book—little -read now—which was published by Southey -anonymously, called <cite>The Doctor</cite>:<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> a book showing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> -vast accumulation of out-of-the-way bits -of learning—full of quips, and conceits, and -oddities; there are traces of Sterne in it and of -Rabelais; but there is little trenchant humor of -its own. It is a literary jungle; and all its wit -sparkles like marsh fire-flies that lead no whither. -You may wonder at its erudition; wonder at its -spurts of meditative wisdom; wonder at its -touches of scholastic cleverness, and its want of -any effective coherence, but you wonder more at -its waste of power. Yet he had great pride in -this book; believed it would be read admiringly -long after him; enjoyed vastly a boyish dalliance—if -not a lying by-play—with the secret of its -authorship; but he was, I think, greatly aggrieved -by its want of the brilliant success he had hoped -for.</p> - -<p>But sorrows of a more grievous sort were dawning -on him. On the very year before the publication -of the first volumes of <cite>The Doctor</cite>, he writes -to his old friend, Bedford: “I have been parted -from my wife by something worse than death. -Forty years she has been the life of my life; and -I have left her this day in a lunatic asylum.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></p> - -<p>But she comes back within a year—quiet, but -all beclouded; looking vacantly upon the faces of -the household, saddened, and much thinned now. -For the oldest boy Herbert is dead years since; -and the daughter, Isabel, “the most radiant creature -(he says) that I ever beheld, or shall behold”—dead -too; his favorite niece, Sara Coleridge, -married and gone; his daughter Edith, married -and gone; and now that other Edith—his wife—looking -with an idle stare around the almost -empty house. It was at this juncture, when all -but courage seemed taken from him, that Sir -Robert Peel wrote, offering the poet a Baronetcy; -but he was beyond taking heart from any such -toy as this. He must have felt a grim complacency—now -that his hair was white and his -shoulders bowed by weight of years and toil, and -his home so nearly desolate—in refusing the -empty bauble which Royalty offered, and in staying—plain -Robert Southey.</p> - -<p>Presently thereafter his wife died; and he, whose -life had been such a domestic one, strayed round -the house purposeless, like a wheel spinning -blindly—off from its axle. Friends, however,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> -took him away with them to Paris; among these -friends—that always buoyant and companionable -Crabb Robinson, whose diary is so rich in reminiscences -of the literary men of these times. -Southey’s son Cuthbert went with him, and the -poet made a good mock of enjoying the new -scenes; plotted great work again—did labor -heartily on his return, and two years thereafter -committed the indiscretion of marrying again: -the loneliness at Keswick was so great. The -new mistress he had long known and esteemed; -and she (Miss Caroline Bowles) was an excellent, -kindly, judicious woman—although a poetess.</p> - -<p>But it was never a festive house again. All the -high lights in that home picture which was set -between Skiddaw and the Derwent-water were -blurred. Wordsworth, striding across the hills by -Dunmail Rise, on one of his rare visits, reports -that Southey is all distraught; can talk of nothing -but his books; and presently—counting only -by months—it appears that he will not even talk -of these—will talk of nothing. His handwriting, -which had been neat—of which he had been -proud—went all awry in a great scrawl obliquely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> -athwart the page. For a year or two he is in -this lost trail; mumbling, but not talking; seeing -things—yet as one who sees not; clinging to -those loved books of his—fondling them; passing -up and down the library to find this or the -other volume that had been carefully cherished—taking -them from their shelves; putting his lips -to them—then replacing them;—a year or more -of this automatic life—the light in him all -quenched.</p> - -<p>He died in 1843, and was buried in the pretty -church-yard of Crosthwaite, a short mile away -from his old home. Within the church is a beautiful -recumbent figure of the poet, which every -traveller should see.</p> - -<h3>Crabb Robinson.</h3> - -<p>I had occasion to name Crabb Robinson<a name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> as -one of the party accompanying Southey on his -last visit to the Continent. Robinson was a man -whom it is well to know something of, by reason<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> -of his Boswellian <cite>Reminiscences</cite>, and because—though -of comparatively humble origin—he grew -to be an excellent type of the well-bred, well-read -club-man of his day—knowing everybody who -was worth knowing, from Mrs. Siddons to Walter -Scott, and talking about everybody who was worth -talking of, from Louis Phillippe to Mrs. Barbauld.</p> - -<p>He was quick, of keen perception—always -making the most of his opportunities; had fair -schooling; gets launched somehow upon an attorney’s -career, to which he never took with great -enthusiasm. He was an apt French scholar—passed -four or five years, too, studying in Germany; -his assurance and intelligence, aptitude, -and good-nature bringing him to know almost -everybody of consequence. He is familiar with -Madame de Staël—hob-nobs with many of the -great German writers of the early part of this century—is -for a time correspondent of the <cite>Times</cite> -from the Baltic and Stockholm; and from Spain -also, in the days when Bonaparte is raging over -the Continent. He returns to London, revives -old acquaintances, and makes new ones; knows -Landor and Dyer and Campbell; is hail fellow—as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> -would seem—with Wordsworth, Southey, -Moore, and Lady Blessington; falls into some -helpful legacies; keeps lazily by his legal practice; -husbands his resources, but never marries; -pounces upon every new lion of the day; hears -Coleridge lecture; hears Hazlitt lecture; hears -Erskine plead, and goes to play whist and drink -punch with the Lambs. He was full of anecdote, -and could talk by the hour. Rogers once -said to his guests who were prompt at breakfast: -“If you’ve anything to say, you’d better say it; -Crabb Robinson is coming.” He talked on all -subjects with average acuteness, and more than -average command of language, and little graceful -subtleties of social speech—but with no special -or penetrative analysis of his subject-matter. The -very type of a current, popular, well-received -man of the town—good at cards—good at a -club dinner—good at supper—good in travel—good -for a picnic—good for a lady’s tea-fight.</p> - -<p>He must have written reams on reams of letters. -The big books of his <cite>Diary and Reminiscences</cite><a name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> -which I commend to you for their amusing and -most entertaining gossip, contained only a most -inconsiderable part of his written leavings.</p> - -<p>He took admirable care of himself; did not -permit exposure to draughts—to indigestions, or -to bad company of any sort. Withal he was charitable—was -particular and fastidious; always -knew the best rulings of society about ceremony, -and always obeyed; never wore a dress-coat -counter to good form. He was an excellent listener—especially -to people of title; was a judicious -flatterer—a good friend and a good fellow; -dining out five days in the week, and living thus -till ninety: and if he had lived till now, I think -he would have died—dining out.</p> - -<p>Mr. Robinson was not very strong in literary -criticism. I quote a bit from his <cite>Diary</cite>, that will -show, perhaps as well as any, his method and -range. It is dated <i>June 6, 1812</i>:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Sent <cite>Peter Bell</cite> to Chas. Lamb. To my surprise, he -does not like it. He complains of the slowness of the narrative—as -if that were not the <em>art</em> of the poet. He says -Wordsworth has great thoughts, but has left them out here. -[And then continues in his own person.] In the perplexity -arising from the diverse judgments of those to whom I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> -am accustomed to look up, I have no resource but in the -determination to disregard all opinions, and trust to the -simple impression made on my own mind. When Lady -Mackintosh was once stating to Coleridge her disregard of -the beauties of nature, which men commonly affect to admire, -he said his friend Wordsworth had described her feeling, -and quoted three lines from ‘<cite>Peter Bell</cite>:’</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">‘A primrose by a river brim</div> -<div class="verse">‘A yellow primrose was to him,</div> -<div class="verse">‘And it was nothing more.’</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>“‘Yes,’ said Lady Mackintosh—‘that is precisely my -case.’”</p> - -</div> - -<h3>Thomas De Quincey.</h3> - -<p>On the same page of that <cite>Diary</cite>—where I go -to verify this quotation—is this entry:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“At four o’clock dined in the [Temple] Hall with De -Quincey,<a name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> who was very civil to me, and cordially invited me -to visit his cottage in Cumberland. Like myself, he is an -enthusiast for Wordsworth. His person is small, his complexion -fair, and his air and manner are those of a sickly -and enfeebled man.”<a name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p> - -<p>Some twenty-seven years before the date of this -encounter, the sickly looking man was born near -to Manchester, his father being a well-to-do merchant -there—whose affairs took him often to -Portugal and Madeira, and whose invalidism kept -him there so much that the son scarce knew him;—remembers -only how his father came home one -day to his great country house—pale, and propped -up with pillows in the back of his carriage—came -to die. His mother, left with wealth enough for -herself and children, was of a stern Calvinistic -sort; which fact gives a streak of unpleasant color -here and there to the son’s reminiscences. He is -presently at odds with her about the Bath school—where -he is taught—she having moved into -Somersetshire, whereabout she knows Mistress -Hannah More; the boy comes to know this lady -too, with much reverence. The son is at odds with -his mother again about Eton (where, though -never a scholar, he has glimpses of George -III.—gets a little grunted talk even, from the -old king)—and is again at odds with the -mother about the Manchester Grammar School: -so much at odds here, that he takes the bit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> -fairly in his mouth, and runs away with <cite>Euripides</cite> -in his pocket. Then he goes wandering -in Wales—gypsy-like—and from there strikes -across country blindly to London, where he becomes -gypsy indeed. He bargains with Jews to -advance money on his expectations: and with this -money for “sinker,” he sounds a depth of sin and -misery which we may guess at, by what we know, -but which in their fulness, even his galloping -pen never told. Into some of those depths his -friends traced him, and patched up a truce, which -landed him in Oxford.</p> - -<p>Quiet and studious here at first—he is represented -as a rare talker, a little given to wine—writing -admiring letters to Wordsworth and others, -who were his gods in those days; falling -somehow into taste for that drug which for so -many years held him in its grip, body and -soul. The Oxford career being finished after a -sort, there are saunterings through London streets -again—evenings with the Lambs, with Godwin, -and excursions to Somersetshire and the Lake -country, where he encounters and gives nearer -worship to the poetic gods of his idolatry. Always<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> -shy, but earnest; most interesting to strangers—with -his pale face, high brow and lightning -glances; talking too with a winning flow and an -exuberance of epithet that somewhiles amounts to -brilliancy: no wonder he was tenderly entreated -by good Miss Wordsworth; no wonder the poet -of the “Doe of Rylstone” enjoyed the titillation -of such fresh, bright praises!</p> - -<p>So De Quincey at twenty-four became householder -near to Grasmere—in the cottage I spoke -of in the opening of the chapter—once occupied -by Wordsworth, and later by Hartley Coleridge. -There, on that pretty shelf of the hills—scarce -lifted above Rydal-water, he gathers his books—studies -the mountains—provokes the gossip of -all the pretty Dalesmen’s daughters—lives there -a bachelor, eight years or more—ranging round -and round in bright autumnal days with the -sturdy John Wilson (of the <cite>Noctes Ambrosianæ</cite>)—cultivating -intimacy with poor crazy Lloyd -(who lived nearby)—studying all anomalous characters -with curious intensity, and finding anomalies -where others found none. Meantime and -through all, his sensibilities are kept wrought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> -to fever heat by the opiate drinks—always flanking -him at his table; and he, so dreadfully wonted -to those devilish drafts, that—on some occasions—he -actually consumes within the twenty-four -hours the equivalent of seven full wine-glasses -of laudanum! No wonder the quiet Dales-people -looked dubiously at the light burning in those -cottage windows far into the gray of morning, -and counted the pale-faced, big-headed man for -something uncanny.</p> - -<p>In these days comes about that strange episode -of his mad attachment to the little elfin child—Catharine -Wordsworth—of whom the poet-father -wrote:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent13">“Solitude to her</div> -<div class="verse">Was blithe society, who filled the air</div> -<div class="verse">With gladness and involuntary songs.</div> -<div class="verse">Light were her sallies, as the tripping fawn’s,</div> -<div class="verse">Forth startled from the form where she lay couched;</div> -<div class="verse">Unthought of, unexpected, as the stir</div> -<div class="verse">Of the soft breeze ruffling the meadow flowers.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Yet De Quincey, arrogantly interpreting the -deep-seated affections of that father’s heart, says, -“She was no favorite with Wordsworth;” but he -“himself was blindly, doatingly, fascinated” by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> -this child of three. And of her death, before she -is four, when De Quincey is on a visit in London, -he says, with crazy exaggeration:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Never, perhaps, from the foundations of those mighty -hills was there so fierce a convulsion of grief as mastered my -faculties on receiving that heart-shattering news.… I -had always viewed her as an impersonation of the dawn and -the spirit of infancy.… I returned hastily to Grasmere; -stretched myself every night, for more than two -months running, upon her grave; in fact often passed the -night upon her grave … in mere intensity of sick, -frantic yearning after neighborhood to the darling of my -heart.”<a name="FNanchor_11" id="FNanchor_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p> - -</div> - -<p>This is a type of his ways of feeling, and of his -living, and of his speech—tending easily to all -manner of extravagance: black and white are too -tame for his nerve-exaltation; if a friend looks -sharply, “his eye glares;” if disturbed, he has a -“tumult of the brain;” if he doubles his fist, his -gestures are the wildest; and a well-built son and -daughter of a neighbor Dalesman are the images -of “Coriolanus and Valeria.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span></p> - -<h3>Marriage and other Flights.</h3> - -<p>At thirty-one, or thereabout, De Quincey married -the honest daughter of an honest yeoman of -the neighborhood. She was sensible (except her -marriage invalidate the term), was kindly, was -long-suffering, and yet was very human. I suspect -the interior of that cottage was not always -like the islands of the blessed. Mr. Froude would -perhaps have enjoyed lifting the roof from such a -house. Many children were born to that strangely -coupled pair,—some of them still living and most -worthy.</p> - -<p>It happens by and by to this impractical man, -from whose disorderly and always open hand inherited -moneys have slipped away; it happens—I -say—that he must earn his bread by his own -toil; so he projects great works of philosophy, of -political economy, which are to revolutionize opinions; -but they topple over into opium dreams before -they are realized. He tries editing a county -paper, but it is nought. At last he utilizes even -his vices, and a chapter of the <cite>Confessions of an -Opium Eater</cite>, in the <cite>London Magazine</cite>, draws<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> -swift attention to one whose language is as vivid -as a flame; and he lays bare, without qualm, his -own quivering sensibilities. This spurt of work, -or some new craze, takes him to London, away -from his family. And so on a sudden, that idyl -of life among the Lakes becomes for many years -a tattered and blurred page to him. He is once -more a denizen of the great city, living a shy, hermit -existence there; long time in a dim back-room -of the publisher Bohn’s, in Bedford Street, -near to Covent Garden. He sees Proctor and -Hazlitt odd-whiles, and Hood, and still more of -the Lambs; but he is peevish and distant, and -finds largest company in the jug of laudanum -which brings swift succeeding dreams and stupefaction.</p> - -<p>We will have a taste of some of his wild writing -of those days. He is speaking of a dream.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“The dream commenced with a music of preparation and -of awakening suspense; a music like the opening of the Coronation -Anthem, and which, like that, gave the feeling of a -vast march; of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the tread -of innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty -day, a day of crisis and of final hope for human nature, then -suffering some mysterious eclipse, and laboring in some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> -dread extremity. Somewhere, I knew not where—somehow, I -knew not how—by some beings, I knew not whom—a battle, -a strife, an agony was conducting, was evolving like a great -drama or a piece of music.… I had the power, and -yet had not the power to decide it … for the weight of -twenty Atlantes was upon me as the oppression of inexpiable -guilt. Deeper than ever plummet sounded, I lay inactive. -Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened; there came sudden -alarms, hurrying to and fro, trepidations of innumerable -fugitives, I know not whether from the good cause or the -bad; darkness and lights; tempest and human faces; and at -last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the -features that were worth all the world to me, and but a moment -allowed—and clasped hands and heart-breaking partings, -and then everlasting farewells! and with a sigh such as -the caves of hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered -the abhorred name of Death, the sound was reverberated—everlasting -farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated—everlasting -farewells!”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Some years later he drifts again to Grasmere, -but only to pluck up root and branch that home -with wife and children,—so wonted now to the -pleasant sounds and sights of the Lake waters and -the mountains—and to transport them to Edinboro’, -where, through Professor Wilson, he has -promise of work which had begun to fail him in -London.</p> - -<p>There,—though he has the introduction which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> -a place at the tavern table of Father Ambrose -gives—he is a lonely man; pacing solitary, sometimes -in the shadow of the Castle Rock, sometimes -in the shadow of the old houses of the -Canongate; always preoccupied, close-lipped, -brooding, and never without that wretched opium-comforter -at his home. It was in <cite>Blackwood</cite> -(1827) he first published the well known essay on -“Murder as a Fine Art,”—perhaps the best known -of all he wrote; there, too, he committed to -paper, in the stress of his necessities, those sketchy -<cite>Reminiscences</cite> of his Lake life; loose, disjointed, -ill-considered, often sent to press without any revision -and full of strange coined words. I note -at random, such as <em>novel-ish erector</em> (for builder), -<em>lambencies</em>, <em>apricating</em>, <em>aculeated</em>; using words -not rarely, etymologically, and for some recondite -sense attaching. Worse than this, there is dreary -tittle-tattle and a pulling away of decent domestic -drapery from the lives of those he had professed to -love and honor; tedious expatiation, too, upon the -scandal-mongering of servant-maids, with illustrations -by page on page; and yet, for the matter of -gossip, he is himself as fertile as a seamstress or a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> -monthly nurse, and as overflowing and brazen as -any newspaper you may name.</p> - -<p>But here and there, even amid his dreariest -pages, you see, quivering—some gleams of his -old strange power—a thrust of keen thought -that bewilders you by its penetration—a glowing -fancy that translates one to wondrous heights of -poetic vision; and oftener yet, and over and over, -shows that mastery of the finesse of language by -which he commands the most attenuated reaches -of his thought, and whips them into place with -a snap and a sting.</p> - -<p>Yet, when all is said, I think we must count -the best that he wrote only amongst the curiosities -of literature, rather than with the manna -that fell for fainting souls in the wilderness.</p> - -<p>De Quincey died in Edinburgh, in 1859, aged -seventy-four.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</h2> - -<p class="dropcap">In our last chapter we took a breezy morning -walk amid the Lake scenery of England—more -particularly that portion of it which lies -between the old homes of Wordsworth and of -Southey; we found it a thirteen-mile stretch of -road, coiling along narrow meadows and over gray -heights—beside mountains and mountain tarns—with -Helvellyn lifting mid-way and Skiddaw -towering at the end. We had our talk of Dr. -Southey—so brave at his work—so generous in -his home charities—so stiff in his Churchism -and latter-day Toryism—with a very keen eye -for beauty; yet writing poems—stately and -masterful—which long ago went to the top-shelves, -and stay there.</p> - -<p>We had our rough and ready interviews with -that first of “War Correspondents”—Henry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> -Crabb Robinson—who knew all the prominent -men of this epoch, and has given us such entertaining -chit-chat about them, as we all listen -to, and straightway forget. Afterwards we had -a look at that strange, intellectual, disorderly -creature De Quincey—he living a long while in -the Lake Country—and in his more inspired -moments seeming to carry us by his swift words, -into that mystical region lying beyond the borders -of what we know and see. He swayed men; but -he rarely taught them, or fed them.</p> - -<h3>Christopher North.</h3> - -<p>We still linger about those charmingest of -country places; and by a wooden gateway—adjoining -the approach to Windermere Hotel—upon -the “Elleray woods,” amid which -lived—eighty years ago—that stalwart friend of -De Quincey’s, whose acquaintance he made among -the Lakes, and who, like himself, was a devoted -admirer of Wordsworth. Indeed, I think it was -at the home of the latter that De Quincey first -encountered the tall, lusty John Wilson—brimful -of enthusiasm and all country ardors; brimful,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> -too, of gush, and all poetic undulations of speech. -He<a name="FNanchor_12" id="FNanchor_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> was a native of Paisley—his father having -been a rich manufacturer there—and had come to -spend his abundant enthusiasms and his equally -abundant moneys between Wordsworth and the -mountains and Windermere. He has his fleet -of yachts and barges upon the lake; he knows -every pool where any trout lurk—every height -that gives far-off views. He is a pugilist, a -swimmer, an oarsman—making the hills echo -with his jollity, and dashing off through the -springy heather with that slight, seemingly frail -De Quincey in his wake—who only reaches to his -shoulder, but who is all compact of nerve and -muscle. For Greek they are fairly mated, both -by love and learning; and they can and do chant -together the choral songs of heathen tragedies.</p> - -<p>This yellow-haired, blue-eyed giant, John Wilson—not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> -so well-known now as he was sixty years -ago—we collegians greatly admired in that far-off -day. He had written the <cite>Isle of Palms</cite>, and was -responsible for much of the wit and dash and -merriment which sparkled over the early pages -of <cite>Blackwood’s Magazine</cite>—in the chapters of the -<cite>Noctes Ambrosianæ</cite> and in many a paper besides:—he -had his first university training at Glasgow; -had a brief love-episode there also, which makes -a prettily coy appearance on the pleasant pages -of the biography of Wilson which a daughter -(Mrs. Gordon) has compiled. After Glasgow came -Oxford; and a characteristic bit of his later writing, -which I cite, will show you how Oxford impressed -him:—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Having bidden farewell to our sweet native Scotland, -and kissed ere we parted, the grass and the flowers with a -show of filial tears—having bidden farewell to all her glens, -now a-glimmer in the blended light of imagination and -memory, with their cairns and kirks, their low-chimneyed -huts, and their high-turreted halls, their free-flowing rivers, -and lochs dashing like seas—we were all at once buried not -in the Cimmerian gloom, but the Cerulean glitter of Oxford’s -Ancient Academic groves. The genius of the place fell upon -us. Yes! we hear now, in the renewed delight of the awe of -our youthful spirit, the pealing organ in that Chapel called<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> -the Beautiful; we see the Saints on the stained windows; at -the Altar the picture of One up Calvary meekly ascending. -It seemed then that our hearts had no need even of the kindness -of kindred—of the country where we were born, and -that had received the continued blessings of our enlarging -love! Yet away went, even then, sometimes, our thoughts -to Scotland, like carrier-pigeons wafting love messages beneath -their unwearied wings.”<a name="FNanchor_13" id="FNanchor_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p> - -</div> - -<p>We should count this, and justly, rather over-fine -writing nowadays. Yet it is throughout -stamped with the peculiarities of Christopher -North; he cannot help his delightfully wanton -play with language and sentiment; and into whatever -sea of topics he plunged—early or late in -life—he always came up glittering with the beads -and sparkles of a highly charged rhetoric. Close -after Oxford comes that idyllic life<a name="FNanchor_14" id="FNanchor_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> in Windermere<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> -to which I have referred. Four or more -years pass there; his trees grow there; his new -roads—hewn through the forests—wind there; -he plots a new house there; he climbs the mountains; -he is busy with his boats. Somewhat later -he marries; he does not lose his old love for the -poets of the Greek anthology; he has children -born to him; he breeds game fowls, and looks -after them as closely as a New England farmer’s -wife after her poultry; but with him poetry and -poultry go together. There are old diaries of his—into -which his daughter gives us a peep—that -show such entries as this:—“The small Paisley -hen set herself 6th of July, with no fewer than -nine eggs;” and again—“Red pullet in Josie’s -barn was set with eight eggs on Thursday;” and -square against such memoranda, and in script as -careful, will appear some bit of verse like this:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Oh, fairy child! what can I wish for thee?</div> -<div class="verse">Like a perennial flowret may’st thou be,</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> -<div class="verse">That spends its life in beauty and in bliss;</div> -<div class="verse">Soft on thee fall the breath of time,</div> -<div class="verse">And still retain in heavenly clime</div> -<div class="verse">The bloom that charms in this.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>He wrote, too, while living there above Windermere, -his poem of the <cite>Isle of Palms</cite>; having a -fair success in the early quarter of this century, -but which was quickly put out of sight and hearing -by the brisker, martial music of Scott, and by -the later and more vigorous and resonant verse of -Byron.</p> - -<p>Indeed, Wilson’s poetry was not such as we -would have looked for from one who was a -“varra bad un to lick” at a wrestling bout, -and who made the splinters fly when his bludgeon -went thwacking into a page of controversial prose. -His verse is tender; it is graceful; it is delicate; -it is full of languors too; and it is tiresome—a -gentle girlish treble of sound it has, that you can -hardly associate with this brawny mass of manhood.</p> - -<h3>Wilson in Scotland.</h3> - -<p>But all that delightful life amidst the woods of -Elleray—with its game-cocks, and boats, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> -mountain rambles, and shouted chorus of Prometheus—comes -to a sharp end. The inherited -fortune of the poet, by some criminal carelessness -or knavery of a relative, goes in a day; and -our fine stalwart wrestler must go to Edinboro’ -to wrestle with the fates. There he coquets -for a time with law; but presently falls into -pleasant affiliation with old Mr. Blackwood (who -was a remarkable man in his way) in the conduct -of his magazine. And then came the trumpet -blasts of mingled wit, bravado, and tenderness, -which broke into those pages, and which made -young college men in England or Scotland or -America, fling up their hats for Christopher -North. Not altogether a safe guide, I think, -as a rhetorician; too much bounce in him; too -little self-restraint; too much of glitter and iridescence; -but, on the other hand—bating some -blackguardism—he is brimful of life and heartiness -and merriment—lighted up with scholarly -hues of color.</p> - -<p>There was associated with Wilson in those days, -in work upon <cite>Blackwood</cite>, a young man—whom -we may possibly not have occasion to speak of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> -again, and yet who is worthy of mention. I mean -J. G. Lockhart,<a name="FNanchor_15" id="FNanchor_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> who afterwards became son-in-law -and the biographer of Walter Scott—a slight -young fellow in that day, very erect and prim; -wearing his hat well forward on his heavy brows, -and so shading a face that was thin, clean cut, -handsome, and which had almost the darkness -of a Spaniard’s. He put his rapier-like thrusts -into a good many papers which the two wrought -at together. All his life he loved literary digs -with his stiletto—which was very sharp—and -when he left Edinboro’ to edit the <cite>Quarterly -Review</cite> in London (as he did in after days) he -took his stiletto with him. There are scenes in -that unevenly written Lockhart story of <cite>Adam -Blair</cite>—hardly known now—which for thrilling -passion, blazing out of clear sufficiencies of -occasion, would compare well with kindred scenes -of Scott’s own, and which score deeper colorings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> -of human woe and loves and remorse than belong -to most modern stories; not lighted, indeed, with -humor; not entertaining with anecdote; not embroidered -with archæologic knowledge; not rattling -with coruscating social fireworks, but—subtle, -psychologic, touching the very marrow of -our common manhood with a pen both sharp and -fine. We remember him, however, most gratefully -as the charming biographer of Scott, and as the -accomplished translator of certain Spanish ballads -into which he has put—under flowing English -verse—all the clashing of Cordovan castanets, -and all the jingle of the war stirrups of the Moors.</p> - -<p>We return now to Professor Wilson and propose -to tell you how he came by that title. It was -after only a few years of work in connection -with <cite>Blackwood</cite> that the Chair of Moral Philosophy -in Edinboro’ University—which had been -held by Dugald Stewart, and later by Dr. Thomas -Brown—fell vacant; and at once the name of -Wilson was pressed by his friends for the position. -It was not a little odd that a man best known by -two delicate poems, and by a bold swashbuckler -sort of magazine writing should be put forward—in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> -such a staid city as Edinboro’, and against -such a candidate as Sir William Hamilton—for a -Chair which had been held by Dugald Stewart! -But he <em>was</em> so put forward, and successfully; -Walter Scott and the Government coming to his -aid. Upon this, he went resolutely to study in -the new line marked out for him; his rods and -guns were, for the time, hung upon the wall; his -wrestling frolics and bouts at quarter-staff, and -suppers at the Ambrose tavern, were laid under -limitations. He put a conscience and a pertinacity -into his labor that he had never put to any -intellectual work before.<a name="FNanchor_16" id="FNanchor_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> But there were very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> -many people in Edinboro’ who had been aggrieved -by the appointment—largely, too, among those -from whom his pupils would come. There was, -naturally, great anxiety among his friends respecting -the opening of the first session. An -eye-witness says:—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“I went prepared to join in a cabal which was formed to -put him down. The lecture-room was crowded to the ceiling. -Such a collection of hard-browed, scowling Scotsmen, -muttering over their knob-sticks, I never saw. The Professor -entered with a bold step, amid profound silence. -Every one expected some deprecatory, or propitiatory introduction -of himself and his subject, upon which the mass was -to decide against him, reason or no reason; but he began -with a voice of thunder right into the matter of his lecture, -kept up—unflinchingly and unhesitatingly, without a pause—a -flow of rhetoric such as Dugald Stewart or Dr. Brown, his -predecessors, never delivered in the same place. Not a -word—not a murmur escaped his captivated audience; and -at the end they gave him a right-down unanimous burst of -applause.”<a name="FNanchor_17" id="FNanchor_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p> - -</div> - -<p>From that time forth, for thirty years or more, -John Wilson held the place, and won a popularity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> -with his annual relays of pupils that was unexampled -and unshaken. Better lectures in his -province may very possibly have been written by -others elsewhere—more close, more compact, -more thoroughly thought out, more methodic. -His were not patterned after Reid and Stewart; -indeed, not patterned at all; not wrought into a -burnished system, with the pivots and cranks of -the old school-men all in their places. But -they made up a series—continuous, and lapping -each into each, by easy confluence of topic—of -discourses on moral duties and on moral relations, -with full and brilliant illustrative talk—sometimes -in his heated moments taking on the gush -and exuberance of a poem; other times bristling -with reminiscences; yet full of suggestiveness, -and telling as much, I think, on the minds of his -eager and receptive students as if the rhetorical -brilliancies had all been plucked away, and some -master of a duller craft had reduced his words to a -stiff, logical paradigm.</p> - -<p>From this time forward Professor Wilson lived -a quiet, domestic, yet fully occupied life. He -wrote enormously for the magazine with which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> -his name had become identified; there is scarce a -break in his thirty years’ teachings in the university; -there are sometimes brief interludes of travel; -journeys to London; flights to the Highlands; -there are breaks in his domestic circle, breaks in -the larger circle of his friends; there are twinges -of the gout and there come wrinkles of age; but -he is braver to resist than most; and for years on -years everybody knew that great gaunt figure, with -blue eyes and hair flying wild, striding along Edinboro’ -streets.</p> - -<p>His poems have indeed almost gone down under -the literary horizon of to-day; but one who has -known <cite>Blackwood</cite> of old, can hardly wander anywhere -amongst the Highlands of Scotland without -pleasant recollections of Christopher North and of -the musical bravuras of his speech.</p> - -<h3>Thomas Campbell.</h3> - -<p>Another Scotsman, who is worthy of our attention -for a little time, is one of a different order; -he is stiff, he is prim, he is almost priggish; he is -so in his young days and he keeps so to the very -last.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p> - -<p>A verse or two from one of the little poems he -wrote will bring him to your memory:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“On Linden when the sun was low,</div> -<div class="verse">All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,</div> -<div class="verse">And dark as winter was the flow,</div> -<div class="verse">Of Iser, rolling rapidly.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">And again:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Then shook the hills with thunder riven,</div> -<div class="verse">Then rushed the steed to battle driven,</div> -<div class="verse">And louder than the bolts of heaven,</div> -<div class="verse">Far flashed the red artillery.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>If Thomas Campbell<a name="FNanchor_18" id="FNanchor_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> had never written anything -more than that page-long story of the -“Battle of Hohenlinden,” his name would have -gone into all the anthologies, and his verse into all -those school-books where boys for seventy years -now have pounded at his martial metre in furies of -declamation. And yet this bit of martial verse, so -full of the breath of battle, was, at the date of its -writing, rejected by the editor of a small provincial<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> -journal in Scotland—as not coming up to the -true poetic standard!<a name="FNanchor_19" id="FNanchor_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p> - -<p>I have spoken of Campbell as a Scotsman; -though after only a short stay in Scotland—following -his university career at Glasgow—and a -starveling tour upon the Continent (out of which -flashed “Hohenlinden”)—he went to London; -and there or thereabout spent the greater part of -the residue of a long life. He had affiliations of -a certain sort with America, out of which may -possibly have grown his <cite>Gertrude of Wyoming</cite>; -his father was for much time a merchant in Falmouth, -Virginia, about 1770; being however a -strong loyalist, he returned in 1776. A brother -and an uncle of the poet became established in -this country, and an American Campbell of this -stock was connected by marriage with the family -of Patrick Henry.</p> - -<p>The first <i lang="fr">coup</i> by which Campbell won his literary -spurs, was a bright, polished poem—with its -couplets all in martinet-like order—called the -<cite>Pleasures of Hope</cite>. We all know it, if for nothing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> -more, by reason of the sympathetic allusion -to the woes of Poland:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Ah, bloodiest picture in the book of time!</div> -<div class="verse">Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime;</div> -<div class="verse">Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe,</div> -<div class="verse">Strength in her arms nor mercy in her woe!</div> -<div class="verse">Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear,</div> -<div class="verse">Closed her bright eye and curbed her high career,</div> -<div class="verse">Hope for a season bade the world farewell,</div> -<div class="verse">And freedom shrieked as Kosciusko fell!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Even at so late a date as the death of Campbell -(1844), when they buried him in Westminster Abbey, -close upon the tomb of Sheridan, some grateful -Pole secured a handful of earth from the grave -of Kosciusko to throw upon the coffin of the poet.</p> - -<p>But in addition to its glow of liberalism, this -first poem of Campbell was, measured by all the -old canons of verse, thoroughly artistic. Its -pauses, its rhymes, its longs and shorts were of the -best prize order; even its errors in matters of fact -have an academic tinge—as, for instance,—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“On Erie’s banks, where tigers steal along!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>The truth is, Mr. Campbell was never strong in -his natural history; he does not scruple to put -flamingoes and palm trees into the valley of Wyoming.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> -Another reason why the first poem of -Campbell’s, written when he was only twenty-one, -came to such success, was the comparatively clear -field it had. The date of publication was at the -end of the century. Byron was in his boyhood; -Scott had not published his <cite>Lay of the Last -Minstrel</cite> (1805); Southey had printed only his -<cite>Joan of Arc</cite> (1796), which few people read; the -same may be said of Landor’s <cite>Gebir</cite>, (1797); -Cowper was an old story; Rogers’s <cite>Pleasures of -Memory</cite> (1792), and Moore’s translation of -<cite>Anacreon</cite> (1799-1800), were the more current -things with which people who loved fresh poetry -could regale themselves. The <cite>Lyrical Ballads</cite> of -Wordsworth and Coleridge had indeed been -printed, perhaps a year or two before, down in -Bristol; but scarce any one read <em>these</em>; few bought -them;<a name="FNanchor_20" id="FNanchor_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> and yet—in that copy of the <cite>Lyrical -Ballads</cite> was lying <i lang="fr">perdu</i>—almost unknown and -uncared for—the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></p> - -<p><cite>Gertrude of Wyoming</cite>, a poem, written at -Sydenham, near London, about 1807, and which, -sixty years ago, every good American who was -collecting books thought it necessary to place upon -his shelves, I rarely find there now. It has not the -rhetorical elaboration of Campbell’s first poem; -never won its success; there are bits of war in it, -and of massacre, that are gorgeously encrimsoned, -and which are laced through and through with -sounds of fife and warwhoop; but the landscape -is a disorderly exaggeration (I have already hinted -at its palm trees) and its love-tale has only the -ardors of a stage scene in it; we know where the -tragedy is coming in, and gather up our wraps so -as to be ready when the curtain falls.</p> - -<p>He was a born actor—in need (for his best -work) of the foot-lights, the on-lookers, the trombone, -the bass-drum. He never glided into victories -of the pen by natural inevitable movement -of brain or heart; he stopped always and everywhere -to consider his <em>pose</em>.</p> - -<p>There is little of interest in Campbell’s personal -history; he married a cousin; lived, as I said, -mostly in London, or its immediate neighborhood.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> -He had two sons—one dying young, and the -other of weak mind—lingering many years—a -great grief and source of anxiety to his father, who -had the reputation of being exacting and stern in -his family. He edited for a long time the <cite>New -Monthly Magazine</cite>, and wrote much for it, but -is represented to have been, in its conduct, careless, -hypercritical, and dilatory. He lectured, too, -before the Royal Institute on poetry; read oratorically -and showily—his subject matter being -semi-philosophical, with a great air of learning -and academically dry; there was excellent system -in his discourses, and careful thinking on themes -remote from most people’s thought. He wrote -some historical works which are not printed nowadays; -his life of Mrs. Siddons is bad; his life of -Petrarch is but little better; some poems he published -late in life are quite unworthy of him and -are never read. Nevertheless, this prim, captious -gentleman wrote many things which have the -ring of truest poetry and which will be dear to -the heart of England as long as English ships sail -forth to battle.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span></p> - -<h3>A Minstrel of the Border.</h3> - -<p>Yet another Scotsman whose name will not be -forgotten—whether British ships go to battle, or -idle at the docks—is Walter Scott.<a name="FNanchor_21" id="FNanchor_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> I scarce -know how to begin to speak of him. We all -know him so well—thanks to the biography -of his son-in-law, Lockhart, which is almost -Boswellian in its minuteness, and has dignity -besides. We know—as we know about a neighbor’s -child—of his first struggles with illness, -wrapped in a fresh sheepskin, upon the heathery -hills by Smailholme Tower; we know of the strong, -alert boyhood that succeeded; he following, with -a firm seat and free rein—amongst other game—the -old wives’ tales and border ballads which, -thrumming in his receptive ears, put the Edinboro -law studies into large confusion. Swift -after this comes the hurry-scurry of a boyish love-chase—beginning -in Grey Friar’s church-yard;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> -she, however, who sprung the race—presently -doubles upon him, and is seen no more; and he -goes lumbering forward to another fate. It was -close upon these experiences that some friends of -his printed privately his ballad of <cite>William and -Helen</cite>, founded on the German Lenore:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Tramp, tramp! along the land they rode!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Splash, splash! along the sea!</div> -<div class="verse">The scourge is red, the spur drops blood,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The flashing pebbles flee!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>And the spirit and dash of those four lines -were quickly recognized as marking a new power -in Scotch letters; and an echo of them, or of their -spirit, in some shape or other, may be found, I -think, in all his succeeding poems and in all the -tumults and struggles of his life. The elder Scott -does not like this philandering with rhyme; it will -spoil the law, and a solid profession, he thinks; -and true enough it does. For the <cite>Border Minstrelsy</cite> -comes spinning its delightfully musical and -tender stories shortly after Lenore; and a little -later appears his first long poem—the <cite>Lay -of the Last Minstrel</cite>—which waked all Scotland -and England to the melody of the new master.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> -He was thirty-four then; ripening later -than Campbell, who at twenty-one had published -his <cite>Pleasures of Hope</cite>. There was no kinship in -the methods of the two poets; Campbell all precision, -and nice balance, delicate adjustment of -language—stepping from point to point in his -progress with all grammatic precautions and with -well-poised poetic steps and demi-volts, as studied -as a dancing master’s; while Scott dashed to his -purpose with a seeming abandonment of care, and -a swift pace that made the “pebbles fly.” Just -as unlike, too, was this racing freedom of Scott’s—which -dragged the mists away from the Highlands, -and splashed his colors of gray, and of the -purple of blooming heather over the moors—from -that other strain of verse, with its introspections -and deeper folded charms, which in the hands of -Wordsworth was beginning to declare itself humbly -and coyly, but as yet with only the rarest applause. -I cannot make this distinction clearer -than by quoting a little landscape picture—let -us say from <cite>Marmion</cite>—and contrasting with it -another from Wordsworth, which was composed six -years or more before <cite>Marmion</cite> was published.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> -First, then, from Scott—and nothing prettier and -quieter of rural sort belongs to him,—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“November’s sky is chill and drear,</div> -<div class="verse">November’s leaf is red and sear;</div> -<div class="verse">Late gazing down the steepy linn</div> -<div class="verse">That hems our little garden in.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">(I may remark, in passing, that this is an actual -description of Scott’s home surroundings at Ashestiel.)</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Low in its dark and narrow glen</div> -<div class="verse">You scarce the rivulet might ken,</div> -<div class="verse">So thick the tangled greenwood grew,</div> -<div class="verse">So feeble trilled the streamlet through;</div> -<div class="verse">Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen</div> -<div class="verse">Through brush and briar, no longer green,</div> -<div class="verse">An angry brook it sweeps the glade,</div> -<div class="verse">Breaks over rock and wild cascade,</div> -<div class="verse">And foaming brown with double speed</div> -<div class="verse">Marries its waters to the Tweed.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>There it is—a completed picture; do what you -will with it! Reading it, is like a swift, glad stepping -along the borders of the brook.</p> - -<p>Now listen for a little to Wordsworth; it is a -scrap from Tintern Abbey:—</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent4">“Once again I see</div> -<div class="verse">These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines</div> -<div class="verse">Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms,</div> -<div class="verse">Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke</div> -<div class="verse">Sent up in silence, from among the trees!</div> -<div class="verse">With some uncertain notice, as might seem</div> -<div class="verse">Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,</div> -<div class="verse">Or of some hermit’s cave, where by his fire</div> -<div class="verse">The hermit sits alone.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>(Here is more than the tangible picture; the -smoke wreaths have put unseen dwellers there); -and again:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“O Sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro’ the woods,</div> -<div class="verse">How often has my spirit turned to thee!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent8">I have learned</div> -<div class="verse">To look on Nature, not as in the hour</div> -<div class="verse">Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes</div> -<div class="verse">The still, sad music of humanity!</div> -<div class="verse">Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power</div> -<div class="verse">To chasten and subdue. And I have felt</div> -<div class="verse">A presence that disturbs me with the joy</div> -<div class="verse">Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime</div> -<div class="verse">Of something far more deeply interfused,</div> -<div class="verse">Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns</div> -<div class="verse">And the round ocean and the living air</div> -<div class="verse">And the blue sky, and in the mind of men</div> -<div class="verse">A motion and a spirit, that impels</div> -<div class="verse">All thinking things, all objects of all thought,</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> -<div class="verse">And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still</div> -<div class="verse">A lover of the meadows and the woods</div> -<div class="verse">And mountains.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>This will emphasize the distinction, to which I -would call attention, in the treatment of landscape -by the two poets: Wordsworth putting <em>his</em> -all on a simmer with humanities and far-reaching -meditative hopes and languors; and Scott -throwing windows wide open to the sky, and saying -only—look—and be glad!</p> - -<p>In those days Wordsworth had one reader where -Scott had a hundred; and the one reader was apologetic -and shy, and the hundred were loud and -gushing. I think the number of their respective -readers is more evenly balanced nowadays; and -it is the readers of Scott who are beginning to be -apologetic. Indeed I have a half consciousness of -putting myself on this page in that category:—As -if the Homeric toss and life and play, and large -sweep of rivers, and of battalions and winnowed -love-notes, and clang of trumpets, and moaning of -the sea, which rise and fall in the pages of the -<cite>Minstrel</cite> and of <cite>Marmion</cite>—needed apology! -Apology or no, I think Scott’s poems will be read<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> -for a good many years to come. The guide books -and Highland travellers—and high-thoughted -travellers—will keep them alive—if the critics -do not; and I think you will find no better fore-reading -for a trip along the Tweed or through -the Trosachs than <cite>Marmion</cite>, and the <cite>Lady of -the Lake</cite>.</p> - -<h3>The Waverley Dispensation.</h3> - -<p>Meantime, our author has married—a marriage, -Goldwin Smith says, of “intellectual disparagement”; -which I suppose means that Mrs. -Scott was not learned and bookish—as she certainly -was not; but she was honest, true-hearted, -and domestic. Mr. Redding profanely says that -she was used to plead, “Walter, my dear, you -must write a new book, for I want another silk -dress.” I think this is apocryphal; and there is -good reason to believe that she gave a little hearty -home huzza at each one of Mr. Scott’s quick -succeeding triumphs.</p> - -<p>Our author has also changed his home; first -from the pretty little village of Lasswade, which is -down by Dalkeith, to Ashestiel by the Yarrow;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> -and thence again to a farm-house, near to that unfortunate -pile of Abbotsford, which stands on the -Tweed bank, shadowed by the trees he planted, -and shadowed yet more heavily by the story of his -misfortunes. I notice a disposition in some recent -writers to disparage this notable country home as -pseudo-Gothic and flimsy. This gives a false impression -of a structure which, though it lack that -singleness of expression and subordination of -details which satisfy a professional critic, does -yet embody in a singularly interesting way, and -with solid construction, all the aspirations, tastes, -clannish vanities and archæologic whims of the -great novelist. The castellated tower is there to -carry the Scottish standard, and the cloister to -keep alive reverent memory of old religious -houses; and the miniature Court gate, with its -warder’s horn; and the Oriole windows, whose details -are, maybe, snatched from Kenilworth; the -mass, too, is impressive and smacks all over of -Scott’s personality and of the traditions he cherished.</p> - -<p>I am tempted to introduce here some notes of a -visit made to this locality very many years ago. I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> -had set off on a foot-pilgrimage from the old -border town of Berwick-on-Tweed; had kept -close along the banks of the river, seeing men -drawing nets for salmon, whose silvery scales -flashed in the morning sun. All around swept -those charming fields of Tweed-side, green with the -richest June growth; here and there were shepherds -at their sheep washing; old Norham Castle -presently lifted its gray buttresses into view; then -came the long Coldstream bridge, with its arches -shimmering in the flood below; and after this the -palace of the Duke of Roxburgh. In thus following -up leisurely the Tweed banks from Berwick, -I had slept the first night at Kelso; had studied -the great fine bit of ruin which is there, and had -caught glimpses of Teviot-dale and of the Eildon -Hills; had wandered out of my way for a sight of -Smailholme tower, and of Sandy Knowe—both -associated with Scott’s childhood; I passed Dryburgh, -where he lies buried, and at last on an -evening of early June, 1845, a stout oarsman ferried -me across the Tweed and landed me in Melrose.</p> - -<p>I slept at the George Inn—dreaming (as many<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> -a young wayfarer in those lands has since done), -of Ivanhoe and Rebecca, and border wars and <cite>Old -Mortality</cite>. Next morning, after a breakfast upon -trout taken from some near stream (very likely the -Yarrow or the Gala-water), I strolled two miles or -so along the road which followed the Tweed bank -upon the southern side, and by a green foot-gate -entered the Abbotsford grounds. The forest trees—not -over high at that time—were those which the -master had planted. From his favorite outdoor -seat, sheltered by a thicket of arbor-vitæ, could -be caught a glimpse of the rippled surface of the -Tweed and of the turrets of the house.</p> - -<p>It was all very quiet—quiet in the wood-walks; -quiet as you approached the court-yard; the master -dead; the family gone; I think there was a yelp -from some young hound in an out-building, and -a twitter from some birds I did not know; there -was the unceasing murmur of the river. Besides -these sounds, the silence was unbroken; and when -I rang the bell at the entrance door, the jangle of -it was very startling; startling a little terrier, too, -whose quick, sharp bark rang noisily through the -outer court.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span></p> - -<p>Only an old house-keeper was in charge, who -had fallen into that dreadful parrot-like way of -telling visitors what things were best worth seeing—which -frets one terribly. What should you or I -care (fresh from <cite>Guy Mannering</cite> or <cite>Kenilworth</cite>) -whether a bit of carving came from Jedburgh or -Kelso? or about the jets in the chandelier, or the -way in which a Russian Grand Duke wrote his -name in the visitors’ book?</p> - -<p>But when we catch sight of the desk at which -the master wrote, or of the chair in which he sat, -and of his shoes and coat and cane—looking as -if they might have been worn yesterday—these -seem to bring us nearer to the man who has -written so much to cheer and to charm the world. -There was, too, a little box in the corridor, simple -and iron-bound, with the line written below it, -“Post will close at two.” It was as if we had -heard the master of the house say it. Perhaps -the notice was in his handwriting (he had been -active there in 1831-2—just thirteen years before)—perhaps -not; but—somehow—more than the -library, or the portrait bust, or the chatter of the -well-meaning house-keeper, it brought back the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> -halting old gentleman in his shooting-coat, and -with ivory-headed cane—hobbling with a vigorous -step along the corridor, to post in that iron-bound -box a packet—maybe a chapter of <cite>Woodstock</cite>.</p> - -<p>I have spoken of the vacant house—family -gone: The young Sir Walter Scott, of the British -army, and heir to the estate—was at that date -(1845) absent in the Indies; and only two years -thereafter died at sea on his voyage home. -Charles Scott, the only brother of the younger Sir -Walter, died in 1841.<a name="FNanchor_22" id="FNanchor_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> Miss Anne Scott, the only -unmarried daughter of the author of <cite>Waverley</cite>, -died—worn-out with tenderest care of mother and -father, and broken-hearted—in 1833. Her only -sister, Mrs. (Sophia Scott) Lockhart, died in 1837. -Her oldest son—John Hugh, familiarly known as -“Hugh Little John”—the crippled boy, for -whom had been written the <cite>Tales of a Grandfather</cite>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> -and the darling of the two households upon -Tweed-side—died in 1831. I cannot forbear -quoting here a charming little memorial of him, -which, within the present year, has appeared in -Mr. Lang’s <cite>Life of Lockhart</cite>.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“A figure as of one of Charles Lamb’s dream-children -haunts the little beck at Chiefswood, and on that haugh at -Abbotsford, where Lockhart read the manuscript of the -<cite>Fortunes of Nigel</cite>, fancy may see ‘Hugh Little John,’ -‘throwing stones into the burn,’ for so he called the Tweed. -While children study the <cite>Tales of a Grandfather</cite>, he does -not want friends in this world to remember and envy the -boy who had Sir Walter to tell him stories.”—P. 75, -vol. ii.</p> - -</div> - -<p>A younger son of Lockhart, Walter Scott by -name, became, at the death of the younger Walter -Scott, inheritor of all equities in the landed estate -upon Tweed-side, and the proper Laird of Abbotsford. -His story is a short and a sad one; he was -utterly unworthy, and died almost unbefriended -at Versailles in January, 1853.</p> - -<p>His father, J. G. Lockhart, acknowledging a -picture of this son, under date of 1843, in a letter -addressed to his daughter Charlotte—(later Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> -Hope-Scott,<a name="FNanchor_23" id="FNanchor_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> and mother of the present proprietress -of Abbotsford), writes with a grief he -could not cover:—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“I am not sorry to have it by me, though it breaks my -heart to recall the date. It is of the sweet, innocent, happy -boy, home for Sunday from Cowies [his school].… Oh, -God! how soon that day became clouded, and how dark its -early close! Well, I suppose there is another world; if not, -sure this is a blunder.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>I have not spoken—because there seemed no -need to speak—of the way in which those marvellous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> -romantic fictions of Sir Walter came -pouring from the pen, under a cloud of mystery, -and of how the great burden of his business -embarrassments—due largely to the recklessness -of his jolly, easy-going friends, the Ballantynes—overwhelmed -him at last. Indeed, in all I -have ventured to say of Scott, I have a feeling -of its impertinence—as if I were telling you about -your next-door neighbor: we all know that swift, -brilliant, clouded career so well! But are those -novels of his to live, and to delight coming -generations, as they have the past? I do not -know what the very latest critics may have to -say; but, for my own part, I have strong belief -that a century or two more will be sure to pass -over before people of discernment, and large -humanities, and of literary appreciation, will -cease to read and to enjoy such stories as that -of the <cite>Talisman of Kenilworth</cite> and of <cite>Old Mortality</cite>. -I know ’tis objected, and with much -reason, that he wrote hastily, carelessly—that -his stories are in fact (what Carlyle called them) -extemporaneous stories. Yet, if they had been -written under other conditions, could we have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> -counted upon the heat and the glow which gives -them illumination?</p> - -<p>No, no—we do not go to him for word-craft; -men of shorter imaginative range, and whose -judgments wait on conventional rule, must -guide us in such direction, and pose as our -modellers of style. Goldsmith and Swift both -may train in that company. But this master we -are now considering wrote so swiftly and dashed -so strongly into the current of what he had to -say, that he was indifferent to methods and words, -except what went to engage the reader and keep -him always cognizant of his purpose. But do -you say that this is the best aim of all writing? -Most surely it is wise for a writer to hold attention -by what arts he can: failing of this, he fails -of the best half of his intent; but if he gains this -by simple means, by directness, by limpid language, -and no more of it than the thought calls -for, and by such rhythmic and beguiling use -of it as tempts the reader to follow, he is a safer -exemplar than one who by force of genius can -accomplish his aims by loose expressions and -redundance of words.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span></p> - -<p>Next it is objected to these old favorites of -ours, that they are not clever in the exhibit -and explication of mental processes, and their -analysis of motives is incomplete. Well, I suppose -this to be true; and that he did, to a certain -extent (as Carlyle used to allege grumblingly), -work from the outside-in. He did live in -times when men fell straightforwardly in love, -without counting the palpitations of the heart; -and when heroes struck honest blows without -reckoning in advance upon the probable contractile -power of their biceps muscles. Again, it -is said that his history often lacks precision and -sureness of statement. Well, the dates are certainly -sometimes twisted a few years out of their -proper lines and seasons; but it is certain, also, -that he does give the atmosphere and the coloring -of historic periods in a completer and more -satisfying way than many much carefuller chroniclers, -and his portraits of great historic personages -are by common consent—even of the critics—more -full of the life of their subjects, and of -a realistic exhibit of their controlling characteristics, -than those of the historians proper. Nothing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> -can be more sure than that Scott was not -a man of great critical learning; nothing is more -sure than that he was frequently at fault in -minor details; but who will gainsay the fact that -he was among the most charming and beneficent -of story-tellers?</p> - -<p>There may be households which will rule him -out as old fashioned and stumbling, and wordy, -and long; but I know of one, at least, where he -will hold his place, as among the most delightful -of visitors—and where on winter nights he will -continue to bring with him (as he has brought so -many times already) the royal figure of the Queen -Elizabeth—shining in her jewels, or sulking in -her coquetries; and Dandie Dinmont, with his -pow-wow of Pepper and Mustard; and King -Jamie, with Steenie and jingling Geordie; and the -patient, prudent, excellent Jeanie Deans; and -the weak, old, amiable mistress of Tillietudlem; -and Rebecca, and the Lady in the Green Mantle, -and Dominie Sampson, and Peter Peebles, and Di -Vernon, and all the rest!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></p> - -<h3>Glints of Royalty.</h3> - -<p>They tell us Scott loved kings: why not? -Romanticism was his nurse, from the days when -he kicked up his baby heels under the shadows of -Smailholme Tower, and Feudalism was his foster-parent. -Always he loved banners and pageantry, -and always the glitter and pomp which give their -under or over tones to his pages of balladry. -And if he stood in awe of titles and of rank, and -felt the cockles of his heart warming in contact -with these, ’twas not by reason of a vulgar tuft-hunting -spirit, nor was it due to the crass toadyism -which seeks reflected benefit; but it grew, I -think, out of sheer mental allegiance to feudal -splendors and traditions.</p> - -<p>Whether Scott ever personally encountered the -old king, George III., may be doubtful; but I -recall in some of his easy, family letters (perhaps -to his eldest boy Walter), most respectful and -kindly allusions to the august master of the royal -Windsor household—who ordered his home -affairs so wisely—keeping “good hours;” while, -amid the turbulences and unrest which belonged<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> -to the American and French Revolutions—succeeding -each other in portentous sequence—he -was waning toward that period of woful mental -imbecility which beset him at last, and which -clouded an earlier chapter<a name="FNanchor_24" id="FNanchor_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> of our record. The -Prince Regent—afterward George IV.—was always -well disposed toward Scott; had read the -<cite>Minstrel</cite>, and <cite>Marmion</cite>, with the greatest gratification -(he did sometimes read), and told Lord -Byron as much; even comparing the Scot with -Homer—which was as near to classicism as the -Prince often ran. But Byron, in his <cite>English -Bards</cite>, etc., published in his earlier days, had -made his little satiric dab at the <cite>Minstrel</cite>—finding -a lively hope in its being <em>the Last</em>!</p> - -<p>Murray, however, in the good Christian spirit -which sometimes overtakes publishers, stanched -these wounds, and brought the poets to bask -together in the smiles of royalty. The first -Baronetcy the Prince bestowed—after coming -to Kingship—was that which made the author -of Waverley Sir Walter; the poet had witnessed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> -and reported the scenes at the Coronation of -1820 in London; and on the King’s gala visit to -Edinboro’—when all the heights about the gray -old city boomed with welcoming cannon, and all -the streets and all the water-ways were a-flutter -with tartans and noisy with bagpipes—it was -Sir Walter who virtually marshalled the hosts, -and gave chieftain-like greeting to the Prince. -Scott’s management of the whole stupendous -paraphernalia—the banquets, the processions, -the receptions, the decorations (of all which the -charming water-colors of Turner are in evidence)—gave -wonderful impressions of the masterful resources -and dominating tact of the man; now -clinking glasses (of Glenlivet) with the mellow -King (counting sixty years in that day); now -humoring into quietude the jealousies of Highland -chieftains; again threading Canongate at nightfall -and afoot—from end to end—to observe if -all welcoming bannerols and legends are in place; -again welcoming to his home, in the heat of -ceremonial occupation, the white-haired and -trembling poet Crabbe; anon, stealing away to -his Castle Street chamber for a new chapter in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> -the <cite>Peveril of the Peak</cite> (then upon the anvil), and -in the heat, and fury, and absorption of the whole -gala business breaking out of line with a bowed -head and aching heart, to follow his best friend, -William Erskine (Lord Kinnedder),<a name="FNanchor_25" id="FNanchor_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> out by -Queensferry to his burial.</p> - -<p>It was only eight years thereafter, when this -poet manager of the great Scotch jubilee—who -seemed good for the work of a score of years—sailed, -by royal permission (an act redeeming and -glorifying royalty) upon a Government ship—seeking -shores and skies which would put new -vigor (if it might be) into a constitution broken -by toil, and into hopes that had been blighted -by blow on blow of sorrow.</p> - -<p>Never was a royal favor more worthily bespoken; -never one more vainly bestowed. ’Twas -too late. No human eye—once so capable of -seeing—ever opened for a first look so wearily -upon the blue of the Mediterranean—upon the -marvellous fringed shores of lower Italy—upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> -Rome, Florence, and the snowy Swiss portals -of the Simplon.</p> - -<p>Royalty (in person of William IV., then on the -throne) asked kindly after the sick magician—who -was established presently on a sick bed in -London; while the cabmen on street corners near -by talked low of the “great mon” who lay there -a-dying. A little show of recovery gave power to -reach home—Abbotsford and Tweed-side—once -more. There was no hope; but it took time for -the great strength in him to waste.</p> - -<p>Withal there was a fine glint of royalty at the -end. “Be virtuous, my dear,” he said to Lockhart; -“be a good man.” And that utterance—the -summing up of forty years of brilliant accomplishment, -and of baffled ambitions—emphasized -by the trembling voice of a dying man—will -dwell longer in human memories, and more worthily, -than the empty baronial pile we call Abbotsford, -past which the scurrying waters of -the Tweed ripple and murmur—as they did on -the day Sir Walter was born, and on the day he -was buried at Dryburgh.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</h2> - -<p class="dropcap">Our last chapter was opened by a rather -full sketch of Professor Wilson, and a -briefer one of Thomas Campbell—who though -of higher repute as a poet, was a far less interesting -man. We then entered upon what may -have seemed a very inadequate account of the -great author of Waverley—because I presumed -upon the reader’s full and ready knowledge; and -because the Minstrel’s grand stride over all the -Scottish country that is worth the seeing, and -over all that domain in English Lands and Letters, -which he made his own, has been noted by scores -of tourists, and by scores of admiring commentators. -You may believe me in saying—that -his story was not scrimped for lack of love; indeed, -it would have been easy to riot in talk -about the lively drum-beat of his poems, or the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> -livelier and more engaging charms of his prose -Romance—through two chapters or through -ten. But we must get on; there is a long road -before us yet.</p> - -<h3>A Start in Life.</h3> - -<p>It was somewhere about the year 1798, that a -sharp-faced, youngish Englishman—who had -been curate of a small country parish down in -Wiltshire—drove, upon a pleasant June day, on -a coach-top, into the old city of Edinboro’. This -clergyman had a young lad seated beside him, -whom he was tutoring; and this tutoring business -enabled the curate to take a respectable -house in the city. And by reason of the respectable -house, and his own pleasant humor -and intelligence, he came after a year or two to -know a great many of the better folk in Edinboro’, -and was invited to preach an occasional -sermon at a small Episcopal chapel in his neighborhood. -But all the good people he met did -not prevent his being a-hungered after a young -person whom he had left in the south of England. -So he took a vacation presently and fetched her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> -back, a bride, to the Scottish capital—having -(as he said) thrown all his fortune in her lap. -This fortune was of maternal inheritance, and -consisted of six well-worn silver teaspoons. -There was excellent society in Edinboro’ in that -day, among the ornaments of which was Henry -Mackenzie,<a name="FNanchor_26" id="FNanchor_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> a stately gentleman—a sort of dean -of the literary coteries, and the author of books -which it is well to know by name—<cite>The Man of -Feeling</cite> and <cite>Julia de Roubigné</cite>—written with -great painstaking and most exalted sentiment, -and—what we count now—much dreariness. -Then there was a Rev. Archibald Alison—he too -an Episcopal clergyman, though Scotch to the -backbone—and the author of an ingenious, but -not very pregnant book, still to be found in -old-fashioned libraries, labelled, <cite>Alison on Taste</cite>. -Dugald Stewart was then active, and did on one -or two occasions bring his honored presence to -the little chapel to hear the preaching of the -young English curate I spoke of. And this young -curate, poor as he is and with a young wife, has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> -an itch for getting into print; and does after a -little time (the actual date being 1800) publish -a booklet, which you will hardly find now, entitled -<cite>Six Sermons preached at Charlotte Chapel, -Edinboro, by Rev. Sydney Smith</cite>.<a name="FNanchor_27" id="FNanchor_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> But it was -not so much these sermons, as his wit and brightness -and great range of information, which -brought him into easy intimacy with the most -promising young men of the city. Walter Scott -he may have encountered odd whiles, though -the novelist was in those days bent on his hunt -after Border Minstrelsy, and would have been shy -of the rampant liberalism ingrained with Smith.</p> - -<p>But the curate did meet often, and most intimately, -a certain prim, delicate, short-statured, -black-eyed, smug, ambitious, precocious young -advocate named Francis Jeffrey; and it was in -a chamber of this latter—up three pair of -stairs in Buccleugh Place—that Sydney Smith, -on a certain occasion, proposed to the host and -two or three other friends there present, the establishment -of a literary journal to be published<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> -quarterly; and out of that proposition grew -straightway that famous <cite>Edinburgh Review</cite> which -in its covers of buff and blue has thrived for over -ninety years now—throwing its hot shot into all -opposing camps of politics or of letters. I have -designated two of the arch plotters, Sydney Smith -and Jeffrey. Francis Horner<a name="FNanchor_28" id="FNanchor_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> was another who -was in at the start; he, too, a young Scotch lawyer, -who went to London on the very year of the establishment -of the journal, but writing for its early -issues, well and abundantly. Most people know -him now only by the beautiful statue of him by -Chantrey, which stands in Westminster Abbey; -it has a noble head, full of intellect—full of integrity. -Sydney Smith said the Ten Commandments -were writ all over his face. Yet the marble -shows a tenderness of soul not common to -those who, like him, had made a profession of politics, -and entered upon a parliamentary career. -But the career was short; he died in 1817—not -yet forty—leaving a reputation that was spotless; -had he lived, he would have come, without a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> -doubt, to the leadership of liberal opinion in England. -The mourning for him was something -extraordinary in its reach, and its sincerity; a -remarkable man—whose politics never up-rooted -his affections, and whose study of the laws of -trade did not spoil his temper, or make him -abusive. His example, and his repeated advices, -in connection with the early history of the <cite>Review</cite>, -were always against the personalities and -ugly satire which were strong features of it in the -first years, and which had their source—very -largely—in the influences and pertinacity of -another member of the <cite>Review</cite> Syndicate; I mean -Henry Brougham.</p> - -<h3>Henry Brougham.</h3> - -<p>This was another young lawyer—of Scottish -birth, but of Cumberland stock; ambitious like -Jeffrey and equally clever, though in a different -line; he was ungainly and lank of limb; with a -dogmatic and presuming manner, and a noticeably -aggressive nose which became afterward the -handle (and a very good handle it made) for -those illustrative caricatures of Mr. Punch, which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> -lasted for a generation. Brougham<a name="FNanchor_29" id="FNanchor_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> was always -a debater from his boy-days—and not a little -of a bully and outlaw; precocious too—a capital -Latinist—writing a paper on Optics at eighteen, -which found publishment in the Philosophical -Transactions; member of the Speculative Society -where Jeffrey and Mackintosh, and Alison were -wont to go, and where his disputatious spirit ran -riot. He didn’t love to agree with anybody; one -of those men it would seem who hardly wished his -dinner to agree with him.</p> - -<p>Yet Brougham was one of the master spirits in -this new enterprise, and became a great historic -personage. His reputation was indeed rather political -and forensic, than literary, and in his writings -he inclined to scientific discussion. He had, -however, a streak of purely literary ambition, and -wrote a novel at one period of his life—after he -had reached maturity—which he called a philosophic -Romance.<a name="FNanchor_30" id="FNanchor_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> Indeed this bantling was so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> -swaddled, in philosophic wrappings that it could -have made no noise. Very few knew of it; fewer -still ever read it. He said, “It had not enough -of indecency and blasphemy in it to make it popular” -(it was written when Byron was in high repute). -But the few who did read it thought there -were other reasons for its want of success.</p> - -<p>He drifted quickly away from Edinboro’, -though long keeping up his connection with the -<cite>Review</cite>; became famous as an advocate—notably -in connection with Queen Caroline’s trial; -went into Parliament; was eventually Lord High -Chancellor, and won a place in the Peerage. He -was associated intimately, too, with great beneficent -schemes—such as the suppression of the -slave trade, the establishment of the London University, -the founding of the Society for the Diffusion -of Useful Knowledge, and the urgence of -the great Reform measures of 1832. Yet in all -these, he arrogated more than his share of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> -honor, wearying his associates by incessant bickering -and scolding, picking flaws in everything not -entirely his own; jealous, suspicious, conceited to -the last degree; never generous in praise of one -living beside him; an enormous worker, with -sinews of iron, and on occasions (which are of record) -speaking and wrangling in the House of -Commons until two of the morning, and then going -home—not to sleep—but to write a thirty-page -article for the <cite>Edinburgh Review</cite>. Such men -make a place for themselves, and keep it. He -was an acrid debater, but a most thorough one—holding -all aspects of a case in view; never getting -muddled; ready with facts; ready with fallacies -(if needed); ready for all and any interruptions; -setting them on fire by the stress of his -argumentation—like carbons in an electric circuit; -ready with storms of irony and running -into rough-edged sarcasm with singular ease and -sharpest appetite.</p> - -<p>On a May evening of 1845 the present writer had -the pleasure of watching him for an hour or more -in the House of Lords. He was lank, as I have -said; awkward, nervous, restless; twisting the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> -great seals at his watch-chain; intent upon everything; -now and then sniffing the air, like a terrier -that has lost the scent; presenting a petition, in -the course of the session, in favor of some Newfoundland -clients who were anxious for more direct -postal communication—who objected that their -mails were sent in a roundabout way <i lang="la">via</i> Halifax. -Whereupon Lord Stanley (afterward Earl Derby), -then Secretary for the Colonies, rose in explanation, -“regretting that his Lordship had not communicated -with the Colonial Office, which had -considered the question raised; there was no communication -by land; the harbor was often closed -by ice; therefore present methods were followed,” -etc. All of which was set forth with most charming -grace and suavity; but Lord Stanley was no -sooner ended than the irascible Scotch peer, nettled, -as would seem, by the very graciousness of -the explanation, was upon his feet in an instant, -with a sharp “M’ Lards,” that promised fun; -and thereafter came a fusillade of keenest, ironical -speech—thanking the honorable Secretary for -“the vera impartant information, that as St. -John’s was upon an island, there could be no communication<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> -by land; and perhaps his learned -<em>Lardship</em> supposes, with an acumen commensurate -with his <em>great</em> geographic knowledge, that the -sending of the mails by the way of Halifax will -have a tendency to <em>thaw</em> the ice in the Harbor of -St. John’s,” and so on, for a ten minute’s storm -of satiric and witty banter. And then—an awkward -plunge backward into his seat—a new, -nervous twirling of his watch-seals, a curious smile -of self-approval, followed by a lapse into the old -nervous unrest.</p> - -<p>There was no serenity in Brougham—no repose—scarce -any dignity. His petulance and angry -sarcasm and frequent ill-nature made him a much -hated man in his latter days, and involved him -in abusive tirades, which people were slow to -forgive.</p> - -<h3>Francis Jeffrey.</h3> - -<p>As for Mr. Jeffrey, his associate on the <cite>Review</cite>, -and for many years its responsible editor, he -was a very different man—of easy address, courteous, -gentlemanly—quite a master of deportment. -Yet it was he who ripped open with his -critical knife Southey’s <cite>Thalaba</cite> and the early<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> -poems of Wordsworth. But even his victims -forgot his severities in his pleasantly magnetic -presence and under the caressing suavities of his -manner. He was brisk, <i lang="fr">débonnaire</i>, cheery—a -famous talker; not given to anecdotes or storytelling, -but bubbling over with engaging book-lore -and poetic hypotheses, and eager to put -them into those beautiful shapes of language -which came—as easily as water flows—to his -pen or to his tongue. He said harsh things, not -for love of harsh things; but because what provoked -them grated on his tastes, or his sense of -what was due to Belles Lettres. One did not—after -conversing with him—recall great special -aptness of remark or of epithet, so much as the -charmingly even flow of apposite and illustrative -language—void of all extravagances and of all -wickednesses, too. Lord Cockburn says of his -conversation:—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“The listeners’ pleasure was enhanced by the personal -littleness of the speaker. A large man [Jeffrey was very -small] could scarcely have thrown off Jeffrey’s conversational -flowers without exposing himself to ridicule. But -the liveliness of the deep thoughts and the flow of bright expressions -that animated his talk, seemed so natural and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> -appropriate to the figure that uttered them, that they were -heard with something of the delight with which the slenderness -of the trembling throat and the quivering of the wings -make us enjoy the strength and clearness of the notes of a -little bird.”<a name="FNanchor_31" id="FNanchor_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p> - -</div> - -<p>The first Mrs. Jeffrey dying early in life, he -married for second wife a very charming American -lady, Miss Wilkes;<a name="FNanchor_32" id="FNanchor_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> having found time—notwithstanding -his engrossment with the <cite>Review</cite>—for -an American journey, at the end of which -he carried home his bride. Some of his letters -to his wife’s kindred in America are very delightful—setting -forth the new scenes to which the -young wife had been transported. He knew just -what to say and what not to say, to make his -pictures perfect. The trees, the church-towers, -the mists, the mosses on walls, the gray heather—all -come into them, under a touch that is as light -as a feather, and as sharp as a diamond.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p> - -<p>His honors in his profession of advocate grew, -and he came by courtesy to the title of Lord -Jeffrey—(not to be confounded with that other -murderous Lord Jeffreys, who was judicial hangman -for James II.). He is in Parliament too; -never an orator properly; but what he says, always -clean cut, sensible, picturesque, flowing smoothly—but -rather over the surface of things than -into their depths. Accomplished is the word -to apply to him; accomplished largely and variously, -and with all his accomplishments perfectly -in hand.</p> - -<p>Those two hundred papers which he wrote in -the <cite>Edinburgh Review</cite> are of the widest range—charmingly -and piquantly written. Yet they do -not hold place among great and popular essays; -not with Macaulay, or Mackintosh, or Carlyle, -or even Hazlitt. He was French in his literary -aptitudes and qualities; never heavy; touching -things, as we have said, with a feather’s point, yet -touching them none the less surely.</p> - -<p>Could he have written a book to live? His -friends all thought it, and urged him thereto. He -thought not. There would be great toil, he said,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> -and mortification at the end; so he lies buried, -where we leave him, under a great tumulus of -most happy <cite>Review</cite> writing.</p> - -<h3>Sydney Smith.</h3> - -<p>I return now to the clever English curate who -was the first to propose the establishment of that -great Northern <cite>Review</cite>, out of which Lord Jeffrey -grew. Smith had written very much and well, -and had cracked his jokes in a way to be heard by -all the good people of Edinboro’. But he was -poor, and his wife poor; he had his fortune to -make; and plainly was not making it there, tutoring -his one pupil. So, in 1804, he struck out for -London, to carve his way to fortune. He knew -few there; but his clever papers in the <cite>Review</cite> -gave him introduction to Whig circles, and a -social plant, which he never forfeited. Lord and -Lady Holland greatly befriended him; and he early -came to a place at the hospitable board of -that famous Holland House—of whose green -quietudes we have had glimpses, in connection -with Addison, and in connection with Charles Fox—and -whose mistress in the days we are now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> -upon, showed immense liking for the brilliant and -witty parson.</p> - -<p>All this while, the Rev. Sydney was seeking -preaching chances; but was eyed doubtfully by -those who had pulpits in their gift. He was too -independent—too witty—too radical—too hateful -of religious conventionalisms—too <i>Edinburgh -Reviewish</i>. Neither was he a great orator; rather -scornful of explosive clap-trap or of noisy pulpit -rhetoric; yet he had a resonant voice—earnest -in every note and trill; often sparkling -to his points in piquant, conversational way, but -wanting quick-witted ones for their reception and -comprehension. He lacked too, in a measure—what -is another great resource for a preacher—the -unction which comes of deep, sustained, devotional -feeling, and a conviction of the unmatchable -importance and efficacy of sacerdotal influences. -I think there was no time in his life when -he would not rather beguile a wayward soul by -giving him a good, bright witticism to digest than -by exhibit of the terrors of the Law. His Gospel—by -preference—was an intellectual gospel; yet -not one that reposed on creeds and formulas. His<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> -heart was large, and his tolerance full. He was a -proud Churchman indeed, and loved to score dissenters; -but delighted in the crack of his witticisms, -more than he mourned over their apostasy. -Among the “evening meetings” that he knew -very much of, and specially relished, were those at -his own little homestead, with closed blinds, and -a few friends, and hot-water, and—lemons!</p> - -<p>I do not at all mean to imply that he had habits -of dissipation, or was ever guilty of vulgar excesses. -Of all such he had a wholesome horror; -but along with it, he had a strong and abiding -fondness for what he counted the good things of -life, and the bright things, and the play of wit, -and the encounter of scholarly weapons.</p> - -<p>One beautiful priestly quality, however, always -shone in him: that was his kindliness for the -poor and feeble—his sympathy with them—his -working for their benefit; and though he trusted -little in appeals to the mere emotional nature, yet -in his charity sermons he drew such vivid pictures -of the suffering poor folk who had come under his -eye, as to put half his auditors in tears.</p> - -<p>His preaching in London at this early period<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> -was for the most part at an out-of-the-way chapel, -in connection with a Foundling Hospital; but he -gave a series of Philosophic Lectures at the Royal -Institution—never reckoned by himself with his -good work—which were besieged by people who -came to enjoy his witty sayings. In a few years, -however, he secured a valuable church gift in -Yorkshire, where he built a rectory—the ugliest -and “honest-est house” in the county—and entertained -London and Scottish friends there, and -grew to enjoy—much as he could—the trees, -flowers, and lawns which he planted, and with -which he coquetted, though only in a half-hearted -way. His supreme love was for cities and crowds; -he counting the country at its best only a kind -of “healthy grave”; flowers, turf, birds are very -well in their way, he says, but not worth an hour -of the rational conversation only to be had -where a million are gathered in one spot.<a name="FNanchor_33" id="FNanchor_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p> - -<p>And he does at last come to the million—getting, -after his Whig friends came into power, and -after the Reform revolution was over, the royal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> -appointment to a canonry in connection with St. -Paul’s Cathedral.<a name="FNanchor_34" id="FNanchor_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p> - -<p>He also has the gift of a new country “living” -in Somersetshire, where he passes his later summer -in another delightfully equipped home; and -between these two church holdings, and certain -legacies conveniently falling due, he has a large -income at command, and enjoys it, and makes the -poor of his parishes enjoy it too.</p> - -<p>He has taken a lusty hand in that passage of the -Reform bill (1832), and while its success seemed -still to be threatened by the sullen opposition of -the House of Lords, he made that famous witty -comparison in which he likened the popular interest -in Reform to a great storm and tide which had -set in from the Atlantic, and the opposition of the -Lords, to the efforts of Dame Partington, who -lived upon the beach, and—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“who was seen at the door of her house with mops and -pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> -vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic -was roused. Mrs. Partington’s spirit was up. But I need -not tell you the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean -beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop or a -puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>And this happy and droll comparison was met -with a great roar of laughter and of applause that -ran all over England. The same tactics of witty -ridicule belonged also to his attacks upon Tractarianism -and Puseyism, which made stir in his -latter days. Indeed, his bump of veneration was -very small; and his drollery creeps into his letters -as into his speech. He writes of a visit to Edinboro’:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“My old friends were glad to see me; some were turned -Methodists, some had lost their teeth, some had grown very -fat, some were dying, and, alas! many were dead. But the -world is a coarse enough place; so I talked away, comforted -some, praised others, kissed some old ladies, and passed a -very riotous week.”<a name="FNanchor_35" id="FNanchor_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a></p> - -</div> - -<p>He writes to Moore, the poet:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Moore</span>: I have a breakfast of philosophers at ten, -punctually, to-morrow—‘muffins and metaphysics, crumpets -and contradiction.’ Will you come?”</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span></p> - -<p>When Mrs. Smith is ailing at her new home in -Somersetshire he says:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Mrs. S—— has eight distinct illnesses, and I have -nine. We take something every hour, and pass the mixture -between us.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>One part of his suffering comes of hay fever, as -to which he says:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Light, dust, contradiction—the sight of a dissenter—anything -sets me sneezing; and if I begin sneezing at -twelve, I don’t leave off till two, and am heard distinctly in -Taunton (when the wind sets that way), a distance of six -miles.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>This does not show quite so large a reserve and -continence of speech as we naturally look for in -the clerical profession; but this, and other such -do, I think, set the Rev. Sydney Smith before us, -with his witty proclivities, and his unreserve, and -his spirit of frolic, as no citations from his moral -and intellectual philosophy could ever do. And -I easily figure to myself this portly, well-preserved -gentleman of St. Paul’s, fighting the weaknesses of -the gout with a gold-headed cane, and picking his -way of an afternoon along the pavements of Piccadilly, -with eye as bright as a bird’s, and beak as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> -sharp as a bird’s—regaling himself with the -thought of the dinner for which he is booked, -and of the brilliant talkers he is to encounter, -with the old parry and thrust, at Rogers’s rooms, -or under the noble ceiling of Holland House.</p> - -<h3>A Highlander.</h3> - -<p>Another writer—whose sympathies from the beginning -were with the Liberalism of the <cite>Edinburgh -Review</cite> (though not a contributor till some years -after its establishment) was Sir James Mackintosh.<a name="FNanchor_36" id="FNanchor_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> -A Highlander by birth—he was at Aberdeen -University—afterwards in Edinboro’, where -he studied medicine, and getting his Doctorate, -set up in London—eking out a support, which -his medical practice did not bring, by writing for -the papers.</p> - -<p>This was at the date when the recent French -Revolution and its issues were at the top of -all men’s thoughts; and when Burke had just -set up his glittering bulwark of eloquence and -of sentiment in his famous “Reflections”; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> -our young Doctor (Mackintosh)—full of a bumptious -Whiggism, undertook a reply to the great -statesman—a reply so shrewd, so well-seasoned, -so sound—that it brought to the young Scotchman -(scarce twenty-five in those days) a fame he -never outlived. It secured him the acquaintance -of Fox and Sheridan, and the friendship of Burke, -who in his latter days invited the young pamphleteer, -who had so strongly, yet respectfully, -antagonized his views, to pass a Christmas with -him at his home of Beaconsfield. Of course, such -a success broke up the doctoring business, and -launched Mackintosh upon a new career. He devoted -himself to politics; was some time an accredited -lecturer upon the law of nations; was -knighted presently and sent to Bombay on civil -service. His friends hoped he might find financial -equipment there, but this hope was vain; red-tape -was an abomination to him always; cash-book -and ledger represented unknown quantities; -he knew no difference between a shilling and a -pound, till he came to spend them. He was in -straits all his life.</p> - -<p>His friendship for Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> -Brougham was maintained by correspondence, -and on his return from India he became an occasional -contributor to the great Scotch <cite>Review</cite> on -various subjects.</p> - -<p>His range of acquirements was most wide—too -wide and too unceasing for the persistency which -goes with great single achievements. His histories -are fragments. His speeches are misplaced -treatises; his treatises are epitomes of didactic -systems. When we weigh his known worth, his -keenness of intellect, his sound judgment, his -wealth of language, his love for thoroughness—which -led him to remotest sources of information—his -amazing power in colloquial discourse, we -are astonished at the little store of good things he -has left. There was a lack in him, indeed, of the -salient and electrical wit of Sydney Smith; a -lack of the easy and graceful volubility of Jeffrey; -lack of the abounding and illuminating rhetoric -of Macaulay; but a greater lack was of that -dogged, persistent working habit which gave to -Brougham his triumphs.</p> - -<p>Yet Mackintosh was always plotting great literary -designs; but his fastidious taste, and his critical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> -hunger for all certainties, kept him forever in -the search of new material and appliances. He -was dilatory to the last degree; his caution always -multiplied delays; no general was ever so watchful -of his commissariat—none ever so unready -for a “Forward, march!” Among his forecasts -was that of a great history of England. Madame -de Staël urged her friend to take possession of her -villa on Lake Geneva and, like Gibbon, write his -way there to a great fame. He did for awhile set -himself resolutely to a beginning at the country -home of Weedon Lodge in Buckinghamshire—accumulated -piles of fortifying MSS. and private -records; but for outcome we have only that clumsy -torso which outlines the Revolution of 1688.<a name="FNanchor_37" id="FNanchor_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a></p> - -<p>His plans wanted a hundred working years, instead -of the thirty which are only allotted to men. -What Jeffrey left behind him marks, I think, the -full limit of his powers; the same is true of -Brougham, and true probably of Macaulay; and -I think no tension and no incentive would have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> -wrought upon Sydney Smith to work greater and -brighter things than he did accomplish. A bishopric -would only have set his gibes into coruscation -at greater tables, and perhaps given larger -system to his charities. But Mackintosh never -worked up to the full level of his best power and -large learning, except in moments of conversational -exaltation.</p> - -<h3>Rest at Cannes.</h3> - -<p>Before closing our chapter we take one more -swift glimpse at that arch-plotter for Whiggism—in -the early days of the <cite>Edinburgh Review</cite>—whom -we left fidgetting in the House of Lords, -on a May evening of 1845. He had a longer life -by far than most of those who conspired for the -maintenance of the great blue and buff forerunner -of British critical journals. He was only -twenty-three when he put his shoulder to the -quarterly revolutions of the <cite>Edinburgh</cite>—youngest -of all the immediate founders;<a name="FNanchor_38" id="FNanchor_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> and he outlived<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> -them all and outvoiced them all in the -hurly-burly of the world.</p> - -<p>He survived Macaulay too—an early contributor -of whom we shall have more to say—and -though he was past eighty at the death of the -historian, he was alert still, and his brain vagrantly -active; but the days of his early glory and -fame—when the young blusterer bolstered up -Reform, and slew the giants of musty privilege -and sent “the schoolmaster abroad,” and antagonized -slavery, were gone;<a name="FNanchor_39" id="FNanchor_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> so, too, were those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> -palmy times when he made the courts at Westminster -ring with his championship of that poor -Queen (who, whatever her demerits—and they -were many—was certainly abominably maltreated -by a husband far worse than she); times when the -populace who espoused her cause shouted bravos -to Harry Brougham—times when he was the best -known and most admired man in England; all -these, and his chancellorship, and his wordy triumphs -in the House of Lords, were far behind -him, and the inevitable loss of place and power -fretted him grievously. He quarrelled with old -coadjutors; in Parliament he shifted from bench -to bench; in the weakness of age, he truckled -to power; he exasperated his friends, and for -years together—his scoldings, his tergiversations, -and his plaid trousers made a mine of mockery for -Mr. Punch. As early as 1835-40, Lord Brougham -had purchased an estate in the south of France, -in a beautiful nook of that mountain shore which -sweeps eastward from the neighborhood of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> -Marseilles—along the Mediterranean, and which so -many travellers now know by the delights of the -Cornice Road and Monaco, and Mentone, and -San Remo. The little fishing village where years -ago Lord Brougham set up his Villa of Louise -Eléonore (after a darling and lost child) is now a -suburb of the fashionable resort of Cannes. At -his home there, amongst the olives, the oleanders -and the orange-trees, the disappointed and petulant -ex-chancellor passed most of the later years -of his life.</p> - -<p>Friends dropping in upon him—much doubting -of their reception—found him as the humors -changed, peevish with strong regrets and recriminations, -or placid under the weight of his years, -and perhaps narcotized by the marvellous beauty -of the scenes around him.</p> - -<p>He was over ninety at his death in 1868. To -the very last, a man not to be reckoned on: some -days as calm as the sea that rippled under his -window; other days full of his old unrest and -petulancies. There are such men in all times -and in all societies—sagacious, fussy, vain, indefatigable, -immensely serviceable, cantankerous;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> -we <em>can’t</em> get on without them; we are for ever -wishing that we could.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>In our next chapter we shall come upon a critic, -who was a famous editor—adroit, strong, waspish, -bookish, and ignoble. We shall encounter a king, -too—of whom we have thus far only had glimpses—who -was jolly—excellently limbed and conditioned -physically—a man “of an infinite jest,” -too, and yet as arrant a dastard—by all old-fashioned -moral measures of character—as Falstaff -himself. Again we shall follow traces of a great -poet—but never a favorite one—who has left -markings of his career, strong and deep; a man -who had a Greek’s delight in things of beauty, -and a Greek’s subtlety of touch; but one can fancy -a faun’s ears showing their tips upon his massive -head, and (without fancy) grow conscious of -a heathenism clouding his great culture. Other -two poets of lighter mould we shall meet;—more -gracious, lighter pinioned—prettily flitting—iridescent—grace -and sparkle in their utterances, -but leaving no strong markings “upon the sands -of time.”</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</h2> - -<p class="dropcap">We have wandered much in our two last -chapters beyond what may be reckoned -strictly English lands, into that pleasant region -lying between the Tweed and the Firth of -Forth; and it was north of the heights of Lammermuir -and of the Pentland Hills, and in that -delightful old city which is dominated by the -lesser heights of the Salisbury crags, the Castle -Rock, and Calton Hill, that we found the -builders of that great <cite>Review</cite>, which in its livery -of buff and blue still carries its original name. -I traced the several careers of Sydney Smith, -Lord Brougham, and Judge Jeffrey; the first of -these, from a humble village curacy, coming to -be one of the most respected literary men of -England, and an important official of St. Paul’s -Cathedral; if his wit had been less lively he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> -might have risen to a bishopric. Brougham was, -first, essayist, then advocate, then Parliamentary -orator, then Reformer, then Lord High Chancellor—purging -the courts of much legal trumpery—always -a scold and quarreller, and gaining -in the first year of William IV. his barony -of Brougham and Vaux: hence the little squib -of verse, which will help to keep his exact title -in mind:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Why is Lord Brougham like a sweeping man</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That close by the pavement walks?</div> -<div class="verse">Because when he’s done all the sweep that he can</div> -<div class="verse indent1">He takes up his <em>Broom</em> and <em>Valks</em>!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>As for Jeffrey, he became by his resolute -industry and his literary graces and aptitudes one -of the most admired and honored critics of Great -Britain.</p> - -<h3>Gifford and His Quarterly.</h3> - -<p>Our start-point to-day is on the Thames—in -that devouring city of London, which very early -in the century was laying its tentacles of growth -on all the greenness that lay between Blackwall -and Bayswater, and which—athwart the Thames<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> -shores—strode blightingly from Clapham to -Hackney.</p> - -<p>It was, I believe, in the year 1809 that Mr. -John Murray, the great publisher of London—stirred, -perhaps, by some incentive talk of Walter -Scott, or of other good Tory penmen, and emulous -of the success which had attended Jeffrey’s <cite>Review</cite> -in the north, established a rival one—called simply -<cite>The Quarterly</cite>—intended to represent the Tory -interests as unflinchingly and aggressively as the -<cite>Edinburgh</cite> had done Whig interests. The first -editor was a William Gifford<a name="FNanchor_40" id="FNanchor_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> (a name worth remembering -among those of British critics), who -was born in Devonshire. He was the son of a dissolute -house-painter, and went to sea in his young<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> -days, but was afterwards apprenticed to a shoemaker. -Some piquant rhymes he made in those -days attracting the attention of benevolent gentlemen, -he was put in the way of schooling, and at -Oxford, where he studied. It was while there he -meditated, and perhaps executed, some of those -clever translations from Persius and Juvenal, -which he published somewhat later. He edited -Ben Jonson’s works in a clumsy and disputatious -way, and in some of his earlier, crude, satirical -rhymes (<cite>Baviad</cite>) paid his respects to Madame -Thrale in this fashion:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“See Thrale’s gay widow with a satchel roam,</div> -<div class="verse">And bring in pomp laborious nothings home.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Again he pounces upon the biographer of Dr. -Johnson thus-wise:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Boswell, aping with preposterous pride,</div> -<div class="verse">Johnson’s worst frailties, rolls from side to side,</div> -<div class="verse">His heavy head from hour to hour erects,</div> -<div class="verse">Affects the fool, and is what he affects.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>These lines afford a very good measure of his -poetic grace and aptitude; but they give only a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> -remote idea of his wonderful capacity for abusing -people who did not think as he thought. He -had a genius in this direction, which could not -have discredited an editorial room in New York—or -elsewhere. Walter Scott—a warm political -friend—speaks of him as “a little man, dumpled -up together, and so ill-made as to seem almost -deformed;” and I think that kindly gentleman -was disposed to attribute much of the critic’s -rancor to his invalidism; but if we measure his -printed bile in this way, there must be credited -him not only his usual rheumatic twinges, but -a pretty constant dyspepsia, if not a chronic -neuralgia. Of a certainty he was a most malignant -type of British party critics; and it is -curious how the savors of its first bitterness do -still linger about the pages of the <cite>Quarterly -Review</cite>.</p> - -<p>John Wilson Croker<a name="FNanchor_41" id="FNanchor_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> will be best known to our -readers as the editor of that edition of Boswell’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> -“Johnson,” to which I have alluded. Within the -last ten years, however, his memoirs and correspondence, -in two bulky volumes, have excited a -certain languid interest, and given entertainment -to those who are curious in respect to the political -wire-pullings of the early part of this century in -London. He was an ardent co-worker with Gifford -in the early history of the <cite>Quarterly Review</cite>. -He loved a lord every whit as well as Gifford, and -by dint of a gentlemanly manner and gentlemanly -associations was not limited to the “back-stairs -way” of Mr. Gifford in courting those in authority. -His correspondence with dukes and earls—to all -of whom he is a “dear Croker”—abound; and -his account of interviews with the Prince Regent, -and of dinners at the Pavilion in Brighton, are -quite Boswellian in their particularity and in -their atmosphere of worship. There is also long -account in the book to which I have called attention, -of a private discourse by George IV., of -which Mr. Croker was sole auditor; and it is hard -to determine whether Croker is more elated by -having the discourse to record, or Mr. Jennings -by having such a record to edit.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span></p> - -<h3>A Prince Regent.</h3> - -<p>This royal mention brings us once more, for a -little space, to our background of kings. Of the -old monarch, George III., we have had frequent -and full glimpses. We wish to know something -now of that new prince (whom we saw in our -Scott chapter), but who in 1810, when his father’s -faculties failed altogether, became Regent; and -we wish to learn what qualities are in him and -under what training they developed.</p> - -<p>The old father had a substructure of good, -hard sense that showed itself through all his obstinacies; -for instance, when Dr. Markham, who -was appointed tutor to his two oldest sons—Prince -of Wales and Duke of York—asked how -he should treat them, the old king said: “Treat -them? Why, to be sure, as you would any gentleman’s -sons! If they need the birch, give them -the birch, as you would have done at Westminster.” -But when they had advanced a bit, and a certain -Dr. Arnold (a later tutor) undertook the same -regimen, the two princes put their forces together<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> -and gave the doctor such a drubbing that he -never tried birch again. But it was always a very -close life the princes led in their young days; the -old king was very rigorous in respect of hours and -being out at night. By reason of which George -IV. looked sharply after his opportunities, when -they did come, and made up for that early cloisterhood -by a large laxity of regimen.<a name="FNanchor_42" id="FNanchor_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> Indeed, he -opened upon a very glittering career of dissipations—the -old father groaning and grumbling and -squabbling against it vainly.</p> - -<p>It was somewhere about 1788 or 1789, just when -the French Revolution was beginning to throw -its bloody foam over the tops of the Bastille, that -temporary insanity in the old King George III. -did for a very brief space bring the Prince into -consequence as Regent. Of the happening of -this, and of the gloom in the palace, there is story -in the diary of Madame D’Arblay,<a name="FNanchor_43" id="FNanchor_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> who was herself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> -in attendance upon the Queen. If, indeed, -George III. had stayed mad from that date, and -the Prince—then in his fullest vigor, and a great -friend of Fox and other Liberal leaders—had -come to the full and uninterrupted responsibility -of the Regency, his career might have been very -different. But the old king rallied, and for -twenty years thereafter put his obstinacies and -Tory caution in the way of the Prince, who, with -no political royalties to engage him, and no important -official duties (though he tried hard to -secure military command), ran riot in the old way. -He lavishes money on Carlton House; builds -a palace for Mrs. Fitzherbert; coquets with -Lady Jersey; affects the fine gentleman. No -man in London was prouder of his walk, his cane, -his club nonchalance, his taste in meats, his -knowledge of wines, ragoûts, indelicate songs, and -arts of the toilette. Withal, he is well-made, tall, -of most graceful address, a capital story-teller, -too; an indefatigable diner-out; a very fashion-plate -in dress—corsetted, puffed out in the chest -like a pouter pigeon; all the while running vigorously -and scandalously in debt, while the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> -father is setting himself squarely against any further -parliamentary grant in his favor. There -are, however—or will be—relentings in the -old King’s mind, if “Wales” will promise to -settle down in life and marry his cousin, Caroline -of Brunswick—if, indeed, he be not already -married to Mrs. Fitzherbert, which some avow -and some deny. It does not appear that the -Prince is very positive in his declarations on -this point—yes or no. So he filially yields and -accedes to a marriage, which by the conditions -of the bargain is to bring him £70,000 to pay -his debts withal. She is twenty-seven—a good-looking, -spirited Brunswicker woman, who sets -herself to speaking English—nips in the bud -some love-passages she has at home, and comes -over to conquer the Prince’s affections—which -she finds it a very hard thing to do. He is -polite, however; is agreeably disposed to the marriage -scheme, which finds exploitation with a -great flourish of trumpets in the Chapel Royal of -St. James. The old King is delighted with his -niece; the old Queen is a little cool, knowing that -the Prince does not care a penny for the bride,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> -and believing that she ought to have found that -out.</p> - -<p>She does find it out, however, in good time; and -finds out about Mrs. Fitzherbert and her fine -house; and does give her Prince some very severe -curtain lectures—beginning early in that branch -of wifely duty. The Prince takes it in dudgeon; -and the dudgeon grows bigger and bigger on both -sides (as such things will); finally, a year or more -later—after the birth of her daughter, the Princess -Charlotte—proposals for separation are -passed between them (with a great flourish of -diplomacy and golden sticks), and accepted with -exceeding cordiality on both sides.</p> - -<p>Thereafter, the Prince becomes again a man -about town—very much about town indeed. -Everybody in London knows his great bulk, his -fine waistcoats, his horses, his hats and his wonderful -bows, which are made with a grace that -seems in itself to confer knighthood. For very -many years his domestic life,—what little there -was of it,—passed without weighty distractions. -His Regency when established (1811) was held -through a very important period of British<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> -history; those great waves of Continental war -which ended in Waterloo belonged to it; so did -the American war of 1812; so did grave disaffection -and discontent at home. He did not quarrel -with his cabinets, or impede their action; he -learned how to yield, and how to conciliate. -Were it only for this, ’tis hardly fair to count him -a mere posture-master and a dandy.</p> - -<p>He loved, too, and always respected his old -mother, the Queen of George III.;<a name="FNanchor_44" id="FNanchor_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> loved too,—in -a way—and more than any other creature in -the world except himself, that darling daughter -of his, the Princess Charlotte, who at seventeen -became the bride of Leopold, afterward King of -Belgium,—she surviving the marriage only a year. -Her memory is kept alive by the gorgeous marble -cenotaph you will see in St. George’s Chapel, -Windsor.</p> - -<p>It was only when George IV. actually ascended -the throne in 1820 that his separated wife put in -a disturbing appearance again; she had been living -very independently for some years on the Continent;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> -and it occurred to her—now that George -was actually King—that it would be a good thing, -and not impinge on the old domestic frigidities, to -share in some of the drawing-room splendors and -royalties of the British capital. To George IV. it -seemed very awkward; so it did to his cabinet. -Hence came about those measures for a divorce, -and the famous trial of Queen Caroline, in which -Brougham won oratorical fame by his brilliant -plea for the Queen. This was so far successful as -to make the ministerial divorce scheme a failure; -but the poor Queen came out of the trial very -much bedraggled; whether her Continental life -had indeed its criminalities or not, we shall never -positively know. Surely no poor creature was -ever more sinned against than she, in being wheedled -into a match with such an unregenerate partaker -in all deviltries as George IV. But she was -not of the order of women out of which are made -martyrs for conscience’s sake. It was in the -year 1821 that death came to her relief, and her -shroud at last whitened a memory that had -stains.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p> - -<h3>A Scholar and Poet.</h3> - -<p>We freshen the air now with quite another presence. -Yet I am to speak of a man whose life was -full of tumult, and whose work was full of learning -and power—sometimes touched with infinite -delicacy.</p> - -<p>He was born four years after Sydney Smith and -Walter Scott—both of whom he survived many -years; indeed he lacked only eleven years of completing -a century when he died in Florence, where -most of his active—or rather inactive—life was -passed. I allude to the poet and essayist, Walter -Savage Landor.<a name="FNanchor_45" id="FNanchor_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> He is not what is called a favorite -author; he never was; he never will be. In -fact, he had such scorn of popular applause, that -if it had ever happened to him in moments of -dalliance with the Muses, and of frolic with rhythmic -language, to set such music afloat as the world -would have repeated and loved to repeat, I think -he would have torn the music out in disdain for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> -the approval of a multitude. Hear what he says, -in one of his later poetic utterances:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Never was I impatient to receive</div> -<div class="verse">What <em>any</em> man could give me. When a friend</div> -<div class="verse">Gave me my due, I took it, and no more,</div> -<div class="verse">Serenely glad, because that friend was pleased.</div> -<div class="verse">I seek not many; many seek not me.</div> -<div class="verse">If there are few now seated at my board,</div> -<div class="verse">I pull no children’s hair because they munch</div> -<div class="verse">Gilt gingerbread, the figured and the sweet,</div> -<div class="verse">Or wallow in the innocence of whey;</div> -<div class="verse">Give <em>me</em> wild boar, the buck’s broad haunch give <em>me</em>,</div> -<div class="verse">And wine that time has mellowed, even as time</div> -<div class="verse">Mellows the warrior hermit in his cell.”<a name="FNanchor_46" id="FNanchor_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Such verse does not invite a large following, -nor did the man. Pugnacious, tyrannic, loud-mouthed, -setting the world’s and the Church’s -rubrics at defiance; yet weighing language to the -last jot and tittle of its significance, and—odd-whiles—putting -little tendernesses of thought and -far-reaching poetic aspirations into such cinctures -of polished verse—so jewelled, so compact, -so classic, so fine—that their music will last and -be admired as long, I think, as English speech<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> -lasts. Apart from all this man wrote, there is a -strange, half-tragic interest in his life, which will -warrant me in telling you more of him than I -have told of many whose books are more prized -by you.</p> - -<p>He was the son of a Dr. Landor, of Warwick, -in middle England, who by reason of two adroit -marriages was a man of fortune, and so secured -eventually a very full purse to the poet, who if he -had depended only on the sale of his literary -wares, would have starved. Language was always -young Landor’s hobby; and he came, by dint of -good schooling, to such dexterity in the use of -Latin, as to write it in verse or prose with nearly -the same ease as English. He loved out-of-door -pursuits in boyhood and all his life; was greatly -accomplished, his biographer says, in fishing—especially -with a cast-net; and of the prey that -sometimes came into such net there is this -frolicsome record:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“In youth ’twas there I used to scare</div> -<div class="verse">A whirring bird, or scampering hare,</div> -<div class="verse">And leave my book within a nook</div> -<div class="verse">Where alders lean above the brook,</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> -<div class="verse">To walk beyond the third mill-pond</div> -<div class="verse">And meet a maiden fair and fond</div> -<div class="verse">Expecting me beneath a tree</div> -<div class="verse">Of shade for two, but not for three.</div> -<div class="verse">Ah, my old Yew, far out of view,</div> -<div class="verse">Why must I bid you both adieu?”<a name="FNanchor_47" id="FNanchor_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>At Oxford he was a marked man for his cleverness -and for his audacities; these last brought -him to grief there, and going home upon his -rustication, he quarrelled with his father. Thereafter -we find him in London, where he publishes -his first little booklet of poems (1795); only -twenty then; counted a fierce radical; detesting -old George III. with his whole heart; admiring -the rebel George Washington and declaring it; -loving the French, too, with their liberty and -fraternity song, until it was silenced by the -cannonading of Napoleon; thenceforward, he -counts that people a nation of “monkeys, fit only -to be chained.”</p> - -<p>But Landor never loved London. We find him -presently wandering by the shores of Wales, and -among its mountains. Doubtless he takes his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> -cast-net with him; the names of Ianthé and -Ioné decorate occasional verses; a certain Rose -Aylmer he encounters, too, who loans him a book -(by Clara Reeve), from a sketch in which he -takes hint for his wild, weird poem of <cite>Gebir</cite>, his -first long poem—known to very few—perhaps -not worth the knowing. It is blind in its drift; -war and pomp and passion in it—ending with a -poisoned cup; and contrasting with these, such -rural beatitudes as may be conjured under Afric -skies, with tender love-breezes, ending in other -beatitudes in coral palaces beneath the sea. This, -at any rate, is the phantasmic outline which a -reading leaves upon my own memory. Perhaps -another reader may be happier.</p> - -<p>That shadowy Rose Aylmer, through whom the -suggestion for the poem came, was the real daughter -of Lord Aylmer, of the near Welsh country; -what Landor’s intimacy with her may have been, in -its promise or its reach, we do not know; but we -do know that when she died, somewhat later and -in a far country, the poet gave her name embalmment -in those wonderful little verses, which poor -Charles Lamb, it is said, in his later days, would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> -repeat over and over and over, never tiring of the -melody and the pathos. Here they are:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Ah, what avails the sceptred race,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Ah, what the form divine!</div> -<div class="verse">What—every virtue, every grace!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Rose Aylmer, all were thine.</div> -<div class="verse">Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes</div> -<div class="verse indent1">May weep, but never see,</div> -<div class="verse">A night of memories and of sighs</div> -<div class="verse indent1">I consecrate to thee!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Meantime, growing into a tempestuous love for -the wild Welsh country, he bargains for a great -estate, far up in a valley which opens down upon -the larger valley in which lies Abergavenny; and -being rich now by reason of his father’s death, -parts with his beautiful ancestral properties in the -Warwickshire region, lavishing a large portion -of the sales-money upon the savagery of the new -estate in Wales. He plants, he builds, he plays -the monarch in those solitudes. He marries, too, -while this mountain passion is on him, a young -girl of French or Swiss extraction—led like a -lamb into the lion’s grasp. But the first Welsh -quarrel of this poet-monarch—who was severely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> -classic, and who fed himself all his life through -on the thunder-bolts of Jupiter—was with his -neighbors; next with his workmen; then with -his tenants; then the magistrates; last with everybody; -and in a passion of disgust, he throws -down his walls, turns astray his cattle, lets loose -his mountain tarns, and leaving behind him the -weltering wreck of his half-built home, goes over -with his wife to Jersey, off the coast of Normandy. -There she, poor, tired, frighted, worried bird—maybe -with a little of the falcon in her—would -stay; <em>he</em> would not. So he dashes on incontinently—deserting -her, and planting himself in -mid-France at the old city of Tours, where he devotes -himself to study.</p> - -<p>This first family tiff, however, gets its healing, -and—his wife joining him—they go to Como, -where Southey (1817) paid them a visit; this poet -had been one of the first and few admirers of -<cite>Gebir</cite>, which fact softened the way to very much -of mutual and somewhat over-strained praises -between these two.<a name="FNanchor_48" id="FNanchor_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> From Como Landor went to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> -Pisa—afterward to Florence, his home thenceforth -for very many years; first in the town proper and -then in a villa at Fiesole from which is seen that -wondrous view—none can forget who have beheld -it—of the valley, which seems a plain—of the -nestling city, with its great Brunelleschi dome, -its arrow-straight belfry of Giotto, its quaint tower -of the Palazzo Vecchio, its cypress sentinels on the -Boboli heights, its River Arno shining and winding, -and stealing away seaward from the amphitheatre -of hills—on whose slopes are dotted white -convents, sleeping in the sun, and villas peeping -out from their cloakings of verdure, and the gray -shimmer of olive orchards.</p> - -<h3>Landor in Italy.</h3> - -<p>It was in Florence that Landor wrote the greater -part of those <cite>Imaginary Conversations</cite> which have -given him his chief fame; but which, very possibly, -may be outlived in the popular mind by the -wonderful finish and the Saxon force which belong -to many of his verselets.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></p> - -<p>The conversations are just what their name -implies—the talk of learned, or distinguished -men, on such topics as they were supposed to be -most familiar with; all <em>imagined</em>, and set forth -by the brain of Landor, who took a strange -delight in thus playing with the souls of other -men and making them the puppets of his will. -One meets in his pages Roger Ascham and Lady -Jane Grey, Milton and Andrew Marvel, and -Achilles and Helena; then we are transported -from Mount Ida to the scene of a homely colloquy -between Washington and Franklin—about monarchy -and Republicanism. Again we have Leofric -and Godiva telling their old story with a touching -dramatic interest; and can listen—if we will—to -long and dullish dispute between Dr. Johnson -and Horne Tooke, about Language and its Laws; -from this—in which Landor was always much -interested—we slip to the Philo-Russianism of a -talk between Peter the Great and Alexis. There -are seven great volumes of it all—which must -belong to all considerable libraries, private or -other, and which are apt to keep very fresh and -uncut. Of course there is no logical continuity—no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> -full exposition of a creed, or a faith, or a -philosophy. It is a great, wide, eloquent, homely -jumble; one bounces from rock to rock, or -from puddle to puddle (for there are puddles) -at the will of this great giant driver of the -chariot of imaginary talk.<a name="FNanchor_49" id="FNanchor_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> There are beauties -of expression that fascinate one; there are sentences -so big with meaning as to bring you to -sudden pause; there are wearisome chapters about -the balance of French verselets, in which he sets -up the poor Abbé Delille on rhetorical stilts—only -to pelt him down; there are page-long -blotches of crude humor, and irrelevant muddy -tales, that you wish were out. As sample of his -manner, I give one or two passages at random. -Speaking of Boileau, he says:—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“In Boileau there is really more of diffuseness than of -brevity [he loves thus to slap a popular belief straight in -the face]; few observe this, because [Boileau] abounds in -short sentences; and few are aware that sentences may be -very short, and the writer very prolix; as half a dozen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> -stones rising out of a brook give the passenger more trouble -than a plank across it.” [He abounds in short, pert similes -of this sort which seem almost to carry an argument in -them.]</p> - -<p>[Again] “Caligula spoke justly and admirably when he -compared the sentences of Seneca <em>to sand without lime</em>.”</p> - -<p>[And once more] “He must be a bad writer, or, however, -a very indifferent one, to whom there are no inequalities. -The plants of such table-land are diminutive and never -worth gathering.… The vigorous mind has mountains -to climb and valleys to repose in. Is there any sea -without its shoal? On that which the poet navigates, he -rises intrepidly as the waves riot around him, and sits composedly -as they subside.…”</p> - -<p>“Level the Alps one with another, and where is their -sublimity? Raise up the Vale of Tempe to the downs -above, and where are those sylvan creeks and harbors in -which the imagination watches while the soul reposes, those -recesses in which the gods partook of the weaknesses of -mortals, and mortals the enjoyments of the gods.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>The great learning of Landor and his vast information, -taken in connection with his habits of -self-indulgence (often of indolence), assure us -that he must have had the rare talent, and the -valuable one, of riddling books—that is, of skimming -over them—with such wonderfully quick -exercise of wit and judgment as to segregate the -valuable from the valueless parts. ’Tis not a bad<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> -quality; nor is it necessarily (as many suppose) -attended by superficiality. The superficial man -does indeed skim things; but he pounces as -squarely and surely upon the bad as upon the -good; he works by mechanical process and progression—here -a sentence and there a sentence; -but the man who can race through a book well (as -did Dr. Johnson and Landor), carries to the work—in -his own genius for observation and quick -discernment—a chemical mordant that bites and -shows warning effervescence, and a signal to stay, -only where there is something strong to bite.</p> - -<h3>Landor’s Domesticities.</h3> - -<p>Meanwhile, we have a sorry story to tell of -Landor’s home belongings. There is a storm -brewing in that beautiful villa of Fiesole. Children -have been born to the house, and he pets -them, fondles them—seems to love them absorbingly. -Little notelets which pass when they are -away, at Naples, at Rome, are full of pleasantest -paternal banter and yearning. But those children -have run wild and are as vagrant as the winds.</p> - -<p>The home compass has no fixed bearings and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> -points all awry—the mother, never having sympathy -with the work which had tasked Landor in -those latter years, has, too, her own outside vanities -and a persistent petulance, which breaks out -into rasping speech when Jupiter flings his thunder-bolts. -So Landor, in a strong rage of determination, -breaks away: turns his back on wife and -children—providing for them, however, generously—and -goes to live again at Bath, in England.</p> - -<p>For twenty-three years he stays there, away -from his family (remembering, perhaps, in self-exculpating -way, how Shakespeare had once done -much the same), rambling over his old haunts, -writing new verse, revamping old books, petting -his Pomeranian dog, entertaining admiring guests, -fuming and raving when crossed. He was more -dangerously loud, too, than of old; and at last is -driven away, to escape punishment for some scathing -libels into which a storm of what he counted -righteous rage has betrayed him. It must have -been a pitiful thing to see this old, white-haired -man—past eighty now—homeless, as good as -childless, skulking, as it were, in London, just<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> -before sailing for the Continent,—appearing suddenly -at Forster’s house, seated upon his bed -there, with Dickens in presence, mumbling about -Latin poetry and its flavors!</p> - -<p>He finds his way to Genoa, then to Florence, -then to the Fiesole Villa once more; but it would -seem as if there were no glad greetings on either -side; and in a few days estrangement comes again, -and he returns to Florence. Twice or thrice more -those visits to Fiesole are repeated, in the vague -hope, it would seem, floating in the old man’s -mind, that by some miracle of heaven, aspects -would change there—or perhaps in him—and -black grow white, and gloom sail away under -some new blessed gale from Araby. But it does -never come; nor ever the muddied waters of that -home upon the Florentine hills flow pure and -bright again.</p> - -<h3>Final Exile and Death.</h3> - -<p>He goes back—eighty-five now—toothless, and -trembling under weight of years and wranglings, -to the Via Nunziatina, in Florence; he has no -means now—having despoiled himself for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> -benefit of those living at his Villa of Fiesole, who -will not live with him, or he with them; he is -largely dependent upon a brother in England. -He passes a summer, in these times, with the -American sculptor Story. He receives occasional -wandering friends; has a new pet of a dog to -fondle.</p> - -<p>There is always a trail of worshipping women -and poetasters about him to the very last; but the -bad odor of his Bath troubles has followed him; -Normanby, the British Minister, will give him no -recognition; but there is no bending, no flinching -in this great, astute, imperious, headstrong, ill-balanced -creature. Indeed, he carries now under -his shock of white hair, and in his tottering figure, -a stock of that coarse virility which has distinguished -him always—which for so many has its -charm, and which it is hard to reconcile with the -tender things of which he was capable;—for instance, -that interview of Agamemnon and Iphigenia—so -cunningly, delicately, and so feelingly -told—as if the story were all his own, and had no -Greek root—other than what found hold in the -greensward of English Warwickshire. And I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> -close our talk of Landor, by citing this: Iphigenia -has heard her doom (you know the story); she -must die by the hands of the priest—or, the -ships, on which her father’s hopes and his fortunes -rest, cannot sail. Yet, she pleads;—there may -have been mistakes in interpreting the cruel oracle,—there -may be hope still,—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“The Father placed his cheek upon her head</div> -<div class="verse">And tears dropt down it; but, the king of men</div> -<div class="verse">Replied not: Then the maiden spoke once more,—</div> -<div class="verse">‘O, Father, says’t thou nothing? Hear’st thou not</div> -<div class="verse"><em>Me</em>, whom thou ever hast, until this hour,</div> -<div class="verse">Listened to—fondly; and awakened me</div> -<div class="verse">To hear my voice amid the voice of birds</div> -<div class="verse">When it was inarticulate as theirs,</div> -<div class="verse">And the down deadened it within the nest.’</div> -<div class="verse">He moved her gently from him, silent still:</div> -<div class="verse">And this, and this alone, brought tears from her</div> -<div class="verse">Although she saw fate nearer: then, with sighs,—</div> -<div class="verse">‘I thought to have laid down my hair before</div> -<div class="verse">Benignant Artemis, and not have dimmed</div> -<div class="verse">Her polisht altar with my virgin blood;</div> -<div class="verse">I thought to have selected the white flowers</div> -<div class="verse">To please the Nymphs, and to have asked of each</div> -<div class="verse">By name, and with no sorrowful regret,</div> -<div class="verse">Whether, since both my parents willed the change,</div> -<div class="verse">I might at Hymen’s feet bend my clipt brow,</div> -<div class="verse">And—(after those who mind us girls the most)</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Adore our own Athena, that she would</div> -<div class="verse">Regard me mildly with her azure eyes;</div> -<div class="verse">But—Father! to see you no more, and see</div> -<div class="verse">Your love, O Father! go, ere I am gone.’</div> -<div class="verse">Gently he moved her off, and drew her back,</div> -<div class="verse">Bending his lofty head far over hers,</div> -<div class="verse">And the dark depths of nature heaved and burst:</div> -<div class="verse">He turned away: not far, but silent still:</div> -<div class="verse">She now first shuddered; for in him—so nigh,</div> -<div class="verse">So long a silence seemed the approach of death</div> -<div class="verse">And like it. Once again, she raised her voice,—</div> -<div class="verse">‘O Father! if the ships are now detained</div> -<div class="verse">And all your vows move not the Gods above</div> -<div class="verse">When the knife strikes me, there will be one prayer</div> -<div class="verse">The less to them; and, purer can there be</div> -<div class="verse">Any, or more fervent, than the daughter’s prayer</div> -<div class="verse">For her dear father’s safety and success?’</div> -<div class="verse">A groan that shook him, shook not his Resolve.</div> -<div class="verse">An aged man now entered, and without</div> -<div class="verse">One word, stept slowly on, and took the wrist</div> -<div class="verse">Of the pale maiden. She looked up and saw</div> -<div class="verse">The fillet of the priest, and calm cold eyes:</div> -<div class="verse">Then turned she, where her parent stood and cried,—</div> -<div class="verse">‘O, Father! grieve no more! the ships can sail!’”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>When we think of Landor, let us forget his -wrangles—forget his wild impetuosities—forget -his coarsenesses, and his sad, lonely death; and—instead—keep -in mind, if we can, that sweet -picture I have given you.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span></p> - -<h3>Prose of Leigh Hunt.</h3> - -<p>It was some two years before George IV. came -to the Regency, and at nearly the same date -with the establishment of Murray’s <cite>Quarterly</cite>, -that Mr. Leigh Hunt,<a name="FNanchor_50" id="FNanchor_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> in company with his -brother John Hunt, set up a paper called the -<cite>Examiner</cite>—associated in later days with the -strong names of Fonblanque and Forster. This -paper was of a stiffly Whiggish and radical sort, -and very out-spoken—so that when George IV., -as Regent, seemed to turn his back on old Whig -friends, and show favors to the Tories (as he did), -Mr. Leigh Hunt wrote such sneering and abusive -articles about the Regent that he was prosecuted, -fined, and clapped into prison, where he -stayed two years. They were lucky two years -for him—making reputation for his paper and -for himself; his friends and family dressed up -his prison room with flowers (he loved overmuch<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> -little luxuries of that sort); Byron, Moore, Godwin, -and the rest all came to see him; and there -he caught the first faint breezes of that popular -applause which blew upon him in a desultory and -rather languid way for a good many years afterward—not -wholly forsaking him when he had -grown white-haired, and had brought his delicate, -fine, but somewhat feeble pen into the modern -courts of criticism.</p> - -<p>I do not suppose that anybody in our day goes -into raptures over the writings of Leigh Hunt; -nevertheless, we must bring him upon our record—all -the more since there was American blood in -him. His father, Isaac Hunt, was born in the Barbadoes, -and studied in Philadelphia; in the latter -city, Dr. Franklin and Tom Paine used to be -visitors at his grandfather’s house. At the outbreak -of the Revolution, Hunt’s father, who—notwithstanding -his Philadelphia wife—was a -bitter loyalist, went to England—his departure -very much quickened by some threats of punishing -his aggressive Toryism. He appears in England -as a clergyman—ultimately wedded to -Unitarian doctrines; finding his way sometimes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> -to the studio of Benjamin West—talking over -Pennsylvania affairs with that famous artist, and -encountering there, as it chanced, John Trumbull, -a student in painting—who in after years -bequeathed an art-gallery to Yale College. It -happens, too, that this Colonel Trumbull, in 1812, -when the American war was in progress, was -suspected as a spy, and escaped grief mainly by -the intervention of Isaac Hunt.</p> - -<p>The young Hunt began early to write—finding -his way into journalism of all sorts; his name associated -sooner or later with <cite>The News</cite>, and dramatic -critiques; with the <cite>Examiner</cite>, the <cite>Reflector</cite>, -the <cite>Indicator</cite>, the <cite>Companion</cite>, and the <cite>Liberal</cite>—for -which latter he dragged his family down into -Italy at the instance of Byron or Shelley, or both. -That <cite>Liberal</cite> was intended to astonish people and -make the welkin ring; but the Italian muddle -was a bad one, the <cite>Liberal</cite> going under, and -an ugly quarrel setting in; Hunt revenging himself -afterward by writing <cite>Lord Byron and his -Contemporaries</cite>,—a book he ultimately regretted: -he was never strong enough to make his bitterness -respected. Honeyed words became him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> -better; and these he dealt out—wave upon -wave—on all sorts of unimportant themes. -Thus, he writes upon “Sticks”; and again upon -“Maid-servants”; again on “Bees and Butterflies” -(which is indeed very pretty); and again “Upon -getting up of a cold morning”—in which he -compassionates those who are haled out of their -beds by “harpy-footed furies”—discourses on his -own experience and sees his own breath rolling -forth like smoke from a chimney, and the windows -frosted over.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Then the servant comes in: ‘It is very cold this morning, -is it not?’ ‘Very cold, sir.’ ‘Very cold, indeed, isn’t -it?’ ‘Very cold, indeed, sir.’ ‘More than usually so, isn’t -it, even for this weather?’ ‘Why, sir, I think it <em>is</em>, sir.’… And -then the hot water comes: ‘And is it quite -hot? And isn’t it too hot?’ And what ‘an unnecessary and -villainous custom this is of shaving.’”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Whereupon he glides off, in words that flow as -easily as water from a roof—into a disquisition -upon flowing beards—instancing Cardinal Bembo -and Michelangelo, Plato and the Turks. Listen -again to what he has to say in his <cite>Indicator</cite> upon -“A Coach”:—</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span></p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“It is full of cushions and comfort; elegantly colored inside -and out; rich yet neat; light and rapid, yet substantial. -The horses seem proud to draw it. The fat and fair-wigged -coachman lends his sounding lash, his arm only in action, -and that but little; his body well set with its own weight. -The footman, in the pride of his nonchalance, holding by -the straps behind, and glancing down sideways betwixt his -cocked hat and neckcloth, standing swinging from East to -West upon his springy toes. The horses rush along amidst -their glancing harness. Spotted dogs leap about them, barking -with a princely superfluity of noise. The hammer cloth -trembles through all its fringe. The paint flashes in the -sun.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Nothing can be finer—if one likes that sort of -fineness. We follow such a writer with no sense -of his having addressed our intellectual nature, -but rather with a sense of pleasurable regalement -to our nostrils by some high wordy perfume.</p> - -<p>Hawthorne, in <cite>Our Old Home</cite>, I think, tells us -that even to extreme age, the boyishness of the -man’s nature shone through and made Hunt’s -speech like the chirp of a bird; he never tired of -gathering his pretty roses of words. It is hard to -think of such a man doing serious service in the -role of radical journalist—as if he <em>could</em> speak -dangerous things! And yet, who can tell? They<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> -say Robespierre delighted in satin facings to his -coat, and was never without his <i lang="fr">boutonnière</i>.</p> - -<p>We all know the figure of Harold Skimpole, in -Dickens’s <cite>Bleak House</cite>, with traits so true to Leigh -Hunt’s, that the latter’s friends held up a warning -finger, and said: “For shame!” to the novelist. -Indeed, I think Dickens felt relentings in his -later years, and would have retouched the portrait; -but a man who paints with flesh and blood -pigments cannot retouch.</p> - -<p>Certain it is that the household of Hunt was of -a ram-shackle sort, and he and his always very -much out at ends. Even Carlyle, who was a -neighbor at Chelsea, was taken aback at the easy -way in which Hunt confronted the butcher-and-baker -side of life; and the kindly Mrs. Carlyle -drops a half-querulous mention of her shortened -larder and the periodic borrowings of the excellent -Mrs. Hunt.</p> - -<h3>Hunt’s Verse.</h3> - -<p>But over all this we stretch a veil now, woven -out of the little poems that he has left. He -wrote no great poems, to be sure; for here, as in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> -his prose, he is earnestly bent on carving little -baskets out of cherry-stones—little figures on -cherry-stones—dainty hieroglyphics, but always -on cherry-stones!</p> - -<p>His “Rimini,” embodying that old Dantesque -story about Giovanni and Paolo and Francesca, is -his longest poem. There are exceedingly pretty -and delicate passages in it; I quote one or two:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“For leafy was the road with tall array</div> -<div class="verse">On either side of mulberry and bay,</div> -<div class="verse">And distant snatches of blue hills between;</div> -<div class="verse">And there the alder was, with its bright green,</div> -<div class="verse">And the broad chestnut, and the poplar’s shoot</div> -<div class="verse">That, like a feather, waves from head to foot;</div> -<div class="verse">With ever and anon majestic pines;</div> -<div class="verse">And still, from tree to tree, the early vines</div> -<div class="verse">Hung, garlanding the way in amber lines.</div> -<div class="verse center">…</div> -<div class="verse">And then perhaps you entered upon shades,</div> -<div class="verse">Pillowed with dells and uplands ’twixt the glades</div> -<div class="verse">Through which the distant palace, now and then,</div> -<div class="verse">Looked forth with many windowed ken—</div> -<div class="verse">A land of trees which, reaching round about,</div> -<div class="verse">In shady blessing stretched their old arms out</div> -<div class="verse">With spots of sunny opening, and with nooks</div> -<div class="verse">To lie and read in—sloping into brooks,</div> -<div class="verse">Where at her drink you started the slim deer,</div> -<div class="verse">Retreating lightly with a lovely fear.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> -<div class="verse">And all about the birds kept leafy house,</div> -<div class="verse">And sung and sparkled in and out the boughs,</div> -<div class="verse">And all about a lovely sky of blue</div> -<div class="verse">Clearly was felt, or down the leaves laughed through.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">And so on—executed with ever so much of delicacy—but -not a sign or a symbol of the grave and -melancholy tone which should equip, even to the -utmost hem of its descriptive passages, that tragic -story of Dante.</p> - -<p>Those deft, little feathery touches—about deer, -and birds, and leafy houses, are not scored with -the seriousness which in every line and pause -should be married with the intensity of the -story. The painting of Mr. Watts, of the dead -Francesca—ghastly though it be—has more in -it to float one out into the awful current of -Dante’s story than a world of the happy wordy -meshes of Mr. Hunt. A greater master would -have brought in, maybe, all those natural beauties -of the landscape—the woods, the fountains, the -clear heaven—but they would all have been toned -down to the low, tragic movement, which threatens, -and creeps on and on, and which dims even -the blue sky with forecast of its controlling gloom.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span></p> - -<p>There is no such inaptness or inadequacy where -Leigh Hunt writes of crickets and grasshoppers -and musical boxes. In his version of the old classic -story of “Hero and Leander,” however, the impertinence -(if I may be pardoned the language) of -his dainty wordy dexterities is even more strikingly -apparent. <em>His</em> Hero, waiting for her Leander, -beside the Hellespont,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Tries some work, forgets it, and thinks on,</div> -<div class="verse">Wishing with perfect love the time were gone,</div> -<div class="verse">And lost to the green trees with their sweet singers,</div> -<div class="verse">Taps on the casement-ledge with idle fingers.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>No—this is not a Greek maiden listening for -the surge of the water before the stalwart swimmer -of Abydos; it is a London girl, whom the -poet has seen in a second-story back window, meditating -what color she shall put to the trimming -of her Sunday gown!</p> - -<p>Far better and more beautiful is this fathoming -of the very souls of the flowers:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">“We are the sweet Flowers,</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Born of sunny showers,</div> -<div class="verse">Think, whene’er you see us, what our beauty saith:</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Utterance mute and bright,</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Of some unknown delight,</div> -<div class="verse">We feel the air with pleasure, by our simple breath;</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> -<div class="verse indent3">All who see us, love us;</div> -<div class="verse indent3">We befit all places;</div> -<div class="verse">Unto sorrow we give smiles; and unto graces, graces.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">“Mark our ways—how noiseless</div> -<div class="verse indent3">All, and sweetly voiceless,</div> -<div class="verse">Though the March winds pipe to make our passage clear;</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Not a whisper tells</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Where our small seed dwells,</div> -<div class="verse">Nor is known the moment green, when our tips appear.</div> -<div class="verse indent3">We tread the earth in silence,</div> -<div class="verse indent3">In silence build our bowers,</div> -<div class="verse">And leaf by leaf in silence show, ’till we laugh atop, sweet Flowers!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse center">…</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">“Who shall say that flowers</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Dress not Heaven’s own bowers?</div> -<div class="verse">Who its love, without them, can fancy—or sweet floor?</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Who shall even dare</div> -<div class="verse indent3">To say we sprang not there,</div> -<div class="verse">And came not down that Love might bring one piece of heav’n the more?</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Oh, pray believe that angels</div> -<div class="verse indent3">From those blue Dominions</div> -<div class="verse">Brought us in their white laps down, ’twixt their golden pinions.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>No poet of this—or many a generation past—has -said a sweeter or more haunting word for the -flowers.</p> - -<p>We will not forget the “Abou-ben-Adhem;” nor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> -shall its commonness forbid our setting this charmingly -treated Oriental fable, at the end of our -mention of Hunt—a memorial banderole of -verse:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)</div> -<div class="verse">Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,</div> -<div class="verse">And saw within the moonlight in his room,</div> -<div class="verse">Making it rich and like a lily in bloom,</div> -<div class="verse">An Angel, writing in a book of gold.</div> -<div class="verse">Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold;</div> -<div class="verse">And to the presence in the room, he said,—</div> -<div class="verse">‘What writest thou?’ The Vision raised its head,</div> -<div class="verse">And with a look made of all sweet accord</div> -<div class="verse">Answered, ‘The names of those who love the Lord.’</div> -<div class="verse">‘And is mine one?’ said Abou. ‘Nay, not so;’</div> -<div class="verse">Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,</div> -<div class="verse">But cheerly still; and said, ‘I pray thee, then,</div> -<div class="verse">Write me as one that loves his fellow-men.’</div> -<div class="verse">The Angel wrote and vanished. The next night</div> -<div class="verse">It came again, with a great wakening light,</div> -<div class="verse">And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,</div> -<div class="verse">And lo!—Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<h3>An Irish Poet.</h3> - -<p>Among those who paid their visits of condolence -to Leigh Hunt in the days of his prisonhood,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span> -was Moore<a name="FNanchor_51" id="FNanchor_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> the author of <cite>Lalla Rookh</cite> and of <cite>The -Loves of the Angels</cite>. He was not used to paying -visits in such quarters, for he had an instinctive -dislike for all uncanny things and disagreeable -places; nor was he ever a great friend of Hunt; -but he must have had a good deal of sympathy -with him in that attack upon the Prince Regent -which brought about Hunt’s conviction. Moore, -too, had his gibes at the Prince—thinking that -great gentleman had been altogether too neglectful -of the dignities of his high estate; but he was -very careful that his gibes should be so modulated -as not to put their author in danger.</p> - -<p><cite>Lalla Rookh</cite> may be little read nowadays; but -not many years have passed since this poem -and others of the author’s used to get into the -finest of bindings, and have great currency for -bridal and birthday gifts. Indeed, there is a -witching melody in Moore’s Eastern tales, and a -delightful shimmer and glitter of language, which -none but the most cunning of our present craft-masters -in verse could reach.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span></p> - -<p>Moore was born in Dublin, his father having -kept a wine-shop there; and his mother (he tells -us) was always anxious about the quality of his -companions, and eager to build up his social standing—an -anxiety which was grafted upon the poet -himself, and which made him one of the wariest, -and most coy and successful of society-seekers—all -his life.</p> - -<p>He was at the Dublin University—took easily -to languages, and began spinning off some of -<cite>Anacreon’s</cite> numbers into graceful English, even -before he went up to London—on his old -mother’s savings—to study law at the Temple. -He was charmingly presentable in those -days; very small, to be sure, but natty, courteous, -with a pretty modesty, and a voice that -bubbled over into music whenever he recited -one of his engaging snatches of melody. He has -letters to Lords, too, and the most winning of -tender speeches and smiles for great ladies. He -comes to an early interview with the Prince of -Wales—who rather likes the graceful Irish -singer, and flatters him by accepting the dedication -of <cite>Anacreon</cite> with smiles of condescension—which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> -Mr. Moore perhaps counted too largely upon. -Never had a young literary fellow of humble birth -a better launch upon London society. His Lords’ -letters, and his pretty conciliatory ways, get him -a place of value (when scarce twenty-four) in -Bermuda. But he is not the man to lose his -hold on London; so he goes over seas only to put -a deputy in place, and then, with a swift run -through our Atlantic cities, is back again. It is -rather interesting to read now what the young -poet says of us in those green days:—In Philadelphia, -it appears, the people quite ran after him:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“I was much caressed while there.… and two or -three little poems, of a very flattering kind, some of their -choicest men addressed to me.” [And again.] “Philadelphia -is the only place in America which can boast any -literary society.” [Boston people, I believe, never admired -Moore overmuch.]</p> - -</div> - -<p>Here again is a bit from his diary at Ballston—which -was the Saratoga of that day:—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“There were about four hundred people—all stowed in a -miserable boarding-house. They were astonished at our -asking for basons and towels in our rooms; and thought we -might condescend to come down to the Public Wash, with -the other gentlemen, in the morning.”</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span></p> - -<p>Poor, dainty, Moore! But he is all right when -he comes back to London, and gives himself to -old occupations of drawing-room service, and to -the coining of new, and certainly very sweet and -tender, Irish melodies. He loved to be tapped on -the shoulder by great Dowagers, sparkling in -diamonds, and to be entreated—“Now, dear -Mr. Moore, <em>do</em> sing us one more song.”</p> - -<p>And it was pretty sure to come: he delighted -in giving his very feeling and musical voice range -over the heads of fine-feathered women. The -peacock’s plumes, the shiver of the crystal, the -glitter of Babylon, always charmed him.</p> - -<p>Nor was it all only tinkling sound that he gave -back. For proof I cite one or two bits:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Then I sing the wild song, ’twas once such a pleasure to hear,</div> -<div class="verse">When our voices commingling breathed, like one, on the ear;</div> -<div class="verse">And, as Echo far off thro’ the vale, my sad orison rolls,</div> -<div class="verse">I think, O my love! ’tis thy voice from the Kingdom of Souls</div> -<div class="verse">Faintly answering still the notes that once were so dear.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">And again:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Dear Harp of my Country! farewell to thy numbers,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">This sweet wreath of song is the last we shall twine.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Go sleep, with the Sunshine of Fame on thy slumbers,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Till touched by some hand less unworthy than mine.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“If the pulse of the patriot, soldier, or lover</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Have throbbed at our lay, ’tis thy glory alone;</div> -<div class="verse">I was <em>but</em> as the wind, passing heedlessly over,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And all the wild sweetness I wak’d was thy own.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>This is better than dynamite to stir Ireland’s -best pulses, even now.</p> - -<h3>Lalla Rookh.</h3> - -<p>Mr. Moore had his little country vacations—among -them, that notable stay up in the lovely -county of Derbyshire, near to Ashbourne and -Dovedale, and the old fishing grounds of Walton -and of Cotton—where he wrote the larger part -of his first considerable poem, <cite>Lalla Rookh</cite>—which -had amazing success, and brought to its -author the sum of £3,000. But I do not think -that what inspiration is in it came to him from -the hollows or the heights of Derbyshire; I -should rather trace its pretty Oriental confusion -of sound and scenes to the jingle of London chandeliers. -Yet the web, the gossamer, the veils and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> -the flying feet do not seem to touch ground anywhere -in England, but shift and change and grow -out of his Eastern readings and dreams.</p> - -<p>Moore married at thirty-two—after he was -known for the Irish melodies, but before the publication -of <cite>Lalla Rookh</cite>; and in his <cite>Letters and -Diary</cite> (if you read them—though they make an -enormous mass to read, and frighten most people -away by their bulk), you will come upon very frequent, -and very tender mention of “Dear Bessie”—the -wife. It is true, there were rumors that he -wofully neglected her, but hardly well founded. -Doubtless there was many a day and many a week -when she was guarding the cottage and the children -at Sloperton; and he bowing and pirouetting his -way amongst the trailing robes of their ladyships -who loved music and literature in London; but -how should he refuse the invitations of his Lordship -this or that? Or how should she—who -has no robes that will stand alone—bring her -pretty home gowns into that blazon of the salons? -Always, too (if his letters may be trusted), he is -eager to make his escape between whiles—wearied -of this <i lang="fr">tintamarre</i>—and to rush away to his cottage<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> -at Sloperton<a name="FNanchor_52" id="FNanchor_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> for a little slippered ease, and -a romp with the children. Poor children—they -all drop away, one by one—two only reaching -maturity—then dying. The pathetic stories of -the sickening, the danger and the hush, come -poignantly into his Diary, and it does seem that -the winning clatter of the world gets a hold upon -his wrenched heart over-quickly again. But what -right have you or I to judge in such matters?</p> - -<p>There are chirrupy little men—and women, -too,—on whom grief does not seem to take a hard -grip; all the better for them! Moore, I think, -was such a one, and was braced up always and -everywhere by his own healthy pulses, and, perhaps, -by a sense of his own sufficiency. His vanities -are not only elastic, but—by his own bland -and child-like admissions—they seem sometimes -almost monumental. He writes in his <cite>Diary</cite>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> -“Shiel (that’s an Irish friend) says I am the first -poet of the day, and join the beauty of the Bird-of-Paradise’s -plumes to the strength of the eagle’s -wing.” Fancy a man copying that sort of thing -into his own <cite>Diary</cite>, and regaling himself with it!</p> - -<p>Yet he is full of good feeling—does not cherish -resentments—lets who will pat him on the shoulder -(though he prefers a lord’s pat). Then he -forgives injuries or slights grandly; was once so -out with Jeffrey that a duel nearly came of it; but -afterward was his hail-fellow and good friend for -years. Sometimes he shows a magnanimous strain—far -more than his artificialities of make-up -would seem to promise. Thus, being at issue with -the publisher, John Murray (a long-dated difference), -he determines on good advisement to be away -with it; and so goes smack into the den of the -great publisher and gives him his hand: such action -balances a great deal of namby-pambyism.</p> - -<p>But what surprises more than all about Moore, -is the very great reputation that he had in his -day. We, in these latter times, have come to -reckon him (rather rashly, perhaps) only an arch -gossipper of letters—a butterfly of those metropolitan<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> -gardens—easy, affable, witty, full of -smiles, full of good feeling, full of pretty little -rhythmical utterances—singing songs as easy as a -sky-lark (and leaving the sky thereafter as empty); -planting nothing that lifts great growth, or tells -larger tale than lies in his own lively tintinnabulation -of words.</p> - -<p>Yet Byron said of him: “There is nothing -Moore may not do, if he sets about it.” Sydney -Smith called him “A gentleman of small stature, -but full of genius, and a steady friend of all that -is honorable.” Leigh Hunt says: “I never received -a visit from him, but I felt as if I had been -talking with Prior or Sir Charles Sedley.” It is -certain that he must have been a most charming -companion. Walter Scott says: “It would be a -delightful addition to life if Thomas Moore had a -cottage within two miles of me.” Indeed, he was -always quick to scent anything that might amuse, -and to store it up. His diaries overflow with -these bright specks and bits of talk, which may -kindle a laugh, but do not nestle in the memory.</p> - -<p>But considered as a poet whose longish work -ought to live and charm the coming generations,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> -his reputation certainly does not hold to the old -illuminated heights. Poems of half a century -ago, which <cite>Lalla Rookh</cite> easily outshone, have -now put the pretty orientalisms into shade. Nor -can we understand how so many did, and do, put -such twain of verse-makers as Byron and Moore -into one leash, as if they were fellows in power. -In the comparison the author of the <cite>Loves of the -Angels</cite> seems to me only a little important-looking, -kindly pug—nicely combed, with ribbons -about the neck—in an embroidered blanket, with -jingling bells at its corners; and Byron—beside -him—a lithe, supple leopard, with a tread that -threatens and a dangerous glitter in the eye. -Milk diet might sate that other; but this one, -if occasion served, would lap blood.</p> - -<p>In the pages that follow we shall, among others, -more or less notable, encounter again that lithe -leopard in some of his wanton leaps—into verse, -into marriage, into exile, and into the pit of death -at Missolonghi.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</h2> - -<p class="dropcap">We opened our budget in the last chapter -with the <cite>Quarterly Review</cite>, which was -just getting upon its legs through the smart, -keen, and hard writing of Mr. William Gifford. -It throve afterward under the coddling of the -most literary of the Tory gentlemen in London, -and its title has always been associated with the -names of John Wilson Croker, of Dr. Southey, -and of Mr. Lockhart. It is a journal, too, which -has always been tied by golden bonds to the worship -of tradition and of vested privilege, and -which has always been ready with its petulant, -impatient bark of detraction at reform or reformers, -or at any books which may have had -a scent of Liberalism. Leigh Hunt, of course, -came in for periodic scathings—some of them deserved; -some not deserved. Indeed, I am half-disposed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> -to repent what may have seemed a too -flippant mention of this very graceful poet and -essayist. Of a surety, there is an abounding affluence -of easy language—gushing and disporting -over his pages—which lures one into reading and -into dreamy acquiescence; but read as much as -we may, and as long as we will, we shall go away -from the reading with a certain annoyance that -there is so little to keep out of it all—so little -that sticks to the ribs and helps.</p> - -<p>As for the poet Moore, of whom also we may -have spoken in terms which may seem of too great -disparagement to those who have loved to linger -in his</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent13">“Vale of Cashmere</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With its roses, the brightest that earth ever gave.</div> -<div class="verse">Its temples, and grottos, and fountains as clear</div> -<div class="verse indent1">As the love-lighted eyes that hang over their wave,”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">no matter what may become of these brilliant -orientalisms, or of his life of Byron, or of his -diaries, and his “Two-penny Post Bag,” it is certain -that his name will be gratefully kept alive by -his sparkling, patriotic, and most musical Irish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> -melodies; and under that sufficient monument -we leave him.</p> - -<p>As for Landor—surely the pages in which we -dealt with him were not too long: a strange, -strong bit of manhood—as of one fed on collops -of bear’s meat; a big animal nature, yet wonderfully -transfused by a vivid intellectuality—fine -and high—that pierced weighty subjects to their -core; and yet—and yet, singing such heart-shivering -tributes as that to Rose Aylmer: coarse -as the bumpkins on the sheep wolds of Lincoln, -and yet with as fine subtleties in him as belonged -to the young Greeks who clustered about the -writer of the <cite>Œdipus Tyrannus</cite>.</p> - -<h3>The “First Gentleman.”</h3> - -<p>King George IV. was an older man than any of -those we have commented on; indeed, he was a -prematurely old man at sixty-five—feeling the -shivers and the stings of his wild life: I suppose -no one ever felt the approaches of age more mortifyingly. -He had counted so much on being -the fine gentleman to the last—such a height,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> -such a carriage, such a grace! It was a dark day -for him when his mirror showed wrinkles that his -cosmetics would not cover, and a stoop in the -shoulders which his tailors could not bolster out of -sight. Indeed, in his later years he shrunk from -exposure of his infirmities, and kept his gouty step -out of reach of the curious, down at Windsor, -where he built a cottage in a wood; and arranged -his drives through the Park so that those who had -admired this Apollo at his best should never know -of his shakiness. Thither went his conclave of -political advisers—sometimes Canning, the wonderful -orator—sometimes the Duke of Wellington, -with the honors of Waterloo upon him—sometimes -young Sir Robert Peel, just beginning to make his -influence felt; oftener yet, Charles Greville, whose -memoirs are full of piquant details about the royal -household—not forgetting that army of tailors -and hair-dressers who did their best to assuage -the misery and gratify the vanities of the gouty -king. And when he died—which he hated exceedingly -to do—in 1830, there came to light -such a multitude of waistcoats, breeches, canes, -snuff-boxes, knee-buckles, whips, and wigs, as I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> -suppose were never heaped before around any -man’s remains. The first gentleman in Europe -could not, after all, carry these things with him. -His brother, William IV., who succeeded him, was -a bluff old Admiral—with not so high a sense of -the proprieties of life as George; but honester -even in his badnesses (which were very many) and, -with all his coarseness and vulgarity, carrying a -brusque, sailor-like frankness that half redeemed -his peccadilloes. In those stormy times which belonged -to the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832, -he showed nerve and pluck, and if he split the air -pretty often with his oaths, he never offended by -a wearying dilettanteism, or by foppery. In the -year 1837 he died; and then and there began—within -the memory of a good many of us old -stagers—that reign of his young niece Victoria, -daughter of his brother, the Duke of Kent (who -had died seventeen years before)—which reign -still continues, and is still resplendent with the -virtues of the Sovereign and the well-being of -her people.</p> - -<p>Under these several royal hands, the traditional -helpfulness to men of letters had declared itself in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> -pensions and civil appointments; Southey had -come to his laureateship, and his additional pension; -we found the venerable Wordsworth making -a London pilgrimage for a “kissing of hands,” -and the honor of a royal stipend; Walter Scott -had received his baronetcy at the hands of George -IV., and that dilettante sovereign would have -taken Byron (whom we shall presently encounter) -patronizingly by the hand, except the fiery poet—scenting -slights everywhere—had flamed up in -that spirit of proud defiance, which afterward declared -itself with a fury of denunciation in the -<cite>Irish Avatar</cite> (1821).</p> - -<h3>Hazlitt and Hallam.</h3> - -<p>Another noticeable author of this period, whose -cynicism kept him very much by himself, was -William Hazlitt;<a name="FNanchor_53" id="FNanchor_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> he was the son of a clergyman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> -and very precocious—hearing Coleridge preach -in his father’s pulpit at Wem in Shropshire, and -feeling his ambition stirred by the notice of that -poet, who was attracted by the shrewd speech and -great forehead of the boy. Young Hazlitt drifts -away from such early influences to Paris and -to painting—he thinking to master that art. But -in this he does nothing satisfying; he next appears -in London, to carve a way to fame with his -pen. He is an acute observer; he is proud; he -is awkward; he is shy. Charles Lamb and sister -greatly befriend him and take to him; and he, -with his hate of conventionalisms, loves those -Lamb chambers and the whist parties, where he -can go, in whatever slouch costume he may choose; -poor Mary Lamb, too, perceiving that he has -a husband-ish hankering after a certain female -friend of hers—blows hot and cold upon it, in -her quaint little notelets, with a delighted and an -undisguised sense of being a party to their little -game. It ended in a marriage at last; not without -its domestic infelicities; but these would be -too long, and too dreary for the telling. Mr. -Hazlitt wrote upon a vast variety of topics—upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> -art, and the drama, upon economic questions, -upon politics—as wide in his range as Leigh -Hunt; and though he was far more trenchant, -more shrewd, more disputatious, more thoughtful, -he did lack Hunt’s easy pliancy and grace of touch. -Though a wide reader and acute observer, Hazlitt -does not contend or criticise by conventional -rules; his law of measurement is not by old syntactic, -grammatic, or dialectic practices; there’s -no imposing display of critical implements (by -which some operators dazzle us), but he cuts—quick -and sharp—to the point at issue. We -never forget his strenuous, high-colored personality, -and the seething of his prejudices—whether -his talk is of Napoleon (in which he is not reverent -of average British opinion), or of Sir Joshua -Reynolds, or of Burke’s brilliant oratorical apostrophes. -But with fullest recognition of his acuteness, -and independence, there remains a disposition -(bred by his obstinacies and shortcomings) -to take his conclusions <i lang="la">cum grano salis</i>. He never -quite disabuses our mind of the belief that he is a -paid advocate; he never conquers by calm; and, -upon the whole, impresses one as a man who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> -found little worth the living for in this world, -and counted upon very little in any other.</p> - -<p>The historian, Henry Hallam,<a name="FNanchor_54" id="FNanchor_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> on the other -hand, who was another notable literary character of -this epoch, was full of all serenities of character—even -under the weight of such private griefs as were -appalling. He was studious, honest, staid—with -a great respect for decorum; he would have gravitated -socially—as he did—rather to Holland -House than to the chambers where Lamb presided -over the punch-bowl. In describing the man one -describes his histories; slow, calm, steady even to -prosiness, yet full; not entertaining in a gossipy -sense; not brilliant; scarce ever eloquent. If he -is in doubt upon a point he tells you so; if there -has been limitation to his research, there is no -concealment of it; I think, upon the whole, the -honestest of all English historians. In his search -for truth, neither party, nor tradition, nor religious -scruples make him waver. None can make -their historic journey through the Middle Ages<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> -without taking into account the authorities he -has brought to notice, and the path that he has -scored.</p> - -<p>And yet there is no atmosphere along that path -as he traces it. People and towns and towers and -monarchs pile along it, clearly defined, but in dead -shapes. He had not the art—perhaps he would -have disdained the art—to touch all these with -picturesque color, and to make that page of the -world’s history glow and palpitate with life.</p> - -<p>Among those great griefs which weighed upon -the historian, and to which allusion has been -made, I name that one only with which you are -perhaps familiar—I mean the sudden death of his -son Arthur, a youth of rare accomplishments—counted -by many of more brilliant promise than -any young Englishman of his time—yet snatched -from life, upon a day of summer’s travel, as by a -thunderbolt. He lies buried in Clevedon Church, -which overhangs the waters of Bristol Channel; -and his monument is Tennyson’s wonderful memorial -poem.</p> - -<p>I will not quote from it; but cite only the lines -“out of which” (says Dr. John Brown), “as out of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> -the well of the living waters of Love, flows forth -all <cite>In Memoriam</cite>.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Break—break—break</div> -<div class="verse indent1">At the foot of thy crags, O sea:</div> -<div class="verse">But the tender grace of a day that is dead</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Will never come back to me.</div> -<div class="verse">And the stately ships go on</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To their haven under the hill;</div> -<div class="verse">But O, for the touch of a vanished hand</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the sound of a voice that is still.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>I have purposely set before you two strongly -contrasted types of English literary life in that -day—in William Hazlitt and Henry Hallam—the -first representing very nearly what we would -call the Bohemian element—ready to-day for an -article in the <cite>Edinburgh Review</cite>, and to-morrow -for a gibe in the <cite>Examiner</cite>, or a piece of diablerie -in the <cite>London Magazine</cite>; Hallam, on the other -hand, representing the sober and orderly traditions, -colored by the life and work of such men -as Hume, Roscoe, and Gibbon.</p> - -<h3>Queen of a Salon.</h3> - -<p>Another group of literary people, of a very -varied sort, we should have found in the salons<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> -of my Lady Blessington,<a name="FNanchor_55" id="FNanchor_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> who used to hold court -on the Thames—now by Piccadilly, and again at -Gore House—in the early part of this century. -She was herself a writer; nor is her personal history -without its significance, as an outgrowth of -times when George IV. was setting the pace for -those ambitious of social distinction.</p> - -<p>She was the quick-witted daughter of an Irish -country gentleman of the Lucius O’Trigger sort—nicknamed -Beau Power. He loved a whip and -fast horses—also dogs, powder, and blare. He -wore white-topped boots, with showy frills and -ruffles; he drank hard, swore harder—wasted his -fortune, abused his wife, but was “very fine” to -the end. He was as cruel as he was fine; shot a -peasant once, in cold blood, and dragged him home -after his saddle beast. He worried his daughter, -Marguerite (Lady Blessington), into marrying, -at fifteen, a man whom she detested. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> -gave relief, however, from paternal protection, -until the husband proved worse than the father, -and separation ensued—made good (after some -years of tumultuous, uneasy life) by the violent -and providential death of the recreant husband. -Shortly after, she married Lord Blessington, a rich -Irish nobleman, very much blasé, seven years -her senior, but kind and always generous with -her. Then came travel in a princely way over the -Continent, with long stays in pleasant places, and -such lavish spendings as put palaces at their disposal—of -all which a readable and gossipy record -is given in her <cite>Idler in Italy</cite> and <cite>Idler in France</cite>—books -well known, in their day, in America. -Of course she encountered in these ramblings -Landor, Shelley, Byron, and all notable Englishmen, -and when she returned to London it was to -establish that brilliant little court already spoken -of. She was admirably fitted for sovereign of -such a court; she was witty, ready, well-instructed; -was beautiful, too, and knew every -art of the toilet.<a name="FNanchor_56" id="FNanchor_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span></p> - -<p>More than this, she was mistress of all the -pretty and delicate arts of conciliation; had -amazing aptitude for accommodating herself to -different visitors—flattering men without letting -them know they were flattered—softening difficulties, -bringing enemies together, magnetizing -the most obstinate and uncivil into acquiescence -with her rules of procedure. Withal she had in -large development those Irish traits of generosity -and cheer, with a natural, winning way, which -she studied to make more and more taking. One -of those women who, with wit, prettiness, and -grace, count it the largest, as it is (to them) the -most agreeable duty of life, to be forever making -social conquests, and forever reaping the applause -of drawing-rooms. And if we add to the smiles -and the witty banter and the persuasive tones of -our lady, the silken hangings, the velvet carpets, -the mirrors multiplying inviting alcoves, with -paintings by Cattermole or Stothard, and marbles, -maybe by Chantrey or Westmacott, and music in -its set time by the best of London masters, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> -cooking in its season as fine as the music,—and -we shall be at no loss to measure the attractions -of Gore House, and to judge of the literary and -social aspects which blazed there on the foggy -banks of the Thames. No wonder that old Samuel -Rogers, prince of epicures, should love to -carry his pinched face and his shrunk shanks into -such sunny latitudes. Moore, too, taking his -mincing steps into those regions, would find banquets -to remind him of the Bowers of Bendemeer. -Possibly, too, the Rev. Sydney Smith, without -the fear of Lady Holland in his heart or eyes, -may have pocketed his dignity as Canon of St. -Paul’s and gone thither to taste the delights of -the table or of the talk. Even Hallam, or -Southey (on his rare visits to town), may have -gone there. Lady Blessington was always keenly -awake for such arrivals. Even Brougham used to -take sometimes his clumsy presence to her brilliant -home; and so, on occasion, did that younger -politician, and accomplished gentleman, Sir Robert -Peel. Procter—better known as Barry Cornwall—the -song-writer, was sure to know his way -to those doors and to be welcomed; and Leigh<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> -Hunt was always eager to play off his fine speeches -amid such surroundings of wine and music.</p> - -<p>The Comte d’Orsay, artist and man of letters, -who married (1827) a daughter of Lord Blessington -(step-daughter of the Countess), was a standing -ornament of the house; and rivalling him in -their cravats and other millinery were two young -men who had long careers before them. These -were Benjamin Disraeli and Edward Lytton Bulwer.</p> - -<h3>Young Bulwer and Disraeli.</h3> - -<p>It was some years before the passage of the Reform -bill, and before the death of George IV., -that Bulwer<a name="FNanchor_57" id="FNanchor_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> blazed out in <cite>Pelham</cite> (1828), <cite>The -Disowned</cite>, and <cite>Devereux</cite>, making conquest of the -novel-reading town, at a time when <cite>Quentin Durward</cite> -(1823) was not an old book, and <cite>Woodstock</cite><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> -(1826) still fresh. And if Pelhamism had its -speedy subsidence, the same writer put such captivating -historic garniture and literary graces about -the Italian studies of <cite>Rienzi</cite>, and of the <cite>Last Days -of Pompeii</cite>, as carry them now into most libraries, -and insure an interested reading—notwithstanding -a strong sensuous taint and sentimental extravagances.</p> - -<p>He had scholarship; he had indefatigable industry; -he had abounding literary ambitions and -enthusiasms, but he had no humor; I am afraid -he had not a very sensitive conscience; and he -had no such pervading refinement of literary -taste as to make his work serve as the exemplar -for other and honester workers.</p> - -<p>Benjamin Disraeli<a name="FNanchor_58" id="FNanchor_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> in those days overmatched -him in cravats and in waistcoats, and was the -veriest fop of all fop-land. No more beautiful -accessory could be imagined to the drawing-room -receptions over which Lady Blessington presided,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> -and of which the ineffable Comte d’Orsay was a -shining and a fixed light, than this young Hebraic -scion of a great Judean house—whose curls were -of the color of a raven’s wing, and whose satin -trumpery was ravishing!</p> - -<p>And yet—this young foppish Disraeli, within -fifty years, held the destinies of Great Britain in -his hand, and had endowed the Queen with the -grandest title she had ever worn—that of Empress -of India. Still further, in virtue of his old -friendship for his fellow fop Bulwer, he sends the -son of that novelist (in the person of the second -Lord Lytton) to preside over a nation numbering -two hundred millions of souls. Whoever can -accomplish these ends with such a people as that -of Great Britain must needs have something in -him beyond mere fitness for the pretty salons of -my Lady Blessington.</p> - -<p>And what was it? Whatever you may count it, -there is surely warrant for telling you something -of his history and his antecedents: Three or -more centuries ago—at the very least—a certain -Jew of Cordova, in Spain, driven out by the -terrors of the Inquisition, went to Venice—established<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> -himself there in merchandise, and his family -throve there for two hundred years. A century -and a half ago,—when the fortunes of Venice -were plainly on the wane—the head of this Jewish -family—Benjamin Disraeli (grandfather of -the one of whom we speak) migrated to England. -This first English Benjamin met with success on -the Exchange of London, and owing to the influences -of his wife (who hated all Jewry) he discarded -his religious connection with Hebraism, went to -the town of Enfield, a little north of London—with -a good fortune, and lived there the life of a -retired country gentleman. He had a son Isaac, -who devoted himself to the study of literature, -and showed early strong bookish proclivities—very -much to the grief of his father, who had a -shrewd contempt for all such follies. Yet the -son Isaac persisted, and did little else through a -long life, save to prosecute inquiries about the -struggles of authors and the lives of authors -and the work of authors—all ending in that -agglomeration which we know as the <cite>Curiosities -of Literature</cite>—a book which sixty years since -used to be reckoned a necessary part of all well-equipped<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> -libraries; but which—to tell truth—has -very little value; being without any method, -without fulness, and without much accuracy. It -is very rare that so poor a book gets so good a -name, and wears it so long.</p> - -<p>Oddly enough, this father, who had devoted a -life to the mere gossip of literature, as it were, -warns his son Benjamin against literary pursuits -(he wrote three or four novels indeed,<a name="FNanchor_59" id="FNanchor_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> but they -are never heard of), and the son studied mostly -under private tutors; there is no full or trustworthy -private biography of him: but we know -that in the years 1826-1827—only a short time -before the Lady Blessington coterie was in its best -feather—he wrote a novel called <cite>Vivian Grey</cite>,—the -author being then under twenty-two—which -for a time divided attention with <cite>Pelham</cite>. In club -circles it made even more talk. It is full of pictures -of people of the day; Brougham and Wilson -Croker, and Southey, and George Canning, -and Mrs. Coutts and Lady Melbourne (Caroline -Lamb), all figure in it. He never gave over, indeed,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> -putting portraits in his books—as Goldwin -Smith can tell us. The larger Reviews were coy -of praise and coy of condemnation: indeed ’twas -hard to say which way it pointed—socially or politically; -but, for the scandal-mongers, there was -in it very appetizing meat. He became a lion of -the salons; and he enjoyed the lionhood vastly. -Chalon<a name="FNanchor_60" id="FNanchor_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> painted him in that day—a very Adonis—gorgeous -in velvet coat and in ruffled shirt.</p> - -<p>But he grew tired of England and made his trip -of travel; it followed by nearly a score of years -after that of Childe Harold, and was doubtless -largely stimulated by it; three years he was gone—wandering -over all the East, as well as Europe. -He came back with an epic (published 1834), believing -that it was to fill men’s minds, and to conquer -a place for him among the great poets of the -century. In this he was dismally mistaken; so -he broke his lyre, and that was virtually the last -of his poesy. There came, however, out of these -journeyings, besides the poem, the stories of <cite>Contarini<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> -Fleming</cite>, of <cite>The Young Duke</cite>, and <cite>The -Wondrous Tale of Alroy</cite>. These kept his fame -alive, but seemed after all only the work of a man -playing with literature, rather than of one in -earnest.</p> - -<p>With ambition well sharpened now, by what he -counted neglect, he turned to politics; as the son -of a country gentleman of easy fortune, it was not -difficult to make place for himself. Yet, with all -the traditions of a country gentleman about him, -in his first moves he was not inclined to Toryism; -indeed, he startled friends by his radicalism—was -inclined to shake hands at the outset -with the arch-agitator O’Connell; but not identifying -himself closely with either party; and so, to -the last it happened that his sympathies were -halved in most extraordinary way; he had the -concurrence of the most staid, Toryish, and conservative -of country voters; and no man could, like -himself, bring all the jingoes of England howling -at his back. Indeed, nothing is more remarkable -in his career than his shrewd adaptation of policy -to meet existing, or approaching tides of feeling; -he does not avow great convictions of duty, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> -stand by them; but he toys with convictions; -studies the weakness, as he does the power, of -those with him or against him; shifts his ground -accordingly; rarely lacking poise, and the attitude -of seeming steadfastness; whipping with his -scourge of a tongue the little lapses of his adversaries -till they shrill all over the kingdom; and -putting his own triumphs—great or small—into -such scenic combination, with such beat of drum, -and blare of trumpet, as to make all England -break out into bravos.<a name="FNanchor_61" id="FNanchor_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> There was not that literary -quality in his books, either early or late, -which will give to them, I think, a very long life; -but there was in the man a quality of shrewdness -and of power which will be long remembered—perhaps -not always to his honor.</p> - -<p>I do not yield to any in admiration for the noble -and philanthropic qualities which belong to the -venerable, retired statesman of Hawarden; yet I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> -cannot help thinking that if such a firm and audacious -executive hand as belonged to Lord Beaconsfield, -had—in the season of General Gordon’s -stress at Khartoum—controlled the fleets and -armies of Great Britain, there would have been -quite other outcome to the sad imbroglio in the -Soudan. When war is afoot, the apostles of peace -are the poorest of directors.</p> - -<p>I go back for a moment to that Blessington -Salon—in order to close her story. There was -a narrowed income—a failure of her jointure—a -shortening of her book sales; but, notwithstanding, -there was a long struggle to keep -that brilliant little court alive. One grows to -like so much the music and the fêtes and the -glitter of the chandeliers, and the unction of -flattering voices! But at last the ruin came; on -a sudden the sheriffs were there; and clerks with -their inventories in place of the “Tokens” and -“annuals”—with their gorgeous engravings by -Finden & Heath—which the Mistress had exploited; -and she hurried off—after the elegant -D’Orsay—to Paris, hoping to rehabilitate herself, -on the Champs Elysées, under the wing of Louis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> -Napoleon, just elected President. I chanced to see -her in her coupé there, on a bright afternoon early -in 1849—with elegant silken wraps about her -and a shimmer of the old kindly smile upon her -shrunken face—dashing out to the Bois; but -within three months there was another sharp -change; she—dead, and her pretty <i lang="fr">decolleté</i> court -at an end forever.</p> - -<h3>The Poet of Newstead.</h3> - -<p>The reminiscences and conversations of Lord -Byron, which we have at the hands of Lady -Blessington, belong to a time, of course, much -earlier than her series of London triumphs, and -date with her journeys in Italy. A score of years -at least before ever the chandeliers of her Irish -ladyship were lighted in Gore House, Byron<a name="FNanchor_62" id="FNanchor_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span> -gone sailing away from England under a storm -of wrath; and he never came back again. Indeed -it is not a little extraordinary that one of the most -typical of English poets, should—like Landor, -with whom he had many traits in common—have -passed so little of his active life on English -ground. Like Landor, he loved England most -when England was most behind him. Like -Landor, he was gifted with such rare powers as -belonged to few Englishmen of that generation. -In Landor these powers, so far as they expressed -themselves in literary form, were kept in check -by the iron rulings of a scrupulous and exacting -craftsmanship; while in Byron they broke all -trammels, whether of craftsmanship or reason, and -glowed and blazed the more by reason of their -audacities. Both were prone to great tempests of -wrath which gave to both furious joys, and, I -think, as furious regrets.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span></p> - -<p>Byron came by his wrathfulness in good hereditary -fashion—as we shall find if we look back -only a little way into the records of that Newstead -family. Newstead Abbey (more properly Priory, -the archæologists tell us) is the name of that great -English home—half a ruin—associated with the -early years of the poet, but never for much time or -in any true sense a home of his own. It is some -ten miles north of Nottingham, in an interesting -country, where lay the old Sherwood Forest, with -its traditions of Robin Hood; there is a lichened -Gothic front which explains the Abbey name; -there are great rambling corridors and halls; there -is a velvety lawn, with the monument to “Boatswain,” -the poet’s dog; but one who goes there—with -however much of Byronic reading in his or -her mind—will not, I think, warm toward the -locality; and the curious foot-traveller will incline -to trudge away in a hunt for Annesley, and the -“Antique Oratory.”</p> - -<p>Well, in that ancient home, toward the end of -the last century, there lived, very much by himself, -an old Lord Byron, who some thirty years -before, in a fit of wild rage, had killed a neighbor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> -and kinsman of the name of Chaworth; there was -indeed a little show of a duel about the murder—which -was done in a London tavern, and by -candle-light. His peerage, however, only saved -this “wicked lord,” as he was called, from prison; -and at Newstead his life smouldered out in 1798, -under clouds of hate, and of distrust. His son -was dead before him; so was his grandson, the -last heir in direct line; but he had a younger -brother, John, who was a great seaman—who published -accounts of his voyages,<a name="FNanchor_63" id="FNanchor_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> which seem always -to have been stormy, and which lend, maybe, some -realistic touches to the shipwreck scenes in “Don -Juan.” A son of this voyager was the father of -the poet, and was reputed to be as full of wrath -and turbulence as his uncle who killed the -Chaworth; and his life was as thick with disaster -as that of the unlucky voyager. His first marriage -was a runaway one with a titled lady, whose heart -he broke, and who died leaving that lone daughter -who became the most worthy Lady Augusta<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> -Leigh. For second wife he married Miss Gordon, -a Scotch heiress, the mother of the poet, whose -fortune he squandered, and whose heart also he -would have broken—if it had been of a breaking -quality. With such foregoers of his own name, -one might look for bad blood in the boy; nor was -his mother saint-like; she had her storms of -wrath; and from the beginning, I think, gave -her boy only cruel milk to drink.</p> - -<p>His extreme boyhood was passed near to Aberdeen, -with the Highlands not far off. How much -those scenes impressed him, we do not know; but -that some trace was left may be found in verses -written near his death:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“He who first met the Highland’s swelling blue</div> -<div class="verse">Will love each peak that shows a kindred hue;</div> -<div class="verse">Hail in each crag a friend’s familiar face</div> -<div class="verse">And clasp the mountain in his mind’s embrace.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>When the boy was ten, the wicked lord who -had killed the Chaworth died; and the Newstead -inheritance fell to the young poet. We can -imagine with what touch of the pride that shivers -through so many of his poems, this lad—just<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> -lame enough to make him curse that unlucky -fate—paced first down the hall at Newstead—thenceforth -master there—a Peer of England.</p> - -<p>But the estate was left in sorry condition; the -mother could not hold it as a residence; so they -went to Nottingham—whereabout the boy seems to -have had his first schooling. Not long afterward -we find him at Harrow, not far out of London, -where he makes one or two of the few friendships -which abide; there, too, he gives first evidence of -his power over language.</p> - -<p>It is at about this epoch, also, that on his visits -to Nottingham—which is not far from the Chaworth -home of Annesley—comes about the spinning -of those little webs of romance which are -twisted afterward into the beautiful Chaworth -“Dream.” It is an old story to tell, yet how -everlastingly fresh it keeps!</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“The maid was on the eve of womanhood;</div> -<div class="verse">The boy had fewer summers, but his heart</div> -<div class="verse">Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye</div> -<div class="verse">There was but one beloved face on earth,</div> -<div class="verse">And that was shining on him; he had looked</div> -<div class="verse">Upon it till it could not pass away;</div> -<div class="verse">He had no breath, nor being, but in hers,</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> -<div class="verse">She was his voice … upon a tone,</div> -<div class="verse">A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow,</div> -<div class="verse">And his cheek change tempestuously—his heart</div> -<div class="verse">Unknowing of its cause of agony.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>As a matter of fact, Miss Chaworth was two -years older, and far more mature than he; she was -gentle too, and possessed of a lady-like calm, -which tortured him—since he could not break it -down. Indeed, through all the time when he was -sighing, she was looking over his head at Mr. -Musters—who was bluff and hearty, and who -rode to the hounds, and was an excellent type of -the rollicking, self-satisfied, and beef-eating English -squire—whom she married.</p> - -<h3>Early Verse and Marriage.</h3> - -<p>After this episode came Cambridge, and those -<cite>Hours of Idleness</cite> which broke out into verse, -and caught the scathing lash of Henry Brougham—then -a young, but well-known, advocate, who -was conspiring with Sydney Smith and Jeffrey -(as I have told you) to renovate the world through -the pages of the <cite>Edinburgh Review</cite>.</p> - -<p>But this lashing brought a stinging reply; and -the clever, shrewd, witty couplets of Byron’s satire<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> -upon the Scottish Reviewers (1809), convinced all -scholarly readers that a new and very piquant -pen had come to the making of English verse. -Nor were Byron’s sentimentalisms of that day all so -crude and ill-shapen as Brougham would have led -the public to suppose. I quote a fragment from -a little poem under date of 1808—he just twenty:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“The dew of the morning</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Sunk chill on my brow</div> -<div class="verse">It felt like the warning</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of what I feel now,</div> -<div class="verse">Thy vows are all broken</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And light is thy fame;</div> -<div class="verse">I hear thy name spoken,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And share in its shame.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“They name thee before me,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A knell to mine ear;</div> -<div class="verse">A shudder comes o’er me—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Why wert thou so dear?</div> -<div class="verse">They know not I knew thee,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Who knew thee too well;</div> -<div class="verse">Long, long shall I rue thee</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Too deeply to tell.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Naturally enough, our poet is beaming with the -success of his satire, which is widely read, and -which has made him foes of the first rank; but -what cares he for this? He goes down with a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> -company of fellow roisterers, and makes the old -walls of Newstead ring with the noisy celebration -of his twenty-first birthday; and on the trail of that -country revel, and with the sharp, ringing couplets -of his “English Bards” crackling on the public -ear, he breaks away for his first joyous experience -of Continental travel. This takes him -through Spain and to the Hellespont and among -the isles of Greece—seeing visions there and -dreaming dreams, all which are braided into that -tissue of golden verse we know as the first two -cantos of <cite>Childe Harold</cite>.</p> - -<p>On his return, and while as yet this poem of -travel is on the eve of publication, he prepares -himself for a new <i lang="fr">coup</i> in Parliament—being -not without his oratorical ambitions. It was -in February of 1812 that he made his maiden -speech in the House of Lords—carefully worded, -calm, not without quiet elegancies of diction—but -not meeting such reception as his -extravagant expectation demanded; whatever he -does, he wishes met with a tempest of approval; a -dignified welcome, to his fiery nature, seems cold.</p> - -<p>But the publication of <cite>Childe Harold</cite>, only a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> -short time later, brings compensating torrents of -praise. His satire had piqued attention without -altogether satisfying it; there was little academic -merit in it—none of the art which made <cite>Absalom -and Achitophel</cite> glow, or which gleamed -upon the sword-thrusts of the <cite>Dunciad</cite>; but its -stabs were business-like; its couplets terse, slashing, -and full of truculent, scorching <i lang="la">vires iræ</i>. -This other verse, however, of <cite>Childe Harold</cite>—which -took one upon the dance of waves and under -the swoop of towering canvass to the groves of -“Cintra’s glorious Eden,” and among those Spanish -vales where Dark Guadiana “rolls his power -along;” and thence on, by proud Seville, and -fair Cadiz, to those shores of the Egean, where</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields,—”<a name="FNanchor_64" id="FNanchor_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span></p> - -<p class="noindent">was of quite another order. There is in it, moreover, -the haunting personality of the proud, broken-spirited -wanderer, who tells the tale and wraps -himself in the veil of mysterious and piquant sorrows: -Withal there is such dash and spirit, such -mastery of language, such marvellous descriptive -power, such subtle pauses and breaks, carrying -echoes beyond the letter—as laid hold on -men and women—specially on women—in a way -that was new and strange. And this bright meteor -had flashed athwart a sky where such stars as -Southey, and Scott, and Rogers, and the almost -forgotten Crabbe, and Coleridge, and Wordsworth -had been beaming for many a day. Was it -strange that the doors of London should be flung -wide open to this fresh, brilliant singer who had -blazed such a path through Spain and Greece, and -who wore a coronet upon his forehead?</p> - -<p>He was young, too, and handsome as the morning; -and must be mated—as all the old dowagers -declared. So said his friends—his sister chiefest -among them; and the good Lady Melbourne -(mother-in-law of Lady Caroline Lamb)—not -without discreet family reasons of her own—fixed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> -upon her charming niece, Miss Milbanke, as the -one with whom the new poet should be coupled, -to make his way through the wildernesses before -him. And there were other approvals; even Tom -Moore—who, of all men, knew his habits best—saying -a reluctant “Yes”—after much hesitation. -And so, through a process of coy propositions and -counter-propositions, the marriage was arranged -at last, and came about down at Seaham House -(near Stockton-on-Tees), the country home of the -father, Sir Ralph Milbanke.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Her face was fair, but was not that which made</div> -<div class="verse">The starlight of his boyhood; as he stood</div> -<div class="verse">Even at the altar, o’er his brow there came</div> -<div class="verse">The self-same aspect, and the quivering shock</div> -<div class="verse">That in the Antique Oratory shook</div> -<div class="verse">His bosom in its solitude; and then—</div> -<div class="verse">As in that hour—a moment o’er his face</div> -<div class="verse">The tablet of unutterable thoughts</div> -<div class="verse">Was traced; and then it faded as it came,</div> -<div class="verse">And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke</div> -<div class="verse">The fitting vows, but heard not his own words,</div> -<div class="verse">And all things reeled around him.”<a name="FNanchor_65" id="FNanchor_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span></p> -<p>Yet the service went on to its conclusion; and -the music pealed, and the welcoming shouts broke -upon the air, and the adieux were spoken; and -together, they two drove away—into the darkness.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</h2> - -<p class="dropcap">Our last chapter brought us into the presence -of that vivacious specimen of royalty, -George IV., who “shuffled off this mortal coil” in -the year 1830, and was succeeded by that rough-edged, -seafaring brother of his, William IV. -This admiral-king was not brilliant; but we found -brilliancy—of a sort—in the acute and disputatious -essayist, William Hazlitt; yet he was far -less companionable than acute, and contrasted -most unfavorably with that serene and most -worthy gentleman, Hallam, the historian. We -next encountered the accomplished and showy -Lady Blessington—the type of many a one who -throve in those days, and who had caught somewhat -of the glitter that radiated from the royal -trappings of George the Fourth. We saw Bulwer, -among others, in her salon; and we lingered longer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> -over the wonderful career of that Disraeli, who -died as Lord Beaconsfield—the most widely -known man in Great Britain.</p> - -<p>We then passed to a consideration of that other -wonderful adventurer—yet the inheritor of an -English peerage—who had made his futile beginning -in politics, and a larger beginning in poetry. -To his career, which was left half-finished, we now -recur.</p> - -<h3>Lord Byron a Husband.</h3> - -<p>As we left him—you will remember—there -was a jangle of marriage-bells; and a wearisome -jangle it proved. Indeed Byron’s marriage-bells -were so preposterously out of tune, and lent their -discord in such disturbing manner to the whole -current of his life, that it may be worth our while -to examine briefly the conditions under which the -discord began. It is certain that all the gossips of -London had been making prey of this match of -the poetic hero of the hour for much time before -its consummation.</p> - -<p>Was he seeking a fortune? Not the least in -the world; for though the burden of debt upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> -his estates was pressing him sorely, and his extravagances -were reckless, yet large sums accruing -from his swift-written tales of the “Corsair,” -“Lara,” and “Bride of Abydos” were left untouched, -or lavishly bestowed upon old or new -friends; his liberality in those days was most exceptional; -nor does it appear that he had any -very definite notion of the pecuniary aid which -his bride might bring to him. She had, indeed, in -her own right, what was a small sum measured -by their standards of living; and her expectancies, -that might have justified the title of heiress -(which he sometimes gives to her in his journal), -were then quite remote.</p> - -<p>As for social position, there could be by such -marriage no gain to him, for whom already the -doors of England were flung wide open. Did he -seek the reposeful dignity of a home? There may -have been such fancies drifting by starts through -his mind; but what crude fancies they must have -been with a man who had scarcely lived at peace -with his own mother, and whose only notion of -enjoyment in the house of his ancestors was in the -transport to Newstead of a roistering company of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span> -boon companions—followed by such boisterous -revels there, and such unearthly din and ghostly -frolics, as astounded the neighborhood!</p> - -<p>The truth is, he marched into that noose of -matrimony as he would have ordered a new -suit from his tailor. When this whim had first -seized him, he had written off formal proposals to -Miss Milbanke—whom he knew at that time only -slightly; and she, with very proper prudence, was -non-committal in her reply—though suggesting -friendly correspondence. In his journal of a little -later date we have this entry:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“November 30, 1813 [some fourteen months before the -marriage]. Yesterday a very pretty letter from Annabella -[the full name was Anna Isabella], which I answered. What -an odd situation and friendship is ours! Without one spark -of love on either side. She is a very superior woman, and -very little spoiled … a girl of twenty, an only child -and a <i lang="fr">savante</i>, who has always had her own way.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>This evidently does not promise a very ardent -correspondence. Nay, it is quite possible that the -quiet reserve he encounters here, does offer a refreshing -contrast to the heated gush of which he -is the subject in that Babel of London; maybe,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> -too, there is something in the reserve and the assured -dignity which reminds him of that earlier -idol of his worship—Miss Chaworth of Annesley.</p> - -<p>However, three months after this last allusion -to Miss Milbanke, we have another entry in his -journal, running thus:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“January 16, 1814. A wife would be my salvation. I am -getting rather into an admiration for C——, youngest -sister of F——. [This is not Miss Milbanke—observe.] -That she won’t love me is very probable, nor shall I love -her. The business would probably be arranged between the -papa and me.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Perhaps it was in allusion to this new caprice -that he writes to Moore, a few months later:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Had Lady —— appeared to wish it, or even not to oppose -it, I would have gone on, and very possibly married, -with the same indifference which has frozen over the Black -Sea of almost all my passions.… Obstacles the -slightest even, stop me.” (<cite>Moore’s Byron</cite>, p. 255.)</p> - -</div> - -<p>And it is in face of some such obstacle, lifting -suddenly, that he flashes up, and over, into new -proposals to Miss Milbanke; these are quietly accepted—very -likely to his wonderment; for he -says, in a quick ensuing letter to Moore:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span></p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“I certainly did not dream that she was attached to me, -which it seems she has been for some time. I also thought -her of a very cold disposition, in which I was also mistaken; -it is a long story, and I won’t trouble you with it. As to -her virtues, and so on, you will hear enough of them (for she -is a kind of <em>pattern</em> in the north) without my running into a -display on the subject.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>A little over two months after the date of this -they were married, and he writes to Murray in -the same week:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“The marriage took place on the 2d inst., so pray make -haste and congratulate away.” [And to Moore, a few days -later.] “I was married this day week. The parson has pronounced -it; Perry has announced it, and the <cite>Morning Post</cite>, -also, under head of ‘Lord Byron’s marriage’—as if it were -a fabrication and the puff direct of a new stay-maker.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>A month and a half later, in another Moore letter, -alluding to the death of the Duke of Dorset -(an old friend of his), he says:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“There was a time in my life when this event would have -broken my heart; and all I can say for it now is—that it -isn’t worth breaking.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Two more citations, and I shall have done with -this extraordinary record. In March, 1815 (the -marriage having occurred in January), he writes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> -to Moore from the house of his father-in-law, Sir -Ralph Milbanke—a little northward of the Tees, -in County Durham:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“I am in such a state of sameness and stagnation, and so -totally occupied in consuming the fruits, and sauntering, and -playing dull games at cards, and yawning, and trying to read -old <cite>Annual Registers</cite> and the daily papers, and gathering -shells on the shore, and watching the growth of stunted gooseberries -in the garden, that I have neither time nor sense to -say more than yours ever—B.”</p> - -</div> - -<h3>A Stay in London.</h3> - -<p>On leaving the country for a new residence in -London, his growing cheer and spirits are very -manifest:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“I have been very comfortable here. Bell is in health, and -unvaried good humor. But we are all in the agonies of -packing.… I suppose by this hour to-morrow I shall -be stuck in the chariot with my chin upon a band-box. I -have prepared, however, another carriage for the abigail, and -all the trumpery which our wives drag along with them.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Well, there follows a year or more of this -coupled life—with what clashings we can imagine. -Old Ralph Milbanke is not there to drawl through -his after-dinner stories, and to intrude his restraining<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span> -presence. The poet finds things to -watch about the clubs and the theatres—quite -other than the stunted gooseberries that grew in -his father-in-law’s garden. Nothing is more sure -than that the wilful audacities, and selfishness, and -temper of the poet, put my lady’s repose and -dignities and perfection to an awful strain. Nor -is it to be wondered at, if the mad and wild indiscretions -of the husband should have provoked -some quiet and galling counter indiscretions on -the part of her ladyship.</p> - -<p>It is alleged, for instance, that on an early occasion—and -at the suggestion of a lady companion -of the august mistress—there was an inspection -of my lord’s private papers, and a sending home to -their writers of certain highly perfumed notelets -found therein; and we can readily believe that -when this instance of wifely zeal came to his lordship’s -knowledge he broke into a strain of -remark which was <em>not</em> precisely that of the -“Hebrew Melodies.” Doubtless he carries away -from such encounter a great reserve of bottled -wrath—not so much against her ladyship personally, -as against the stolid proprieties, the unbending<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span> -scruples, the lady-like austerities, and the -cool, elegant dowager-dignities she represents. -Fancy a man who has put such soul as he has, -and such strength and hope and pride as he has, -into those swift poems, which have taken his -heart’s blood to their making—fancy him, asked -by the woman who has set out to widen his hopes -and life by all the helps of wifehood, “<cite>When—pray—he -means to give up those versifying habits -of his?</cite>” No, I do not believe he resented this in -language. I don’t believe he argued the point; I -don’t believe he made defence of versifying habits; -but I imagine that he regarded her with a dazed -look, and an eye that saw more than it seemed to -see—an eye that discerned broad shallows in her, -where he had hoped for pellucid depths. I think -he felt then—if never before—a premonition -that their roads would not lie long together. And -yet it gave him a shock—not altogether a pleasant -one, we may be sure—when Sir Ralph, the -father-in-law, to whose house she had gone on a -visit, wrote him politely to the effect that—“she -would never come back.” Such things cannot be -pleasant; at least, I should judge not.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span></p> - -<p>And so, she thinks something more of marriage -than as some highly reckoned conventionality—under -whose cover bickerings may go on and -spend their force, and the decent twin masks be -always worn. And in him, we can imagine lingering -traces of a love for the feminine features in -her—for the grace, the dignity, the sweet face, -the modesties—but all closed over and buckled -up, and stanched by the everlasting and all encompassing -buckram that laces her in, and that has so -little of the compensating instinctive softness and -yieldingness which might hold him in leash and -win him back. The woman who cannot—on -occasions—put a weakness into her forgiveness, -can never put a vital strength into her persuasion.</p> - -<p>But they part, and part forever; the only wonder -is they had not parted before; and still -another wonder is, that there should have been -zealous hunt for outside causes when so many are -staringly apparent within the walls of home. I -do not believe that Byron would have lived at -peace with one woman in a thousand; I do not -believe that Lady Byron would have lived at peace -with one man in a hundred. The computation is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> -largely in her favor; although it does not imply -necessity for his condemnation as an utter brute. -Even as he sails away from England—from which -he is hunted with hue and cry, and to whose -shores he is never again to return—he drops a -farewell to her with such touches of feeling in it, -that one wonders—and future readers always will -wonder—with what emotions the mother and his -child may have read it:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Fare thee well and if for ever,<a name="FNanchor_66" id="FNanchor_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a></div> -<div class="verse indent1">Still for ever—fare thee well!</div> -<div class="verse">Even tho’ unforgiving—never</div> -<div class="verse indent1">’Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.</div> -<div class="verse center">…</div> -<div class="verse">Love may sink by slow decay</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But, by sudden wrench, believe not</div> -<div class="verse">Hearts can thus be torn away.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> -<div class="verse indent1">And when thou would’st solace gather,</div> -<div class="verse">When our child’s first accents flow,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Wilt thou teach her to say ‘Father’</div> -<div class="verse">Though his care she must forego?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When her little hands shall press thee,</div> -<div class="verse">When her lip to thine is prest,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee;</div> -<div class="verse">Think of him thy love has blessed.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Should her lineaments resemble</div> -<div class="verse">Those thou never more may’st see,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Then thy heart will softly tremble</div> -<div class="verse">With a pulse yet true to me;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">All my faults perchance thou knowest,</div> -<div class="verse">All my madness none can know,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">All my hopes where’er thou goest</div> -<div class="verse">Wither—yet, with thee they go.</div> -<div class="verse">Every feeling hath been shaken;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Pride which not a world could bow,</div> -<div class="verse">Bows to thee—by thee forsaken,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Even my soul forsakes me now.</div> -<div class="verse">But ’tis done, all words are idle;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Words from <em>me</em> are vainer still;</div> -<div class="verse">But the thoughts we cannot bridle</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Force their way, without the will.</div> -<div class="verse">Fare thee well! thus disunited,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Torn from every nearer tie,</div> -<div class="verse">Seared in heart and lone, and blighted—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">More than this, I scarce can die.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>I should have felt warranted in giving some intelligible -account of the poet’s infelicities at home<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> -were it only to lead up to this exhibit of his -wondrous literary skill; but I find still stronger -reasons in the fact that the hue and cry which -followed upon his separation from his wife seemed -to exalt the man to an insolent bravado, and a -challenge of all restraint—under which his genius -flamed up with new power, and with a blighting -splendor.</p> - -<h3>Exile.</h3> - -<p>It was on the 25th of April, 1816 (he being then -in his twenty-eighth year), that he bade England -adieu forever, and among the tenderest of his -leave-takings was that from his sister, who had -vainly sought to make smooth the difficulties in -his home, and who (until Lady Byron had fallen -into the blindness of dotage) retained her utmost -respect. I cannot forbear quoting two verses from -a poem addressed to this devoted sister:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Though the rock of my last hope is shivered</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And its fragments are sunk in the wave,</div> -<div class="verse">Though I feel that my soul is delivered</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To pain—it shall <em>not</em> be its slave;</div> -<div class="verse">There is many a pang to pursue me;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">They may crush—but they shall not contemn,</div> -<div class="verse">They may torture, but shall not subdue me,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">’Tis of <em>thee</em> that I think—not of them.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“From the wreck of the past, which hath perished,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thus much I at least may recall,</div> -<div class="verse">It hath taught me that what I most cherished</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Deserved to be dearest of all;</div> -<div class="verse">In the desert a fountain is springing,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In the wide waste, there still is a tree,</div> -<div class="verse">And a bird in the solitude singing</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Which speaks to my spirit of <em>thee</em>.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Never was a man pelted away from his native -shores with more anathemas; never one in whose -favor so few appealing voices were heard. It was -not so much a memory of his satirical thrusts, as -a jealousy begotten by his late extraordinary successes, -which had alienated nearly the whole literary -fraternity. Only Rogers, Moore, and Scott were -among the better known ones who had forgiven -his petulant verse, and were openly apologetic and -friendly; while such kind wishers as Lady Holland -and Lady Jersey were half afraid to make a show -of their sympathies. Creditors, too, of that burdened -estate of his, had pushed their executions one -upon another—in those days when his torments -were most galling—into what was yet called with -poor significance his home; only his title of peer, -Moore tells us, at one date saved him from prison.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span></p> - -<p>Yet when he lands in Belgium, he travels—true -to his old recklessness—like a prince; with -body servants and physician, and a lumbering -family coach, with its showy trappings. Waterloo -was fresh then, and the wreck and the blood, -and the glory of it were all scored upon his brain, -and shortly afterward by his fiery hand upon -the poem we know so well, and which will carry -that streaming war pennon in the face of other -generations than ours. Then came the Rhine, -with its castles and traditions, glittering afresh in -the fresh stories that he wove; and after these his -settlement for a while upon the borders of Lake -Geneva—where, in some one of these talks of ours -we found the studious Gibbon, under his acacia-trees, -and where Rousseau left his footprints—never -to be effaced—at Clarens and Meillerie. -One would suppose that literature could do no -more with such outlooks on lake and mountain, as -seem to mock at language.</p> - -<p>And yet the wonderful touch of Byron has -kindled new interest in scenes on which the glowing -periods of Rousseau had been lavished. Even -the guide-books can none of them complete their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span> -record of the region without stealing descriptive -gems from his verse; and his story of the -<cite>Prisoner of Chillon</cite> will always—for you and -for me—lurk in the shadows that lie under those -white castle walls, and in the murmur of the -waters that ebb and flow—gently as the poem—all -round about their foundations. I may mention -that at the date of the Swiss visit, and under -the influences and active co-operation of Madame -de Staël—then a middle-aged and invalid lady residing -at her country seat of Coppet, on the borders -of Geneva Lake—Byron did make overtures -for a reconciliation with his wife. They proved -utterly without avail, even if they were not treated -with scorn. And it is worthy of special note that -while up to this date all mention of Lady Byron -by the poet had been respectful, if not relenting -and conciliatory—thereafter the vials of his wrath -were opened, and his despairing scorn knew no -bounds. Thus, in the “Incantation”—thrust -into that uncanny work of <cite>Manfred</cite>—with which -he was then at labor—he says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Though thou seest me not pass by,</div> -<div class="verse">Thou shalt feel me with thine eye,</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> -<div class="verse">As a thing that, though unseen,</div> -<div class="verse">Must be near thee, and hath been;</div> -<div class="verse">And when, in that secret dread,</div> -<div class="verse">Thou hast turned around thy head,</div> -<div class="verse">Thou shalt marvel I am not</div> -<div class="verse">As thy shadow on the spot;</div> -<div class="verse">And the power which thou dost feel</div> -<div class="verse">Shall be what thou must conceal.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<h3>Shelley and Godwin.</h3> - -<p>Another episode of Byron’s Swiss life was his -encounter there, for the first time, with the poet -Shelley.<a name="FNanchor_67" id="FNanchor_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> He, too, was under ban, for reasons -that I must briefly make known. Like his -brother poet, Shelley was born to a prospective -inheritance of title and of wealth. His father -was a baronet, shrewd and calculating, and living<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> -by the harshest and baldest of old conventionalisms; -this father had given a warm, brooding care -to the estate left him by Sir Bysshe Shelley (the -grandfather of the poet), who had an American -bringing up—if not an American birth—in the -town of Newark,<a name="FNanchor_68" id="FNanchor_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> N. J. The boy poet had the advantages -of a place at Eton<a name="FNanchor_69" id="FNanchor_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a>—not altogether a -favorite there, it would seem; “passionate in his -resistance to an injury, passionate in his love.” -He carried thence to Oxford a figure and a -beauty of countenance that were almost effeminate; -and yet he had a capacity for doubts and -negations that was wondrously masculine. His -scholarship was keen, but not tractable; he takes -a wide range outside the established order of -studies; he is a great and unstinted admirer of -the French philosophers, and makes such audacious -free-thinking challenge to the church dignitaries -of Oxford that he is expelled—like something<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span> -venomous. His father, too, gives him the -cold shoulder at this crisis, and he drifts to London. -There he contrives interviews with his -sisters, who are in school at Clapham; and is decoyed -into a marriage—before he is twenty—with -a somewhat pretty and over-bold daughter -of a coffee-house keeper, who has acted as a go-between -in communications with his sisters. The -prudent, conventional father is now down upon -him with a vengeance.</p> - -<p>But the boy has pluck under that handsome -face of his. He sets out, with his wife—after -sundry wanderings—to redeem Ireland; but they -who are used to blunderbusses, undervalue -Shelley’s fine periods, and his fine face. He is -some time in Wales, too (the mountains there -fastening on his thought and cropping out in after -poems); he is in Edinboro’, in York, in Keswick—making -his obeisance to the great Southey -(but coming to over-hate of him in after years). -Meantime he has children. Sometimes money -comes from the yielding father—sometimes none; -he is abstemious; bread and water mostly his -diet; his home is without order or thrift or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span> -invitingness—the lapses of the hoydenish girl-wife -stinging him over and over and through and -through.</p> - -<p>But Shelley has read Godwin’s <cite>Political Justice</cite>—one -of those many fine schemes for the world’s -renovation, by tearing out and burning up most -of the old furniture, which make their appearance -periodically—and in virtue of his admiration of -Godwin, Shelley counts him among the demi-gods -of the heaven which he has conjured up. In -reality Godwin<a name="FNanchor_70" id="FNanchor_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> was an oldish, rather clumsy, but -astute and clever dissenting minister, who had left -preaching, and had not only written <cite>Political Justice</cite>, -but novels—among them one called <cite>Caleb -Williams</cite>; by which you will know him better—if -you know him at all. This gave him great -reputation in its time. There were critics who -ranked him with, or above, Scott—even in fiction. -This may tempt you to read <cite>Caleb<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> -Williams</cite>;<a name="FNanchor_71" id="FNanchor_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> and if you read it—you will not forget it. -It pinches the memory like a vice; much reading -of it might, I should think, engender, in one -of vivid imagination, such nightmare stories as -“<cite>Called Back</cite>” or “<cite>A Dark Day</cite>.”</p> - -<p>But Mr. Godwin had a daughter, Mary (whose -mother was that Mary Wollstonecraft, promoted -now to a place amongst famous women), and our -Shelley going to see Godwin, saw also the daughter -Mary—many times over; and these two—having -misty and mystic visions of a new order of -ethics—ran away together.</p> - -<p>It must be said, however, to the credit of Shelley -(if credit be the word to use), that when this -first wife killed herself—as she did some eighteen -months afterward<a name="FNanchor_72" id="FNanchor_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> (whether from grief or other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span> -cause is doubtful)—he married Miss Godwin; and -it was during the summer preceding this second -marriage that Byron (1816) encountered Shelley -on the shores of Lake Leman. Shelley had already -written that wild screed of <cite>Queen Mab</cite> -(privately printed, 1813), giving poetic emphasis -to the scepticism of his Oxford days. He had -published that dreamy poem of <cite>Alastor</cite>—himself -its poet hero, as indeed he was in a large sense of -every considerable poem he wrote. I cite a fragment -of it, that you may see what waking and -beguiling voice belonged to the young bard, who -posed there on the Geneva lake beside the more -masculine Byron. He has taken us into forest -depths:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent6">“One vast mass</div> -<div class="verse">Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence</div> -<div class="verse">A narrow vale embosoms.</div> -<div class="verse indent6">The pyramids</div> -<div class="verse">Of the tall cedar, overarching, frame</div> -<div class="verse">Most solemn domes within; and far below,</div> -<div class="verse">Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky,</div> -<div class="verse">The ash and the acacia floating, hang</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents clothed</div> -<div class="verse">In rainbow and in fire, the parasites</div> -<div class="verse">Starred with ten thousand blossoms flowed around</div> -<div class="verse">The gray trunks; and as gamesome infants’ eyes,</div> -<div class="verse">With gentle meanings and most innocent wiles</div> -<div class="verse">Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love,</div> -<div class="verse">These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs.</div> -<div class="verse indent6">… the woven leaves</div> -<div class="verse">Make net-work of the dark blue lights of day</div> -<div class="verse">And the night’s noontide clearness, mutable</div> -<div class="verse">As shapes in the weird clouds.</div> -<div class="verse indent6">One darkest glen</div> -<div class="verse">Sends from its woods of musk-rose twined with jasmine</div> -<div class="verse">A soul-dissolving odor, to invite</div> -<div class="verse">To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell</div> -<div class="verse">Silence and twilight here, twin sisters, keep</div> -<div class="verse">Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades</div> -<div class="verse">Like vaporous shapes half seen.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>And such mysteries and vaporous shapes run -through all his poetic world. He wanders, with -that rarely fine gift of rhythmic speech, as wide -away from the compact sordid world—upon -which Byron always sets foot with a ringing tread—as -ever Spenser in his chase of rainbow creations. -Yet there were penetrative sinuous influences -about that young poet—defiant of law and -wrapt in his pursuit of mysteries—which may -well have given foreign touches of color to Byron’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span> -<cite>Manfred</cite> or to his <cite>Prometheus</cite>. At any rate, -these two souls lay quietly for a time, warped -together—like two vessels windbound under -mountain shelter.</p> - -<h3>Byron in Italy.</h3> - -<p>Byron next goes southward, to riotous life in -Venice; where—whether in tradesmen’s houses -or in palaces upon the Grand Canal, or in country -villas upon the Euganean hills—he defies priests -and traditions, and order, and law, and decency.</p> - -<p>To this period belongs, probably, the conception, -if not the execution, of many of those dramas<a name="FNanchor_73" id="FNanchor_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a>—as -non-playable as ever those of Tennyson—unequal, -too, but with passages scattered here and there of -great beauty; masterly aggregation of words -smoking with passion, and full of such bullet-like -force of expression as only he could command; -but there is no adequate blending of parts to make -either stately or well-harmonized march of events -toward large and definite issues.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span></p> - -<p>Out of the Venetian welter came, too, the -fourth canto of <cite>Childe Harold</cite> and the opening -parts of <cite>Don Juan</cite>. The mocking, rollicking, -marvellous <cite>Vision of Judgment</cite>, whose daring -license staggered even Murray and Moore, and -which scarified poor Southey, belongs to a later -phase of his Italian career. It is angry and -bitter—and has an impish laughter in it—of a -sort which our friend Robert Ingersoll might -write, if his genius ran to poetry. <cite>Cain</cite> had -been of a bolder tone—perhaps loftier; with -much of the argument that Milton puts into -the mouth of Satan, amplified and rounded, -and the whole illuminated by passages of wonderful -poetic beauty.</p> - -<p>His scepticism, if not so out-spoken and full of -plump negatives as that of Shelley, is far more -mocking and bitter. If Shelley was rich in negations—so -far as relates to orthodox belief—he -was also rich in dim, shadowy conceptions of a -mysterious eternal region, with faith and love -reigning in it—toward which in his highest range -of poetic effusion he makes approaches with an -awed and a tremulous step. But with Byron—even<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span> -where his words carry full theistic beliefs—the -awe and the tremulous approaches are wanting.</p> - -<h3>Shelley Again.</h3> - -<p>Shelley went back from Switzerland to a home -for a year or more, beyond Windsor, near to -Bisham—amid some of the loveliest country that -borders upon the Thames. Here he wrote that -strange poem of <cite>Laon and Cythna</cite> (or <cite>Revolt of -Islam</cite>, as it was called on its re-issue), which, so -far as one can gather meaning from its redundant -and cumulated billows of rich, poetic language, -tells how a nation was kindled to freedom by -the strenuous outcry of some young poet-prophet—how -he seems to win, and his enemies become -like smoking flax—how the dreadful fates that -beset us, and crowd all worldly courses from their -best outcome, did at last trample him down; not -him only, but the one dearest to him—who is a -willing victim—and bears him off into the shades -of night. Throughout, Laon the Victim is the -poet’s very self; and the very self appears again—with -what seems to the cautious, world-wise reader<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span> -a curious indiscretion—in the pretty jumping -metre of “Rosalind and Helen”:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Joyous he was; and hope and peace</div> -<div class="verse">On all who heard him did abide,</div> -<div class="verse">Raining like dew from his sweet talk,</div> -<div class="verse">As where the evening star may walk</div> -<div class="verse">Along the brink of the gloomy seas,</div> -<div class="verse">Liquid mists of splendid quiver.</div> -<div class="verse">His very gestures touched to tears</div> -<div class="verse">The unpersuaded tyrant, never</div> -<div class="verse">So moved before.…</div> -<div class="verse">Men wondered, and some sneered, to see</div> -<div class="verse">One sow what he could never reap;</div> -<div class="verse">For he is rich, they said, and young,</div> -<div class="verse">And might drink from the depths of luxury.</div> -<div class="verse">If he seeks Fame, Fame never crowned</div> -<div class="verse">The champion of a trampled creed;</div> -<div class="verse">If he seeks Power, Power is enthroned</div> -<div class="verse">’Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed</div> -<div class="verse">Which hungry wolves with praise and spoil,</div> -<div class="verse">Those who would sit near Power must toil.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>It was in 1818, four years before his death, that -Shelley sailed away from English shores forever. -There was not much to hold him there; those -children of the Westbrook mother he cannot know -or guide.<a name="FNanchor_74" id="FNanchor_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> The Chancellor of England has decided<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span> -that question against him; and Law, which he -has defied, has wrought him this great pain; nay, -he has wild, imaginary fears, too, that some Lord -Chancellor, weaving toils in that web of orderly -British custom, may put bonds on these other and -younger children of the Godwin blood. Nor is it -strange that a world of more reasonable motives -should urge this subtle poet—whose head is carried -of purpose, and by love, among the clouds—to -turn his back on that grimy, matter-of-fact -England, and set his face toward those southern -regions where Art makes daily food, and where he -may trail his robes without the chafings of law or -custom. But do not let me convey the impression -that Shelley then or ever lived day by day wantonly -lawless, or doing violence to old-fashioned -proprieties; drunkenness was always a stranger to -him, to that new household—into which he had -been grafted by Godwinian ethics—he is normally -true; he would, if it were possible, bring<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span> -into the lap of his charities those other estrays -from whom the law divides him; his generosities -are of the noblest and fullest; he even entertains -at one time the singular caprice of “taking -orders,” as if the author of <cite>Queen Mab</cite> could hold -a vicarage! It opens, he said, so many ways of -doing kindly things, of making hearts joyful; and—for -doctrine, one can always preach Charity! -With rare exceptions, it is only in his mental attitudes -and forays that he oversteps the metes and -bounds of the every-day moralities around him. -Few poets, even of that time, can or do so measure -him as to enjoy him or to give him joy. Leigh -Hunt is gracious and kindly; but there are no -winged sandals on his feet which can carry him -into regions where Shelley walks. Southey is -stark unbeliever in the mystic fields where Shelley -grazes. Wordsworth is conquered by the Art, but -has melancholy doubts of the soul that seems -caught and hindered in the meshes of its own -craftsmanship. Landor, of a certainty, has detected -with his keen insight the high faculties -that run rampant under the mazes of the new -poet’s language; but Landor, too, is in exile—driven<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span> -hither and thither by the same lack of -steady home affinities which has overset and embroiled -the domesticities of the younger poet.</p> - -<h3>John Keats.</h3> - -<p>Yet another singer of these days, in most earnest -sympathy with the singing moods of Shelley—for -whom I can have only a word now, was -John Keats;<a name="FNanchor_75" id="FNanchor_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> born within the limits of London -smoke, and less than three-quarters of a mile from -London Bridge—knowing in his boy days only -the humblest, work-a-day ranges of life; getting -some good Latinity and other schooling out of a -Mr. Clarke (of the Cowden Clarke family)—reading -Virgil with him, but no Greek. And yet -the lad, who never read Homer save in Chapman, -when he comes to write, as he does in extreme -youth, crowds his wonderful lines with the delicate -trills and warblings which might have broken out -straight from Helicon—with a susurrus from the -Bees of Hymettus. This makes a good argument—so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span> -far as it reaches—in disproof of the averments -of those who believe that, for conquest of -Attic felicities of expression, the Greek vocables -must needs be torn forth root by root, and -stretched to dry upon our skulls.</p> - -<p>He published <cite>Endymion</cite> in the very year when -Shelley set off on his final voyagings—a gushing, -wavy, wandering poem, intermeshed with flowers -and greenery (which he lavishes), and with fairy -golden things in it and careering butterflies; with -some bony under-structure of Greek fable—loose -and vague—and serving only as the caulking pins -to hold together the rich, sensuous sway, and the -temper and roll of his language.</p> - -<p>I must snatch one little bit from that book of -<cite>Endymion</cite>, were it only to show you what music -was breaking out in unexpected quarters from that -fact-ridden England, within sound of the murmurs -of the Thames, when Shelley was sailing away:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent4">“On every morrow are we wreathing</div> -<div class="verse">A flowery band to bind us to the earth</div> -<div class="verse">Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth</div> -<div class="verse">Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,</div> -<div class="verse">Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways</div> -<div class="verse">Made for our searching; yes, in spite of all,</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Some shape of beauty moves away the pall</div> -<div class="verse">From our dark spirits. Such—the sun, the moon,</div> -<div class="verse">Trees—old and young, sprouting a shady boon</div> -<div class="verse">For simple sheep; and such are daffodils</div> -<div class="verse">With the green world they live in; and clear rills</div> -<div class="verse">That for themselves a cooling covert make</div> -<div class="verse">’Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake</div> -<div class="verse">Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms;</div> -<div class="verse">And such, too, is the grandeur of the dooms</div> -<div class="verse">We have imagined for the mighty dead;</div> -<div class="verse">All lovely tales that we have heard or read.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>I might cite page on page from Keats, and yet -hold your attention; there is something so beguiling -in his witching words; and his pictures are -finished—with only one or two or three dashes of -his pencil. Thus we come upon—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Swelling downs, where sweet air stirs</div> -<div class="verse">Blue harebells lightly, and where prickly furze</div> -<div class="verse">Buds lavish gold.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">And again our ear is caught with—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Rustle of the reapéd corn,</div> -<div class="verse">And sweet birds antheming the morn.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Well, this young master of song goes to Italy, -too—not driven, like Byron, by hue and cry, or -like Shelley, restless for change (from Chancellor’s -courts) and for wider horizons—but running from -the disease which has firm grip upon him, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span> -which some three years after Shelley’s going -kills the poet of the <cite>Endymion</cite> at Rome. His -ashes lie in the Protestant burial-ground there—under -the shadow of the pyramid of Caius Cestius. -Every literary traveller goes to see the grave, and -to spell out the words he wanted inscribed there:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Upon that death, Shelley, then living in Pisa, -blazed out in the <cite>Adonais</cite>—the poem making, -with the <cite>Lycidas</cite> of Milton, and the <cite>In Memoriam</cite> -of Tennyson, a triplet of laurel garlands, whose -leaves will never fade. Yet those of Shelley have -a cold rustle in them—shine as they may:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">“Oh, weep for Adonais—he is dead!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Wake, melancholy mother, wake and weep!</div> -<div class="verse">Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Like his—a mute and uncomplaining sleep.</div> -<div class="verse">For he is gone where all things wise and fair</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Descend. Oh, dream not that the amorous deep</div> -<div class="verse">Will yet restore him to the vital air;</div> -<div class="verse">Death feeds on his mute voice and laughs at our despair.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">“Oh, weep for Adonais! The quick dreams,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The passion-winged ministers of thought</div> -<div class="verse">Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span> -<div class="verse indent1">Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The Love which was its music, wander not—</div> -<div class="verse">Wander no more from kindling brain to brain,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But droop there whence they sprung; and mourn their lot</div> -<div class="verse">Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain,</div> -<div class="verse">They ne’er will gather strength, or find a home again.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>The weak place in this impassioned commemorative -poem lies in its waste of fire upon the heads -of those British critics, who—as flimsy, pathetic -legends used to run—slew the poet by their -savagery. Keats did not range among giants; but -he was far too strong a man to die of the gibes of -the <cite>Quarterly</cite>, or the jeers of <cite>Blackwood</cite>. Not -this; but all along, throughout his weary life—even -amid the high airs of Hampstead, where -nightingales sang—he sang, too,—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“I have been half in love with easeful Death,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Called him soft names in many a muséd rhyme,</div> -<div class="verse">To take into the air my quiet breath.”<a name="FNanchor_76" id="FNanchor_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<h3>Buried in Rome.</h3> - -<p>Keats died in 1821. In that year Shelley was -living between Lirici, on the gulf of Spezia, and -Pisa. While in this latter city, he was planted for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span> -a time at the old Lanfranchi palace, where in the -following season very much at the instance and -urgence of Shelley, Leigh Hunt came with his six -riotous young children, and sometimes made a din—that -was new to Byron and most worrisome—in -the court of the Lanfranchi house. Out of this -Hunt fraternizing and co-working (forecast by the -kindly Shelley) was to be built up the success of -that famous “Liberal” Journal, dear to the hearts -of Shelley and Hunt, of which I have already -spoken, and which had disastrous failure; out of -this aggregation of disorderly poetic elements grew -also the squabbles that gave such harsh color to -the <cite>Reminiscences</cite> of Leigh Hunt.<a name="FNanchor_77" id="FNanchor_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a></p> - -<p>But other and graver disaster was impending. -Shelley loved the sea, and carried with him to the -water the same reckless daring which he put into -his verse. Upon a summer day of July, 1822, he -went with a friend and one boatman for a sail -upon the bay of Spezia, not heeding some cautions<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span> -that had been dropped by old seamen, who -had seen portents of a storm; and his boat sailed -away into the covert of the clouds. Next day -there were no tidings, nor the next, nor the next. -Finally wreck and bodies came to the shore.</p> - -<p>Trelawney, Byron’s friend, tells a grim story of -it all—how the dismal truth was carried to the -widowed wife, how the body of the drowned poet -was burned upon the shore, with heathen libations -of oil and wine; how Byron and Hunt both were -present at the weird funeral—the blue Mediterranean -lapping peacefully upon the beach and the -black smoke lifting in great clouds from the pyre -and throwing lurid shadows over the silent company. -The burial—such as there was of it—took -place in that same Protestant graveyard at Rome—just -out of the Porta San Paolo—where we -were just now witnesses at the burial of Keats.</p> - -<p>Shelley made many friendships, and lasting -ones. He was wonderfully generous; he visited -the sick; he helped the needy; putting himself -often into grievous straits for means to give -quickly. As he was fine of figure and of feature, -so his voice was fine, delicate, penetrative, yet in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span> -moments of great excitement rising to a shrillness -that spoiled melody and rasped the ear; so his -finer generosities and kindnesses sometimes passed -into a rasping indifference or even cruelty toward -those nearest him, he feeling that first Westbrook -<i lang="fr">mesalliance</i>, on occasions, like a torture—specially -when the presence of the tyrannic, -coarse, aggravating sister-in-law was like a poisonous -irritant; he—under the teachings of a -conscientious father, in his young days—was -scarce more than half responsible for his wry -life; running to badnesses—on occasions—under -good impulses; perhaps marrying that first wife -because she wanted to marry him; and quitting -her—well—because “she didn’t care.” Intellectually, -as well as morally, he was pagan; seeing -things in their simplest aspects, and so dealing -with them; intense, passionate, borne away in -tempests of quick decision, whose grounds he -cannot fathom; always beating his wings against -the cagements that hem us in; eager to look into -those depths where light is blinding and will not -let us look; seeming at times to measure by some -sudden reach of soul what is immeasurable; but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span> -under the vain uplifts, always reverent, with a dim -hope shining fitfully; contemptuous of harassing -creeds or any jugglery of forms—of whatever -splendid fashionings of mere material, whether -robes or rites—and yearning to solve by some -strong, swift flight of imagination what is insoluble. -There are many reverent steps that go to -that little Protestant cemetery—an English -greenery upon the borders of the Roman Campagna—where -the ashes of Shelley rest and -where myrtles grow. And from its neighborhood, -between Mount Aventine and the Janiculan -heights, one may see reaches of the gleaming -Tiber, and the great dome of St. Peter’s lifting -against the northern sky, like another tomb, its -cross almost hidden in the gray distance.</p> - -<h3>Pisa and Don Juan.</h3> - -<p>No such friendship as that whose gleams have -shot athwart these latter pages could have been -kindled by Byron. No “Adonais” could have -been writ for him; he could have melted into no -“Adonais” for another; old pirate blood, seething -in him, forbade. No wonder he chafed at Hunt’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span> -squalling children in the Lanfranchi palace; <em>that</em> -literary partnership finds quick dissolution. He -sees on rare occasions an old English friend—he, -who has so few! Yet he is in no mood to make -new friends. The lambent flames of the Guiccioli -romance hover and play about him, making -the only counterfeit of a real home which he has -ever known. The proud, independent, audacious, -lawless living that has been his so long, whether -the early charms lie in it or no—he still clings -by. His pen has its old force, and the words spin -from it in fiery lines; but to pluck the flowers -worth the seeking, which he plants in them now, -one must go over quaking bogs, and through ways -of foulness.</p> - -<p>The <cite>Childe Harold</cite> has been brought to its conclusion -long before; its cantos, here and there -splendidly ablaze with Nature—its storms, its -shadows, its serenities; and the sentiment—now -morbid, now jubilant—is always his own, though -it beguiles with honeyed sounds, or stabs like a -knife.</p> - -<p>There have been a multitude of lesser poems, -and of dramas which have had their inception<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span> -and their finish on that wild Continental holiday—beginning -on <cite>Lac Leman</cite> and ending at Pisa -and Genoa; but his real selfhood—whether of -mind or passion—seems to me to come out plainer -and sharper in the <cite>Don Juan</cite> than elsewhere. -There may not be lifts in it, which rise to the romantic -levels of the “Pilgrimage;” there may -be lack of those interpolated bits of passion, of -gloom, of melancholy, which break into the -earlier poem. But there is the blaze and crackle -of his own mad march of flame; the soot, the cinders, -the heat, the wide-spread ashes, and unrest -of those fires which burned in him from the beginning -were there, and devastated all the virginal -purities of his youth (if indeed there were any!) -and welded his satanic and his poetic qualities into -that seamy, shining, wonderful residue of dirty -scoriæ, and of brilliant phosphorescence, which we -call <cite>Don Juan</cite>. From a mere literary point of -view there are trails of doggerel in it, which the -poet was too indolent to mend, and too proud to -exclude. Nor can it ever be done; a revised -Byron would be not only a Byron emasculated, -but decapitated and devastated. ’Twould lack the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span> -links that tie it to the humanities which coil and -writhe tortuously all up and down his pages. His -faults of prosody, or of ethics, or of facts—his -welter, at intervals, through a barren splendor of -words—are all typical of that fierce, proud, ungovernable, -unconventional nature. This leopard -will and should carry all his spots. We cannot -shrive the man; no chanters or churches can do -this; he disdains to be shriven at human hands, -or, it would seem, any other hands. The impact -of that strong, vigorous nature—through his -poems—brings, to the average reader, a sense of -force, of brilliancy, of personality, of humanity (if -gone astray), which exhilarates, which dashes away -a thousand wordy memories of wordy verses, and -puts in their place palpitating phrases that throb -with life. An infinite capability for eloquent -verse; an infinite capability for badnesses! We -cannot root out the satanry from the man, or his -books, any more than we can root out Lucifer -from Milton’s Eden. But we can lament both, -and, if need be, fight them.</p> - -<p>Whether closer British influence (which usually -smote upon him, like sleet on glass)—even of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span> -that “Ancient Oratory” of Annesley—would have -served to whiten his tracks, who shall say? -Long ago he had gone out from them, and from -parish church and sermon; his hymns were the -<cite>Ranz des Vaches</cite> on the heights of the <cite>Dent de -Jaman</cite>, and the preachments he heard were the -mellowed tones of convent bells—filtering through -forest boughs—maybe upon the ear of some -hapless Allegra, scathed by birth-marks of a sin -that is not her own—conning her beads, and -listening and praying!</p> - -<h3>Missolonghi.</h3> - -<p>It was in 1823, when he was living in Genoa—whither -he had gone from Pisa (and before this, -Ravenna)—that his sympathies were awakened in -behalf of the Greeks, who since 1820 had been in -revolt against their Turkish taskmasters. He had -been already enrolled with those Carbonari—the -forerunners of the Mazzinis and the Garibaldis—who -had labored in vain for the independence and -unity of Italy; and in many a burst of his impassioned -song he had showered welcoming praises<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span> -upon a Greece that should be free, and with equal -passion attuned his verse to the lament—that</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Freedom found no champion and no child</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Such as Columbia saw arise when she</div> -<div class="verse">Sprung forth a Pallas, armed and undefiled.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>How much all this was real and how much -only the romanticism of the poet, was now to be -proven. And it was certainly with a business-like -air that he cut short his little <i lang="fr">agaceries</i> with the -Lady Blessington, and pleasant dalliance with the -Guiccioli, for a rallying of all his forces—moneyed -or other—in the service of that cause for which -the brave Marco Bozzaris had fallen, fighting, -only three months before. It was in July that he -embarked at Genoa for Greece—in a brig which -he had chartered, and which took guns and ammunition -and $40,000 of his own procurement, -with a retinue of attendants—including his trusty -Fletcher—besides his friends Trelawney and the -Count Gamba. They skirted the west coast of -Italy, catching sight of Elba—then famous for -its Napoleonic associations—and of Stromboli, -whose lurid blaze, reflected upon the sea, startled -the admiring poet to a hinted promise—that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span> -those fires should upon some near day reek on the -pages of a Fifth Canto of <cite>Childe Harold</cite>.</p> - -<p>Mediterranean ships were slow sailers in those -days, and it was not until August that they arrived -and disembarked at Cephalonia—an island -near to the outlet of the Gulf of Corinth, and lying -due east from the Straits of Messina. There was a -boisterous welcome to the generous and eloquent -peer of England; but it was a welcome that -showed factional discords. Only across a mile or -two of water lay the Isle of Ithaca, full of vague, -Homeric traditions, which under other conditions -he would have been delighted to follow up; but -the torturing perplexities about the distribution -of moneys or ammunition, the jealousies of quarrelsome -chieftains, the ugly watch over drafts -and bills of exchange, and the griping exactions -of local money-changers, made all Homeric fancies -or memories drift away with the scuds of wind -that blew athwart the Ionian seas.</p> - -<p>He battled bravely with the cumulating difficulties—sometimes -maddened to regret—other -times lifted to enthusiasm by the cordial greeting -of such a chieftain as Mavrocordatos, or the street<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span> -cheers of a band of Suliotes. So months passed, -until he embarked again, in equipage of his own, -with his own fittings, for Missolonghi, where -final measures were to be taken. Meantime he is -paying for his ships, paying for his Suliotes, -paying for delays, and beset by rival chieftains for -his interest, or his stimulating presence, or his -more stimulating moneys. On this new but short -sea venture he barely escapes capture by a Turkish -frigate—is badly piloted among the rocky -islets which stud the shores; suffers grievous -exposure—coming at last, wearied and weakened, -to a new harborage, where welcomes are vociferous, -but still wofully discordant. He labors -wearily to smooth the troubled waters, his old, -splendid allegiance to a free and united Greece -suffering grievous quakes, and doubts; and when -after months of alternating turbulence and rest -there seems promise of positive action, he is -smitten by the fever of those low coasts—aggravated -by his always wanton exposures. The attack -is as sudden as a shot from a gun—under -which he staggers and falls, writhing with pain, -and I know not what convulsional agonies.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span></p> - -<p>There is undertaken an Italian regimen of cupping -and leeching about the brow and temples, -from which the bleeding is obstinate, and again -and again renewed. But he rallies; attendants are -assiduous in their care. Within a day or two he -has recovered much of the old <i lang="la">vires vitæ</i>, when on -a sudden there is an alarm; a band of mutinous -Suliotes, arms in hand, break into his lordship’s -apartments, madly urging some trumpery claim -for back-pay. Whereupon Byron—showing the -old savagery of his ancestors—leaps from his bed, -seizes whatever weapon is at hand, and gory—with -his bandaged head still trickling blood—he -confronts the mutineers; his strength for the -moment is all his own again, and they are cowered -into submission, their yataghans clinking as they -drop to the tiled flooring of his room.</p> - -<p>’Twas a scene for Benjamin West to have -painted in the spirit of Death on the Pale Horse, -or for some later artist—loving bloody “impressions.” -However, peace is established. Quiet -reigns once more (we count by days only, now). -There is a goodly scheme for attack upon the -fortress which guards the Gulf of Lepanto (Corinth);<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span> -the time is set; the guards are ready; -the Suliotes are under bidding; the chieftains are -(for once) agreed, when, on the 18th, he falters, -sinks, murmurs some last words—“Ada—daughter—love—Augusta—” barely -caught; -doubtfully caught; but it is all—and the poet -of <cite>Childe Harold</cite> is gone, and that turbulent, -brilliant career hushed in night.</p> - -<p>It was on April 19, 1824, that he died. His -body was taken home for burial. I said <em>home</em>; -’twere better to have said to England, to the -family vault, in which his mother had been laid; -and at a later day, his daughter, Ada, was buried -there beside him, in the old Hucknall-Torkard -church. The building is heavy and bald, without -the winning picturesqueness that belongs to so -many old country churches of Yorkshire. The beatitudes -that are intoned under its timbered arch -are not born of any rural beatitudes in the surroundings. -The town is small, straggly, bricky,<a name="FNanchor_78" id="FNanchor_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> -and neither church nor hamlet nor neighbors’<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span> -houses are suffused with those softened tints which -verdure, and nice keeping, and mellow sunshine -give to so many villages of southern England. -Hucknall-Torkard is half way between Nottingham -and Newstead, and lies upon that northern -road which pushes past Annesley into the region -of woods and parks where Sherwood forest once -flung its shadows along the aisles in which the -bugle notes of master Robin Hood woke the echoes.</p> - -<p>But Hucknall-Torkard church is bald and tame. -Mr. Winter, in his pleasant descriptive sketch,<a name="FNanchor_79" id="FNanchor_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> -does indeed give a certain glow to the “grim” -tower, and many a delightful touch to the gray -surroundings; but even he would inhibit the -pressure of the noisy market-folk against the -church-yard walls, and their rollicking guffaw. -And yet, somehow, the memory of Byron does -not seem to me to mate well with either home or -church quietudes, and their serenities. Is it not -proper and fitting after all that the clangor of a -rebellious and fitful world should voice itself near -such a grave? Old mossy and ivied towers in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span> -which church bells are a-chime, and near trees -where rooks are cawing with home-sounds, do not -marry happily with our memories of Byron.</p> - -<p>Best of all if he had been given burial where -his heart lies, in that Ætolian country, upon some -shaggy fore-land from which could have been seen—one -way, Ithaca and the Ionian seas, and to -the southward, across the Straits of Lepanto, the -woody depths of the Morea, far as Arcadia.</p> - -<p>But there is no mending the matter now; he -lies beside his harsh Gordon mother in the middle -of the flat country of stockings, lace curtains, and -collieries.</p> - -<p>Another poet, William Lisle Bowles, in a quaint -sonnet has versed this Gordon mother’s imaginary -welcome to her dead son:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent6">“Could that mother speak,</div> -<div class="verse">In thrilling, but with hollow accent weak,</div> -<div class="verse">She thus might give the welcome of the dead:</div> -<div class="verse">‘Here rest, my son, with me; the dream is fled;</div> -<div class="verse">The motley mask, and the great stir is o’er.</div> -<div class="verse">Welcome to me, and to this silent bed,</div> -<div class="verse">Where deep forgetfulness succeeds the roar</div> -<div class="verse">Of life, and fretting passions waste the heart no more!’”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span></p> - - - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</h2> - -<p class="dropcap">For many a page now we have spoken intermittently -of that extraordinary man and -poet—full of power and full of passion, both -uncontrolled—whose surroundings we found in -that pleasantly undulating Nottingham country -where Newstead Abbey piled above its lawn and -its silent tarns—half a ruin, and half a home.<a name="FNanchor_80" id="FNanchor_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> -Nor did Byron ever know a home which showed -no ruin—nor ever know a ruin, into which his -verse did not nestle as into a home.</p> - -<p>We traced him from the keeping of that passionate -mother—who smote him through and through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span> -with her own wrathful spirit—to the days when -he uttered the “Idle” songs—coined in the courts -of Cambridge—and to those quick succeeding -days, when his mad verse maddened English bards -and Scotch reviewers. Then came the passages of -love—with Mary Chaworth, which was real and -vain; with a Milbanke, which was a mockery and -ended in worse than mockery; all these experiences -whetting the edge of that sword of song -with which he carved a road of romance for thousands -of after journeymen to travel, through -the old Iberian Peninsula, and the vales of Thessaly. -Then there was the turning away, in rage, -from the shores of England, the episode with the -Shelley household on the borders of Lake Leman, -with its record of “crag-splitting” storms and -sunny siestas; and such enduring memorials as -the ghastly <cite>Frankenstein</cite> of Mrs. Shelley, the -Third Canto of <cite>Childe Harold</cite>, and the child-name -of—Allegra.</p> - -<p>Next came Venice, where the waves lapped -murmurously upon the door-steps of the palaces -which “Mi-lord” made noisy with his audacious -revelry. To this succeeded the long stay at Ravenna,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span> -with its pacifying and lingering, reposeful -reach of an attachment, which was beautiful in -its sincerity, but as lawless as his life. After -Ravenna came Pisa with its Hunt-Lanfranchi -coruscations of spleen, and its weird interlude of -the burning of the body of his poor friend Shelley -upon the Mediterranean shores. Song, and drama, -and tender verselets, and bagnio-tainted pictures -of Don Juan, gleamed with fervid intensity -through the interstices of this Italian life; but -they all came to a sudden stay when he sailed for -Greece, and with a generosity as strong as his -wilder passions, flung away his fortune and his -life in that vortex of Suliote strifes and deadly -miasmas, which was centred amid the swamplands -of Missolonghi.</p> - -<p>The Cretans of to-day (1897), and the men of -Thessaly, and of the Morea, and Albanians all, -may find a lift of their ambitions and a spur to -their courage in Byron’s sacrifice to their old struggle -for liberty, and in his magnificent outburst -of patriotic song. So, too, those who love real -poetry will never cease to admire his subtle turns -of thought, and his superb command of all the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span> -resources of language. But the households are -few in which his name will be revered as an apostle -of those cheering altitudes of thought which -encourage high endeavor, or of those tenderer -humanities which spur to kindly deeds, and give -their glow to the atmosphere of homes.</p> - -<h3>King William’s Time.</h3> - -<p>The last figure that we dealt with among England’s -kings was that bluff, vulgar-toned sailor, -William IV., whom even the street-folk criticise, -because he spat from his carriage window when -driving on some State ceremonial.<a name="FNanchor_81" id="FNanchor_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> Nor was this -the worst of his coarsenesses; he swore—with -great ease and pungency. He forgot his dignity; -he insulted his ministers; he gave to Queen Adelaide, -who survived him many years as dowager, -many most uncomfortable half-hours; and if he -read the new sea-stories of Captain Marryat—though -he read very little—I suspect he loved<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span> -more the spicier condiments of <cite>Peregrine Pickle</cite> -and of <cite>Tom Jones</cite>.</p> - -<p>Yet during the period of his short reign—scarce -seven years—events happened—some -through his slow helpfulness, and none suffering -grievously from his obstructiveness—which gave -new and brighter color to the political development -and to the literary growth of England. There -was, for instance, the passage of the Reform Bill -of 1832 (of which I have already spoken, in connection -with Sydney Smith)—not indeed accomplishing -all its friends had hoped; not inaugurating -a political millennium; not doing away with -the harsh frictions of state-craft; no reforms ever -do or can; but broadening the outlook and range -of all publicists, and stirring quiet thinkers into -aggressive and kindling and hopeful speech. Very -shortly after this followed the establishment of -that old society for the “Diffusion of Useful -Knowledge” which came soon to the out-put—under -the editorship of Charles Knight—of the -<cite>Penny Cyclopædia</cite> and the <cite>Penny Magazine</cite>.<a name="FNanchor_82" id="FNanchor_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span></p> - -<p>I recall distinctly the delight with which—as -boys—we lingered over the pictured pages of that -magazine—the great forerunner of all of our illustrated -monthlies.</p> - -<p>To the same period belong those <cite>Tracts for the -Times</cite>, in which John Keble, the honored author -of the <cite>Christian Year</cite>, came to new notice, while -his associates, Dr. Pusey and Cardinal Newman, -gave utterance to speech which is not without reverberating -echoes, even now. Nor was it long -after this date that British journalism received a -great lift, and a great broadening of its forces, by -a reduction of the stamp-tax—largely due to the -efforts of Bulwer Lytton—whereby British newspapers -increased their circulation, within two -years, by 20,000,000 annually.<a name="FNanchor_83" id="FNanchor_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a></p> - -<p>All these things had come about in the reign of -William IV.; but to none of them had he given -any enthusiastic approval, or any such urgence of -attention as would have dislocated a single one of -his royal dinners.</p> - -<p>In 1837 he died—not very largely sighed over;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span> -least of all by that sister-in-law, the Duchess of -Kent, whom he had hated for her starched proprieties, -whom he had insulted again and again, -and who now, in her palace of Kensington, prepared -her daughter Victoria for her entrance upon -the sovereignty.</p> - -<h3>Her Majesty Victoria.</h3> - -<p>The girl was only eighteen—well taught, discreet, -and modest. Greville tells us that she was -consumed with blushes when her uncles of Sussex -and of Cumberland came, with the royal council, -to kneel before her, and to kiss her hand in token -of the new allegiance.</p> - -<p>The old king had died at two o’clock of the -morning; and by eleven o’clock on the same day -the duties of royalty had begun for the young -queen, in receiving the great officers of state. -Among the others she meets on that first regal day -in Kensington Palace, are Lansdowne, the fidgety -Lord Brougham, the courtly Sir Robert Peel, and -the spare, trim-looking old Duke of Wellington, -who is charmed by her gracious manner, and by -her self-control and dignity. He said he could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span> -not have been more proud of her if she had been -his own daughter.</p> - -<p>Nearer to the young queen than all these—by -old ties of friendship, that always remained unshaken—was -the suave and accomplished Lord -Melbourne—First Minister—who has prepared -the queen’s little speech for her, which she reads -with charming self-possession; to him, too, she -looks for approval and instruction in all her progress -through the new ceremonials of Court, and -the ordering of a royal household. And Melbourne -is admirably suited to that task; he was -not a great statesman; was never an orator, but -possessed of all the arts of conciliation—adroit -and full of tact, yet kindly, sympathetic, and winning. -Not by any means a man beyond reproach -in his private life, but bringing to those new -offices of political guardianship to the young -queen only the soundest good-sense and the -wisest of advice—thus inspiring in her a trust -that was never forfeited.</p> - -<p>Indeed, it was under Melbourne’s encouragements, -and his stimulative commendation (if stimulus -were needed), that the young princess formed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span> -shortly after that marriage relation which proved -altogether a happy one—giving to England -and to the world shining proof that righteous -domesticities were not altogether clean gone from -royal houses. And if the good motherly rulings -have not had their best issues with some of the -male members of the family, can we not match -these wry tendencies with those fastening upon -the boys of well-ordered households all around us? -It is not in royal circles only that his satanic -majesty makes friends of nice boys, when the girls -escape him—or seem to!</p> - -<p>Well, I have gone back to that old palace of -Kensington, which still, with its mossy brick walls, -in the west of London, baffles the years, and the -fogs—the same palace where we went to find William -III. dying, and the gracious Queen Anne too; -and where now the Marquis of Lorne and the Princess -Louise have their home. I have taken you -again there to see how the young Victoria bore -herself at the news of her accession—with the -great councillors of the kingdom about her—not -alone because those whom we shall bring to the -front, in this closing chapter, have wrought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span> -during her reign; but because, furthermore, -she with her household have been encouragers -and patrons of both letters and of art in many -most helpful ways; and yet, again, because this -queen, who has within this twelve-month (1897) -made her new speech to Parliament—sixty years -after that first little speech at Kensington—is -herself, in virtue of certain modest book-making, -to be enrolled with all courtesy in the Guild of -Letters. And though the high-stepping critics -may be inclined to question the literary judgment -or the scrupulous finish of her book-work, we cannot, -I think, deny to it a thoroughly humane tone, -and a tender realism. We greet her not only by -reason of her queenship proper, but for that larger -sovereignty of womanhood and of motherhood -which she has always dignified and adorned.</p> - -<p>I once caught such glimpse of her—as strangers -may—in the flush of her early wedded life; not -beautiful surely, but comely, kindly, and radiant, -in the enjoyment of—what is so rare with sovereigns—a -happy home-life; and again I came -upon other sight of her eight years later, when -the prince was a rollicking boy, and the princess a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span> -blooming maiden; these and lesser rosy-cheeked -ones were taking the air on the terrace at Windsor, -almost in the shadow of the great keep, which has -frowned there since the days of Edward III.</p> - -<h3>Macaulay.</h3> - -<p>In the early days of Queen Victoria’s reign—when -Sir Robert Peel was winning his way to the -proud position he later held—when American and -English politicians were getting into the toils of -the “Maine Boundary” dispute (afterward settled -by Ashburton and Webster), and when the Countess -of Blessington was making “Gore House” -lively with her little suppers, and the banker -Rogers entertaining all <i lang="fr">beaux esprits</i> at his home -near the Green Park, there may have been found -as guest at one of the banker’s famous breakfasts—somewhere -we will say in the year 1838—a -man, well-preserved, still under forty—with a -shaggy brow, with clothes very likely ill-adjusted -and ill-fitting, and with gloves which are never -buttoned—who has just come back from India, -where he has held lucrative official position. He -is cogitating, it is said, a history of England, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span> -his talk has a fulness and richness that seem inexhaustible.</p> - -<p>You know to whom I must refer—Thomas Babington -Macaulay<a name="FNanchor_84" id="FNanchor_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a>—not a new man at Rogers’s -table, not a new man to bookish people; for he -had won his honors in literature, especially by a -first paper on Milton, published in the year 1825 -in the <cite>Edinburgh Review</cite>. This bore a new stamp -and had qualities that could not be overlooked. -There are scores of us who read that paper for the -first time in the impressionable days of youth, who -are carried back now by the mere mention of it to -the times of the old Puritan poet.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“We can almost fancy that we are visiting him in his -small lodging; that we see him sitting at the old organ beneath -the faded green hangings; that we can catch the quick -twinkle of his eyes, rolling in vain to find the day; that we -are reading in the lines of his noble countenance the proud -and mournful history of his glory and his affliction!”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Macaulay came of good old Scotch stock—his -forefathers counting up patriarchal families in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span> -Coll and Inverary; but his father, Zachary -Macaulay, well known for his anti-slavery action -and influence, and for his association with Wilberforce, -married an English Quaker girl from Bristol—said -to have been a <i lang="fr">protégée</i> of our old -friend, Mistress Hannah More. Of this marriage -was born, in 1800, at the charming country house -of an aunt, named Babington, in the pleasant -county of Leicestershire, the future historian.</p> - -<p>The father’s first London home was near by -Lombard Street, where he managed an African -agency under the firm name of Macaulay & Babington; -and the baby Macaulay used to be wheeled -into an open square near by, for the enjoyment of -such winter’s sunshine as fell there at far-away -intervals. His boyish memories, however, belonged -to a later home at Clapham, then a suburban -village. There, was his first schooling, and -there he budded out—to the wonderment of all -his father’s guests—into young poems and the -drollest of precocious talk. His pleasant biographer -(Trevelyan) tells of a visit the bright boy -made at Strawberry Hill—Walpole’s old showplace. -There was a spilling of hot drink of some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span> -sort, during the visitation, which came near to -scalding the lad; and when the sympathizing -hostess asked after his suffering: “Thank you, -madam,” said he, “the agony is abated!” The -story is delightfully credible; and so are other -pleasant ones of his reciting some of his doggerel -verses to Hannah More and getting a gracious and -approving nod of her gray curls and of her mob-cap.</p> - -<p>At Cambridge, where he went at the usual student -age, he studied what he would, and discarded -what he would—as he did all through his life. -For mathematics he had a distinguished repugnance, -then and always; and if brought to task -by them in those student days—trying hard to -twist their certainties into probabilities, and so -make them subject to that world of “ifs and -buts” which he loved to start buzzing about the -ears of those who loved the exact sciences better -than he. He missed thus some of the University -honors, it is true; yet, up and down in those Cambridge -coteries he was a man looked for, and listened -to, eagerly and bravely applauded. Certain -scholastic honors, too, he did reap, in spite of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span> -lunges outside the traces; there was a medal for -his poem of <cite>Pompeii</cite>; and a Fellowship, at last, -which gave him a needed, though small income—his -father’s Afric business having proved a failure, -and no home moneys coming to him thereafter.</p> - -<p>The first writings of Macaulay which had public -issue were printed in <cite>Knight’s Quarterly Magazine</cite>—among -them were criticisms on Italian -writers, a remarkable imaginary conversation between -“Cowley and Milton,” and the glittering, -jingling battle verses about the War of the -League and stout “Henry of Navarre”—full to -the brim of that rush and martial splendor which -he loved all his life, and which he brought in later -years to his famous re-heralding of the <cite>Lays of -Ancient Rome</cite>. A few lines are cited:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“The King is come to marshal us, in all his armor drest;</div> -<div class="verse">And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest.</div> -<div class="verse">He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye;</div> -<div class="verse">He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high.</div> -<div class="verse">Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing</div> -<div class="verse">Down all our line a deafening shout, ‘God save our Lord the King!’</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span> -<div class="verse">And if my standard bearer fall, as fall full well he may,</div> -<div class="verse">For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray;</div> -<div class="verse">Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of war,</div> -<div class="verse">And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>On the year after this “Battle of Ivry” had -sparkled into print appeared the paper on Milton, -to which I have alluded, and which straightway -set London doors open to the freshly -fledged student-at-law. Crabb Robinson, in his -diary of those days, speaks patronizingly of a -“young gentleman of six or seven and twenty, -who has emerged upon the dinner-giving public,” -and is astounding old habitués by his fulness and -brilliancy of talk. He had not, to be sure, those -lighter and sportive graces of conversation which -floated shortly thereafter out from the open windows -of Gore House, and had burgeoned under the -beaming smiles of Lady Blessington. But he -came to be a table match for Sydney Smith, and -was honored by the invitations of Lady Holland,<a name="FNanchor_85" id="FNanchor_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span> -who allowed no new find of so brilliant feather to -escape her.</p> - -<h3>In Politics and Verse.</h3> - -<p>Macaulay’s alliance with the Scottish Reviewers, -and his known liberalism, make him a pet of -the great Whigs; and through Lansdowne, with a -helping hand from Melbourne, he found his way -into Parliament: there were those who prophesied -his failure in that field; I think Brougham in those -days, with not a little of jealousy in his make up, -was disposed to count him a mere essayist. But -his speeches in favor of the Reform bill belied all -such auguries. Sir Robert Peel declared them to -be wonderful in their grasp and eloquence; they -certainly had great weight in furthering reform; -and his parliamentary work won presently for him -the offer from Government of a place in India. -No Oriental glamour allured him, but the new position -was worth £10,000 per annum. He counted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span> -upon saving the half of this, and returning after -five years with a moderate fortune. He did better, -however—shortening his period of exile by nearly -a twelve-month, and bringing back £30,000.</p> - -<p>His sister (who later became Lady Trevelyan) -went with him as the mistress of his Calcutta -household; and his affectionate and most tender -relations with this, as well as with his younger -sister, are beautifully set forth in the charming -biography by his nephew, Otto Trevelyan. It is a -biography that everybody should read; and none -can read it, I am sure, without coming to a kindlier -estimate of its subject. The home-letters with -which it abounds run over with affectionate playfulness. -We are brought to no ugly <i lang="la">post mortem</i> -in the book, and no opening of old sores. It is -modest, courteous, discreet, and full.</p> - -<p>Macaulay did monumental work in India upon -the Penal Code. He also kept up there his voracious -habits of reading and study. Listen for a -moment to his story of this:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“During the last thirteen months I have read Eschylus, -twice; Sophocles, twice; Euripides, once; Pindar, twice; -Callimachus, Apollonius Rhodius, Theocritus, twice; Herodotus,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span> -Thucydides, almost all of Xenophon’s works, almost all of -Plato, Aristotle’s <cite>Politics</cite>, and a good deal of his <cite>Organon</cite>; -the whole of Plutarch’s Lives; half of Lucian; two or three -books of Athenæus; Plautus, twice; Terence, twice; Lucretius, -twice; Catullus, Propertius, Lucan, Statius, Silius Italicus, -Livy, Velleius Paterculus, Sallust, Cæsar, and lastly, -Cicero.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>This is his classical list. Of his modern reading -he does not tell; yet he was plotting the <cite>History -of England</cite>, and the bouncing balladry of the -<cite>Lays of Rome</cite> was even then taking shape in the -intervals of his study.</p> - -<p>His father died while Macaulay was upon his -voyage home from India—a father wholly unlike -the son, in his rigidities and his Calvinistic asperities; -but always venerated by him, and in the -latter years of the old gentleman’s life treated -with a noble and beautiful generosity.</p> - -<p>A short visit to Italy was made after the return -from India; and it was in Rome itself that he -put some of the last touches to the Lays—staying -the work until he could confirm by personal observation -the relative sites of the bridge across the -Tiber and the home of Horatius upon the Palatine.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span></p> - -<p>You remember the words perhaps; if not, ’twere -well you should,—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Alone stood brave Horatius,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But constant still in mind;</div> -<div class="verse">Thrice thirty thousand foes before,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the broad flood behind.</div> -<div class="verse">‘Down with him!’ cried false Sextus,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With a smile on his pale face.</div> -<div class="verse">‘Now yield thee,’ cried Lars Porsena,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">‘Now yield thee to our grace!’</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Round turned he, as not deigning</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Those craven ranks to see;</div> -<div class="verse">Nought spake he to Lars Porsena,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To Sextus nought spake he!</div> -<div class="verse">But he saw on Palatinus</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The white porch of his home;</div> -<div class="verse">And he spake to the noble river</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That rolls by the towers of Rome.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">‘Oh, Tiber, father Tiber!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To whom the Romans pray,</div> -<div class="verse">A Roman’s life, a Roman’s arms,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Take thou in charge this day!’</div> -<div class="verse">So he spake, and speaking sheathed</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The good sword by his side,</div> -<div class="verse">And, with his harness on his back,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Plunged headlong in the tide.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>This does not sound like those verses of Shelley, -which we lately encountered. Those went through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span> -the empyrean of song like Aurora’s chariot of the -morning, with cherubs, and garlands, and flashing -torches. This, in the comparison, is like some -well-appointed dump-cart, with sleek, well-groomed -Percheron horses—up to their work, -and accomplishing what they are set to do absolutely -well.</p> - -<p>It was not until 1842, a year or two after the -Italian visit, that Macaulay ventured to publish -that solitary book of his verse; he very -much doubted the wisdom of putting his literary -reputation in peril by such overture in -rhyme. It extorted, however, extravagant praise -from that muscular critic Christopher North; -while the fastidious Hunt writes to him (begging -a little money—as was his wont), and regretting -that the book did not show more of the poetic -aroma which breathes from the <cite>Faerie Queene</cite>. -But say what we may of its lack—there is no -weakly maundering; it is the work of a man full-grown, -with all his wits active, and his vision clear, -and who loved plain sirloins better than the fricandeaux -and ragoûts of the artists.</p> - -<p>There is also a scholarly handling, with high,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span> -historic air blowing through—as if he liked -his Homer better than his Spenser; his prosody -is up to the rules; the longs and shorts are split -to a hair’s breadth—jingling and merry where -the sense calls for it; and sober and resonant -where meaning is weighty; flashing, too, where -need is—with sword play and spear-heads that -glitter and waver over marching men; but nowhere—I -think it must be said—the tremulous -poetic <em>susurrus</em>, that falters, and touches, and detains -by its mystic sounds—tempting one into -dim border-lands where higher and more inspired -singers find their way. Christabel is not of his -school, nor the star-shaped shadow of Wordsworth’s -Daisy.</p> - -<h3>Parliamentarian and Historian.</h3> - -<p>Meantime occasional papers from Macaulay’s -hand found their way into the pages of the great -Northern <cite>Review</cite>—but by no means so many as -the Whig managers could have wished; he had -himself grown to think lightly of such work; the -History was calling for his best powers, and there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span> -were parliamentary duties devolving upon him as -member for Edinboro’.</p> - -<p>I remember catching sight of him somewhere -between 1844 and 1846—in his place in the House -of Commons, and of listening to his brilliant castigation -of Sir Robert Peel, in the matter, I think, -of the Maynooth grant. He was well toward fifty -then, but sturdy—with the firm tread of a man -who could do his three or four leagues of walking—if -need were; beetle-browed; his clothes ill-adjusted; -his neck bundled in a big swathing of -cravat. There was silence when he rose; there -was nothing orator-like in his bearing; rather -awkward in his pose; having scorn, too, as would -seem, for any of the graces of elocution. But he -was clear, emphatic, direct, with a great swift -river of words all bearing toward definite aim. -Tory critics used to say he wrote his speeches -and committed them to memory. There was no -need for that. Words tripped to his tongue as -easily as to his pen. But there were no delicate -modulations of voice; no art of pantomime; no -conscious or unconscious assumption of graceful -attitudes; and when subject-matter enfevered and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span> -kindled him—as it did on that occasion—there -was the hurry and the over-strained voice of extreme -earnestness.</p> - -<p>It was not very long after this that he met with -a notable repulse from his old political supporters -in Edinboro’ that touched him grievously. But -there were certain arts of the politician he could -not, and would not learn; he could not truckle; -he could not hobnob with clients who made vulgar -claims upon him. He could not make domiciliary -visits, to kiss the babies—whether of patrons, or -of editors; he could not listen to twaddle from -visiting committees, without breaking into a righteous -wrath that hurt his chances. Edinboro’, -afterward, however, cleared the record, by giving -him before his death a triumphant return to -Parliament.</p> - -<p>Meantime that wonderful History had been written, -and its roll of magniloquent periods made -echo in every quarter of the literary world. Its -success was phenomenal. After the issue of its -second couplet of volumes the publishers sent to -the author a check for £20,000 on account. Such -checks passing between publisher and author were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span> -then uncommon; and—without straining a point—I -think I may say they are now. With its Macaulay -endorsement, it makes a unique autograph, -now in the possession of the Messrs. Longmans—but -destined to find place eventually among the -manuscript treasures of the British Museum.</p> - -<p>The great history is a partisan history, but it is -the work of a bold and out-spoken and manly partisan. -The colors that he uses are intense and -glaring; but they are blended in the making of -his great panorama of King William’s times, with -a marvellous art. We are told that he was an advocate -and not a philosopher; that he was a rhetorician -and not a poet. We may grant all this, -and we may grant more—and yet I think we -shall continue to cherish his work. Men of -greater critical acumen and nicer exploration may -sap the grounds of some of his judgments; cooler -writers, and those of more self-restraint, may draw -the fires by which his indignations are kindled; -but it will be very long before the world will -cease to find high intellectual refreshment in the -crackle of his epigrams, in his artful deployment -of testimony, in his picturesque array of great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span> -historic characters and in the roll of his sonorous -periods.</p> - -<p>Yet he is the wrong man to copy; his exaltations -make an unsafe model. He exaggerates—but -he knows how to exaggerate. He paints a -truth in colors that flow all round the truth, and -enlarge it. Such outreach of rhetoric wants corresponding -capacity of brain, and pen-strokes that -never swerve or tremble. Smallish men should -beware how they copy methods which want fulness -of power and the besom of enthusiasm to fill -out their compass. Homer can make all his sea-waves -iridescent and multitudinous—all his -women high-bosomed or blue-eyed—and all his -mountains sweep the skies: but <em>we</em> should be -modest and simple.</p> - -<p>It was not until Macaulay had done his last -work upon the book (still incomplete) which -he counted his monument, that he moved away -from his bachelor quarters in the Albany (Piccadilly) -and established himself at Holly Lodge, -which, under the new name (he gave it) of Oirlie -Lodge, may be found upon a winding lane in -that labyrinth of city roads that lies between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span> -Kensington Gardens and Holland House. There -was a bit of green lawn attached, which he came -to love in those last days of his; though he -had been without strong rural proclivities. Like -Gibbon, he never hunted, never fished, rarely -rode. But now and then—among the thorn-trees -reddening into bloom and the rhododendrons -bursting their buds, the May mornings were -“delicious” to him. He enjoyed, too, overmuch, -the modest hospitalities he could show in a home -of his own. There are joyfully turned notes—in -his journal or in his familiar letters—of “a goose -for Michaelmas,” and of “a chine and oysters for -Christmas eve,” and “excellent audit ale” on Lord -Mayor’s day. There, too, at Holly Lodge, comes -to him in August, 1857, when he was very sad -about India (as all the world were), an offer of a -peerage. He accepts it, as he had accepted all the -good things of life—cheerily and squarely, and was -thenceforward Baron Macaulay of Rothley. He -appears from time to time on the benches of the -Upper House, but never spoke there. His speaking -days were over. A little unwonted fluttering of -the heart warned him that the end was not far off.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span></p> - -<p>A visit to the English lakes and to Scotland -in 1859 did not—as was hoped—give him access -of strength. He was much disturbed, too (at this -crisis), by the prospect of a long separation from -his sister, Lady Trevelyan—whose husband had -just now been appointed Governor of Madras. -“This prolonged parting,” he says, “this slow -sipping of the vinegar and the gall is terrible!” -And the parting came earlier than he thought, and -easier; for on a day of December in the same year -he died in his library chair. His nephew and -biographer had left him in the morning—sitting -with his head bent forward on his chest—an attitude -not unusual for him—in a languid and -drowsy reverie. In the evening, a little before -seven, Lady Trevelyan was summoned, and the -biographer says:—“As we drove up to the porch -of my uncle’s house, the maids ran crying into the -darkness to meet us; and we knew that all was -over.”</p> - -<p>He was not an old man—only fifty-nine. The -stone which marks his grave in Westminster Abbey -is very near to the statue of Addison.</p> - -<p>In estimating our indebtedness to Macaulay as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span> -a historian—where his fame and execution were -largest—we must remember that his method of -close detail forbade wide outlook or grasp of long -periods of time. If he had extended the same -microscopic examination and dramatic exhibit of -important personages to those succeeding reigns, -which he originally intended to cover—coming -down to the days of William IV.—he would have -required fifty volumes; and if he had attempted, -in the same spirit, a reach like that of Green or -Hume, his rhetorical periods must have overflowed -more than two hundred bulky quartos! No ordinary -man could read such; and—thank Heaven!—no -extraordinary man could write so many.</p> - -<h3>Some Tory Critics.</h3> - -<p>Among those who sought with a delightsome -pertinacity for flaws in the historic work of -Macaulay, in his own time, was John Wilson -Croker, to whom I have already alluded.<a name="FNanchor_86" id="FNanchor_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a> He -was an older man than the historian; Irish by -birth, handsome, well-allied by marriage, plausible, -fawning on the great (who were of <em>his</em> party) wearing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span> -easily and boastfully his familiarity with Wellington, -Lansdowne and Cumberland, airing -daintily his literary qualities at the tables of Holland -or Peel; proud of his place in Parliament, -where he loved to show a satiric grace of speech, -and the curled lips of one used to more elegant -encounters. In short, he was the very man to -light up the blazing contempt of such another as -Macaulay; more than all since Croker was identified -with the worst form of Toryism, and the -other always his political antagonist.</p> - -<p>Such being the <i lang="la">animus</i> of the parties, one can -imagine the delight of Croker in detecting a blunder -of Macaulay, and the delight of Macaulay -when he was able to pounce upon the blunders -in Croker’s edition of <cite>Boswell’s Johnson</cite>. This -was on many counts an excellent work and—with -its emendations—holds its ground now; -but I think the slaps, and the scourgings, and -the derisive mockery which the critic dealt out -to the self-poised and elegant Croker have made -a highly appetizing <i lang="fr">sauce piquante</i> for the book -these many a year. For my own part, I never -enjoy it half so much as when I think of Macaulay’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span> -rod of discipline “starting the dust out -of the varlet’s [editor’s] jacket.”</p> - -<p>It is not a question if Croker deserved this excoriation; -we are so taken up with the dexterity -and effectiveness with which the critical professor -uses the surgeon’s knife, that we watch the -operation, and the exceeding grace and ease with -which he lays bare nerve after nerve, without once -inquiring if the patient is really in need of such -heroic treatment.</p> - -<p>The Croker Papers<a name="FNanchor_87" id="FNanchor_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a>—two ponderous volumes -of letters and diary which have been published in -these latter years—have good bits in them; but -they are rare bits, to be dredged for out from -quagmires of rubbish. The papers are interesting, -furthermore, as showing how a cleverish man, with -considerable gifts of presence and of brain, with -his re-actionary Toryism dominant, and made a -fetich of, can still keep a good digestion and go in -a respectable fashion through a long life—backwards, -instead of “face to the front.”</p> - -<p>In this connection it is difficult to keep out of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span> -mind that other Toryish administrator of the -<cite>Quarterly</cite> bombardments of reform and of Liberalists—I -mean Lockhart (to whom reference has -already been made in the present volume), and -who, with all of Croker’s personal gifts, added to -these a still larger scorn than that of his elder associate -in the Quarterly conclaves, for those whose -social disabilities disqualified them for breathing -the rarefied air which circulated about Albemarle -Street and the courts of Mr. Murray. Even Mr. -Lang in his apologetic but very interesting story -of Lockhart’s life,<a name="FNanchor_88" id="FNanchor_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> cannot forbear quiet reprehensive -allusions to that critic’s odious way of -making caustic allusion to “the social rank” of -political opponents; although much of this he avers -“is said in wrath.” Yet it is an unworthy wrath, -always and everywhere, which runs in those directions. -Lockhart, though an acute critic, and a -very clever translator, was a supreme worshipper -of “conditions,” rather than of qualities. He -never forgave Americans for being Americans, and -never preter-mitted his wrathy exposition of their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span> -‘low-lived antecedents’ socially. The baronetcy -of his father-in-law, Sir Walter Scott, was I -think, a perpetual and beneficent regalement to -him.</p> - -<h3>Two Gone-by Story Tellers.</h3> - -<p>Must it be said that the jolly story-teller of the -sea and of the sea-ports, who wrote for our uncles -and aunts, and elder brothers, the brisk, rollicking -tales about <cite>Midshipman Easy</cite>, and <cite>Japhet in -Search of a Father</cite>, is indeed gone by?</p> - -<p>His name was Frederick Marryat,<a name="FNanchor_89" id="FNanchor_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a> the son of a -well-to-do London gentleman, who had served the -little Borough of Sandwich as member of Parliament -(and was also author of some verses and -political tractates), but who did not wean his boy -from an inborn love of the sea. To gratify this -love the boy had sundry adventurous escapades; -but when arrived at the mature age of fourteen, he -entered as midshipman in the Royal Navy—his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span> -first service, and a very active one, being with that -brave and belligerent Lord Cochrane, who later -won renown on the west coast of South America. -Adventures of most hazardous and romantic qualities -were not wanting under such an officer, all of -which were stored in the retentive memory of the -enthusiastic and observant midshipman, and thereafter, -for years succeeding, were strewn with a free -hand over his tales of the sea. These break a good -many of the rules of rhetoric—and so do sailors; -they have to do with the breakage of nearly all the -commandments—and so do sailors. But they are -breezy; they are always pushing forward; spars -and sails are all ship-shape; and so are the sailors’ -oaths, and the rattle of the chain-cables, and the -slatting of the gaskets, and the smell of the stews -from the cook’s galley.</p> - -<p>There is also a liberal and <i lang="la">quasi</i> democratic coloring -of the links and interludes of his novels. -The trials of <cite>Peter Simple</cite> grow largely out of the -cruel action of the British laws of primogeniture; -nor does the jolly midshipman—grandson, or -nephew—forego his satiric raps at my lord -“Privilege.” Yet Marryat shows no special admiration<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span> -for such evolutions of the democratic problem -as he encounters in America.<a name="FNanchor_90" id="FNanchor_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a></p> - -<p>Upon the whole, one finds no large or fine literary -quality in his books; but the <em>fun</em> in them -is positive, and catching—as our aunts and -uncles used to find it; but it is the fun of the -tap-room, and of the for’castle, rather than of -the salon, or the library. For all this, scores and -scores of excellent old people were shaking their -sides—in the early part of this century—over -the pages of Captain Marryat—in the days when -other readers with sighs were bemoaning the -loss of the “Great Magician’s” power in the -dreary story of <cite>Count Robert of Paris</cite>, or kindling -into a new worship as they followed Ainsworth’s<a name="FNanchor_91" id="FNanchor_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a> -vivid narrative of Dick Turpin’s daring -gallop from London to York.</p> - -<p>A nearer name to us, and one perhaps more -familiar, is that of G. P. R. James,<a name="FNanchor_92" id="FNanchor_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a> an excellent,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span> -industrious man, who drove his trade of novel-making—as -our engineers drive wells—with -steam, and pistons, and borings, and everlasting -clatter.</p> - -<p>Yet,—is this sharp, irreverent mention, wholly -fair to the old gentleman, upon whose confections, -and pastries, so many of us have feasted in times -past? What a delight it was—not only for youngsters, -but for white-haired judges, and country -lawyers—to listen for the jingle of the spurs, when -one of Mr. James’s swarthy knights—“with a grace -induced by habits of martial exercise”—came -dashing into old country quietudes, with his visor -up; or, perhaps in “a Genoa bonnet of black -velvet, round which his rich chestnut hair coiled -in profusion”—making the welkin ring with his—“How -now, Sir Villain!”</p> - -<p>I caught sight of this great necromancer of -“miniver furs,” and mantua-making chivalry—in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span> -youngish days, in the city of New York—where -he was making a little over-ocean escape -from the multitudinous work that flowed from -him at home; a well-preserved man, of scarce -fifty years, stout, erect, gray-haired, and with -countenance blooming with mild uses of mild -English ale—kindly, unctuous—showing no -signs of deep thoughtfulness or of harassing -toil. I looked him over, in boyish way, for -traces of the court splendors I had gazed upon, -under his ministrations, but saw none; nor -anything of the “manly beauty of features, -rendered scarcely less by a deep scar upon the -forehead,”—nor “of the gray cloth doublets -slashed with purple;” a stanch, honest, amiable, -well-dressed Englishman—that was all.</p> - -<p>And yet, what delights he had conjured for us! -Shall we be ashamed to name them, or to confess -it all? Shall the modern show of new flowerets -of fiction, and of lilies—forced to the front in -January—make us forget utterly the old cinnamon -roses, and the homely but fragrant pinks, -which once regaled and delighted us, in the April -and May of our age?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span></p> - -<p>What incomparable siestas those were, when, -from between half-closed eyelids, we watched for -the advent of the two horsemen—one in corselet -of shining silver, inlaid with gold, and the other -with hauberk of bright steel rings—slowly riding -down the distant declivity, under the rays of a -warm, red sunset! Then, there were abundance of -gray castle-walls—ever so high, the ivy hanging -deliciously about them; and there were clanging -chains of draw-bridges, that rattled when a good -knight galloped over; and there were stalwart -gypsies lying under hedges, with charmingest of -little ones with flaxen hair (who are not gypsies at -all, but only stolen); and there is clash of arms; -and there are bad men, who get punched with -spear heads—which is good for them; and there -are jolly old burghers who drink beer, and “troll -songs”; and assassins who lurk in the shadows of -long corridors—where the moonbeams shine upon -their daggers; and there are dark-haired young -women, who look out of casements and kiss their -hands and wave white kerchiefs,—and somebody -sees it in the convenient edge of the wood, and -salutes in return, and steals away; and the assassin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span> -escapes, and the gypsies are captured in the bush, -and some bad king is killed, and an old parchment -is found, and the stars come out, and the rivulet -murmurs, and the good knight comes back; and -the dark tresses are at the casement, and she -smiles, and the marriage bells ring, and they are -happy. And the school bell (for supper) rings, -and we are happy!</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>As I close this book with these last shadowy -glimpses of story-tellers, who have told their -pleasant tales, and have lived out their time, and -gone to rest, I see lifting over that fair British -horizon, where Victoria shows her queenly presence—the -modest Mr. Pickwick, with his gaiters -and bland expanse of figure; Thackeray, too, with -his stalwart form and spectacled eyes is peering out -searchingly upon all he encounters; the refined face -of Ruskin is also in evidence, and his easy magniloquence -is covering one phase of British art with -new robes. A woman’s Dantesque profile shows -the striking qualities which are fairly mated by -the striking passages in <cite>Adam Bede</cite> and <cite>Daniel -Deronda</cite>; one catches sight, too, of the shaggy,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span> -keen visage of the quarrel-loving Carlyle, and of -those great twin-brethren of poesy—Browning -and Tennyson—the Angelo and the Raphael of -latter images in verse. Surely these make up a -wonderful grouping of names—not unworthy of -comparison with those others whom we found -many generations ago, grouped around another -great queen of England, who blazed in her royal -court, and flaunted her silken robes, and—is -gone.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> - -<div class="footnotes"> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Robert Southey, b. 1774; d. 1843. <cite>Joan of Arc</cite> (pub.) -1796; <cite>Thalaba</cite>, 1801; <cite>A Vision of Judgment</cite>, 1821; <cite>Life of -Nelson</cite>, 1813; <cite>The Doctor</cite>, 1834-47. <cite>Life and Correspondence</cite>, -edited by Rev. Chas. Cuthbert Southey, 1849-50.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> In a letter to his friend Bedford (he being then aged -fifty) he writes: “I have taken again to my old coat and old -shoes; dine at the reasonable hour of four; enjoy, as I used -to do, the wholesome indulgence of a nap after dinner,” etc.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Letter to Bedford, under date of December, 1793.—<cite>Life -and Correspondence</cite>, p. 69.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> In the <cite>Imaginary Conversation</cite> between Southey and -Porson, Landor makes Porson say: “It is pleasant to find -two poets [Southey and Wordsworth] living as brothers, and -particularly when the palm lies between them, with hardly a -third in sight.”</p> - -<p>Lamb, too, in a letter to Mr. Coleridge (p. 194, Moxon edition -of 1832, London), says: “On the whole, I expect Southey -one day to rival Milton; I already deem him equal to Cowper, -and superior to all living poets besides.” This is <i lang="fr">apropos</i> of -<cite>Joan of Arc</cite>, which had then recently appeared. He begins -his letter: “With <cite>Joan of Arc</cite> I have been delighted, -amazed; I had not presumed to expect anything of such excellence -from Southey.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> George IV. was appointed Regent in the year 1811, the -old king, George III., being then plainly so far bereft of his -senses as to incapacitate him even for intelligent clerical -service. He died, as we shall find later, in the year 1820, -when the Regent succeeded, and reigned for ten years.</p> - -<p>The <cite>Croker Papers</cite> (1884), recently published, make mention -of Mr. Croker’s intervention in the matter of the bestowal -of the Laureate-ship upon Southey. Croker was an -old friend of Southey, and a trusted go-between in all literary -service for the royal household.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> The sixth and seventh volumes appeared after the poet’s -death, in 1847.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Henry Crabb Robinson, b. 1775; d. 1867. <cite>Diary, Reminiscences</cite>, -etc. (ed. by Sadler), 1869.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Best edition is that of Macmillan, London, 1869.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_9" id="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Thomas De Quincey, b. 1785; d. 1859. <cite>Confessions of -an English Opium Eater</cite>, 1821. Complete edition of works, -1852-55. <cite>Life and Writings</cite>: H. A. Page, 2 vols. London, -1877.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_10" id="Footnote_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> The entry is of 1812, p. 391, chap. xv. Macmillan’s -edition. London, 1869.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_11" id="Footnote_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Page 215; vol. ii., <cite>Reminiscences</cite>. Boston Edition.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_12" id="Footnote_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> John Wilson, b. 1785; d. 1854; better known as Christopher -North, his pseudonym in <cite>Blackwood</cite>. <cite>The Isle of -Palms</cite>, 1811; <cite>The City of the Plague</cite>, 1816; <cite>Recreations of -Christopher North</cite>, 1842. In 1851 a civil-list pension of -£300 was conferred upon him. His younger brother James -Wilson was a well-known naturalist, and author of <cite>The Rod -and the Gun</cite>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_13" id="Footnote_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> “Old North and Young North.” <cite>Blackwood</cite>, June, 1828.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_14" id="Footnote_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Dorothy Wordsworth, under date of 1809, writes to her -friend, Lady Beaumont—“Surely I have spoken to you of -Mr. Wilson, a young man of some fortune, who has built a -house in a very fine situation not far from Bowness.… -He has from boyhood been a passionate admirer of my -brother’s writings. [And again.] We all, including Mr. -De Quincey and Coleridge, have been to pay the Bachelor -(Wilson) a visit, and we enjoyed ourselves very much in a -pleasant mixture of merriment, and thoughtful discourse.… He -is now twenty-three years of age.”—Coleorton <cite>Letters</cite>, -vol. ii, p. 91.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_15" id="Footnote_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> John Gibson Lockhart, b. 1794; d. 1854. Connected -with <cite>Blackwood</cite>, 1818; <cite>Adam Blair</cite>, 1822; with <cite>Quarterly -Review</cite>, 1826-53; <cite>Ancient Spanish Ballads</cite>, 1823; <cite>Memoirs -of Walter Scott</cite>, 1836-38. Recent <cite>Life of Lockhart</cite>, by Andrew -Lang. 2 vols., 8vo. Nimmo, London.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_16" id="Footnote_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Mrs. Gordon says, quoting from her mother’s record: -Mr. Wilson is as busy studying as possible; indeed, he has -little time before him for his great task; he says it will take -one month at least to make out a catalogue of the books he -has to read and consult. I am perfectly appalled when I go -into the dining-room and see all the folios, quartos, and -duodecimos, with which it is literally filled; and the poor -culprit himself sitting in the midst, with a beard as long and -red as an ancient carrot; for he has not shaved for a fortnight. -P. 215, <cite>Memoir of John Wilson</cite>. We are sorry to see -that Mr. Lang, in his recent <cite>Life of Lockhart</cite> (1897), pp. -135-6-7-8, has put some disturbing cross-coloring (perhaps -justly) upon the pleasant portrait which Mrs. Gordon has -drawn of Christopher North.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_17" id="Footnote_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Mrs. Gordon’s <cite>Memoir of John Wilson</cite>, p. 222. The -statement is credited to the author of <cite>The Two Cosmos</cite>. -Middleton, New York, 1863.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_18" id="Footnote_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Thomas Campbell, b. 1777; d. 1844. <cite>The Pleasures of -Hope</cite>, 1799; <cite>Gertrude of Wyoming</cite>, 1809; <cite>Life of Petrarch</cite>, -1841; Dr. Beattie’s <cite>Life</cite>, 1850.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_19" id="Footnote_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <cite>Maclise Portrait Gallery</cite>, London, 1883 (which cites in -confirmation, <cite>Notes and Queries</cite>, December 13, 1862).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_20" id="Footnote_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> De Quincey says that he was the only man in all Europe -who quoted Wordsworth as early as 1802. Yet, <i lang="la">per contra</i>, -the <cite>Lyrical Ballads</cite> had warm praises from Jeffrey (in -<cite>Monthly Review</cite>) and from Southey (in <cite>Critical</cite>)—showing -that the finer ears had caught the new notes from Helicon.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_21" id="Footnote_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Walter Scott, b. 1771; d. 1832; <cite>Lay of Last Minstrel</cite>, -1805; <cite>Marmion</cite>, 1808; <cite>Lady of the Lake</cite>, 1810; <cite>Waverley</cite>, -1814; <cite>Woodstock</cite>, 1826; <cite>Life of Napoleon</cite>, 1827; <cite>Life</cite>, by -Lockhart, 1832-37.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_22" id="Footnote_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> He was clerk in Her Majesty’s Foreign Office in London. -Carlyle says in a letter (of date of 1842), “I have the liveliest -impression of that good honest Scotch face and character, -though never in contact with the young man but once.”—Lang’s -<cite>Lockhart</cite>, p. 232, vol. ii.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_23" id="Footnote_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> For those readers who have a failing for genealogic -quests, I give a <i lang="fr">résumé</i> of the Scott family history and -succession of heirs to Abbotsford. The earlier items are -from Scott’s black-letter Bible.</p> - -<p class="monospace"> -Walter Scott, Senior, m. 1758 = Anne Rutherford. - | - +------------+ - | - Walter Scott, Bart., - b. 1771; d. 1832; m. 1797 = Margaret Charlotte - one of twelve children, | Carpenter, of French - of whom five | blood and birth. - reached maturity. | - | - +-----------------+---------+--------+-------------+ - | | | | -Charlotte Sophia, Walter, Br. Army, Anne, bapt. Charles, -bapt. 1799; d. bapt. 1801; m. 1803; d. bapt. 1805; d. -1837; m. 1820 1825, Miss Jobson; unmarried unmarried 1841. -= J. G. Lockhart. d. s. p. 1847. 1833. - | - +----+----------------+---------------------+ - | | | -John Hugh, Walter Scott, Charlotte, b. 1828; d. 1858 -b. 1821; d. b. 1826; d. m. 1847, J. R. Hope, -1831. unmarried later Hope Scott. - 1853. | - | - +--------------------------------+ - | - Mary Monica, b. 1852; now Mrs. Maxwell Scott, - of Abbotsford. -</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_24" id="Footnote_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Chapter IV. <cite>Queen Anne and the Georges.</cite></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_25" id="Footnote_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Lockhart’s <cite>Life of Scott</cite>, chapter viii., pp. 126-27, -vol. iii., Paris edition.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_26" id="Footnote_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Henry Mackenzie, b. 1745; d. 1831. <cite>Man of Feeling</cite>, -1771; <cite>The Lounger</cite>, 1785.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_27" id="Footnote_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Rev. Sydney Smith, b. 1771; d. 1845. <cite>Memoir</cite> by Lady -Holland.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_28" id="Footnote_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Francis Horner, b. 1778; d. 1817. <cite>Memoirs and Correspondence</cite>, -1843.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_29" id="Footnote_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Henry Brougham (Lord Brougham and Vaux), b. 1778; -d. 1868. <cite>Collected Speeches</cite>, 1838. <cite>Historic Sketches, etc.</cite>, -1839-43. Autobiography (edited by a brother), published in -1871.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_30" id="Footnote_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> <cite>Albert Lunel; or The Château of Languedoc.</cite> Lowndes -(Bohn) says—“3 vols. post 8vo, 1844. This novel was -suppressed on the eve of publication, and it is said not above -five copies of the original edition are extant.” The <cite>Maclise -Portrait Gallery</cite> speaks of an issue in 1872.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_31" id="Footnote_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> <cite>Life and Correspondence of Lord Jeffrey</cite>, by Lord Cockburn, -p. 283, vol. i., Harper’s edition.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_32" id="Footnote_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> A grandniece of the great marplot John Wilkes of -George III.’s time, and a near connection (if I am not mistaken) -of Captain Wilkes of the South Sea Expedition and of -the Mason and Slidell seizure.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_33" id="Footnote_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> Cited from recollection; but very close to his own utterance, -in a letter to a friend.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_34" id="Footnote_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> This was arranged through Lord Grey, in exchange for a -place in Bristol Cathedral, which had been bestowed by his -Tory friend Lyndhurst. To the same friend he was indebted -for his living at Combe Fleurey.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_35" id="Footnote_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> <cite>Life and Times of Rev. Sydney Smith</cite>, by <span class="smcap">Stuart J. -Reid</span>, p. 226, 1885.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_36" id="Footnote_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> James Mackintosh, b. 1765; d. 1832; <cite>Vindiciæ Gallicæ</cite> -(reply to Burke), 1791; <cite>Memoirs</cite>, by his son, 1835.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_37" id="Footnote_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> <cite>History of the Revolution in England in 1688, Comprising -a View of the Reign of James II. from his Accession to the -Enterprise [sic] of the Prince of Orange</cite>, London, 1834.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_38" id="Footnote_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> Smith, Jeffrey, Brown, Horner, and Brougham. Stephens: -<cite>Hours in a Library</cite>, iii., 140.</p> - -<p>The “Brown” alluded to as one of the founders, was Dr. -Thomas Brown, a distinguished physician and psychologist -(b. 1778; d. 1820), who after issue of third number of the -<cite>Review</cite>, had differences with Jeffrey (virtual editor) which -led him to withdraw his support. <cite>Life</cite>, by Welsh, p. 79 -<i lang="la">et seq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_39" id="Footnote_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> I cannot forbear giving—though only in a note—one -burst of his fervid oratory, when his powers were at their -best:</p> - -<p>“It was the boast of Augustus—it formed part of the -glare in which the perfidies of his earlier years were lost—that -he found Rome of brick, and left it of marble—a praise -not unworthy of a great prince, and to which the present -reign [George IV.] has its claim also. But how much nobler -will be our Sovereign’s boast, when he shall have it to say, -that he found law dear and left it cheap; found it a sealed -book, and left it a living letter; found it the patrimony of -the rich, left it the inheritance of the poor; found it the -two-edged sword of craft and oppression, left it the staff of -honesty and the shield of innocence.” Speech, on <cite>Present -State of the Law</cite>, February 7, 1828.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_40" id="Footnote_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> William Gifford, b. 1757; d. 1826. I give the birth-date -named by himself in his autobiography, though the new -<cite>National Dictionary of Biography</cite> gives date of 1756. -Gifford—though not always the best authority—ought to -have known the year when he was born.</p> - -<p>Ed. <cite>Quarterly Review</cite>, 1809-1824; <cite>Juvenal</cite>, 1802; <cite>Ben -Jonson</cite>, 1816.</p> - -<p>Some interesting matter concerning the early life of Gifford -may be found in Memoirs of <cite>John Murray</cite>, vol. 1, pp. -127 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_41" id="Footnote_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> John Wilson Croker, b. 1780; d. 1857, wrote voluminously -for the <cite>Quarterly Review</cite>; <cite>Life of Johnson</cite> (ed.), 1831; -his <cite>Memoirs</cite> and <cite>Correspondence</cite>, 1885.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_42" id="Footnote_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Very much piquant talk about George IV. and his -friends may be found in the <cite>Journal of Mary Frampion -from 1779 until 1846</cite>. London: Sampson Low & Co., -1885.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_43" id="Footnote_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> <cite>English Lands and Letters</cite>, vol. iii., pp. 168-70.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_44" id="Footnote_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> Queen Charlotte, d. 1818.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_45" id="Footnote_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> W. S. Landor, b. 1775; d. 1864. <cite>Gebir</cite>, 1798; <cite>Imaginary -Conversations</cite>, 1824; Foster’s <cite>Life</cite>, 1869.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_46" id="Footnote_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> P. 465. <cite>Last Fruit from an Old Tree.</cite></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_47" id="Footnote_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> Colvin cites this from unpublished verses.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_48" id="Footnote_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> In his <cite>Last Fruits from an Old Tree</cite>, p. 334, Moxon -Edition, Landor writes: “Southey could grasp great subjects -and master them; Coleridge never attempted them; Wordsworth -attempted it and failed.” This is strongly <i lang="la">ex parte</i>!</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_49" id="Footnote_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> I would strongly urge, however, the reading and purchase, -if may be, of Colvin’s charming little <cite>Golden Treasury</cite> -collection from Landor.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_50" id="Footnote_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> Leigh Hunt, b. 1784; d. 1859. <cite>Francesca da Rimini</cite>, -1816; <cite>Recollections of Byron</cite>, 1828; <cite>The Indicator</cite>, 1819-21; -<cite>Autobiography</cite>, 1850.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_51" id="Footnote_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> Thomas Moore, b. 1779; d. 1852. <cite>Lalla Rookh</cite>, 1817. -<cite>Life of Byron</cite>, 1830. <cite>Alciphron</cite>, 1839.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_52" id="Footnote_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> Sloperton was near the centre of Wiltshire, a little way -northward from the old market-town of Devizes. Mr. William -Winter, in his <cite>Gray Days and Gold</cite>, has given a very -charming account of this home of Moore’s and of its neighborhood—so -full of English atmosphere, and of the graces -and benignities of the Irish poet, as to make me think regretfully -of my tamer mention.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_53" id="Footnote_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> William Hazlitt, b. 1778; d. 1830. <cite>Characters of Shakespeare</cite>, -1817; <cite>Table Talk</cite>, 1821; <cite>Liber Amoris</cite>, 1823; <cite>Life -of Napoleon</cite>, 1828; <cite>Life</cite> (by Grandson), 1867; a later book -of memoirs, <cite>Four Generations of a Literary Family</cite>, appeared -1897. (It gave nothing essentially new, and was -quickly withdrawn from sale.)</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_54" id="Footnote_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> Henry Hallam, b. 1777; d. 1859. <cite>Middle Ages</cite>, 1818. -<cite>Literature of Europe</cite>, 1837-39. Sketch of <cite>Life</cite>, by Dean -Milman in <cite>Transactions of Royal Society</cite>, vol. x.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_55" id="Footnote_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> Marguerite Power (Countess of Blessington), b. 1789; -d. 1849; m. Captain Farmer, 1804; m. Earl of Blessington, -1817. 1822-1829, travelling on Continent. <cite>Idler in Italy</cite>, -1839-40 (first novel, about 1833). <cite>Conversations with Lord -Byron</cite>, 1834. Her special <em>reign</em> in London, 1831 to 1848.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_56" id="Footnote_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> There is a very interesting, but by no means flattered, -account of Lady Blessington and of her dinners and receptions -in Greville’s <cite>Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria</cite>, -chapter iv., p. 167, vol. i.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_57" id="Footnote_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> Edward L. Bulwer (Lord Lytton), b. 1803; d. 1873; -<cite>Pelham</cite>, 1828; <cite>Rienzi</cite>, 1835; <cite>Caxton Novels</cite>, 1849-53; <cite>Richelieu</cite>, -1839; his <cite>Biography</cite> (never fully completed) has been -written by his son, the second Lord Lytton. It is doubtful, -however, if its developments, and inevitable counter-developments, -have brought any access of honor to the elder Bulwer.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_58" id="Footnote_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> Benjamin Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), b. 1804; d. 1881. -<cite>Vivian Grey</cite>, 1826-27; <cite>Contarini Fleming</cite>, 1832; <cite>Coningsby</cite>, -1844; <cite>Lothair</cite>, 1870. Was Premier, 1867, 1874-80. -Created Earl of Beaconsfield, 1876.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_59" id="Footnote_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> <cite>Vaurien</cite>, 1797; <cite>Flim-Flams</cite>, 1805; <cite>Despotism</cite>, or <cite>Fall -of the Jesuits</cite>, 1811.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_60" id="Footnote_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> A. E. Chalon, an artist much in vogue in the days of -“Tokens,”—who also painted Lady Blessington,—but of -no lasting reputation.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_61" id="Footnote_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> In illustration of his comparatively humble position early, -Greville in his later <cite>Journal</cite>, Chapter XXIV., speaks of -Disraeli’s once proposing to Moxon, the publisher, to take -him (Disraeli) into partnership; Greville says Moxon told him -this.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_62" id="Footnote_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> George Noel Gordon (Lord Byron), b. (London) 1788; -d. (Greece) 1824. <cite>Hours of Idleness</cite>, 1807; <cite>English Bards, -etc.</cite>, 1809; <cite>Childe Harold</cite> (2 cantos), 1812; <cite>Don Juan</cite>, 1819-24; -Moore’s <cite>Life</cite>, 1830; Trelawney, <cite>Recollections, etc.</cite>, 1858. -The first volume (Macmillan, 1897) has appeared of a new -edition of Byron’s works, with voluminous notes (in over-fine -print) by William Ernest Henley. The editorial stand-point -may be judged by this averment from the preface,—“the sole -English poet bred since Milton to live a master-influence in -the world at large.”</p> - -<p>Another full edition of works, with editing by Earl of Lovelace -(grandson of Byron), is announced as shortly to appear -from the press of Murray in London, and of Scribners in -New York.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_63" id="Footnote_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> Byron’s <cite>Narrative</cite>, published in the first volume of -<cite>Hawkesworth’s Collection</cite>. Hon. John Byron, Admiral, etc., -was at one time Governor of Newfoundland; b. 1723; d. 1786.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_64" id="Footnote_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> The short line is not enough. We must give the burden -of that apostrophe to the land of Hellas, though only in a note:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled,</div> -<div class="verse">And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds,</div> -<div class="verse">The free-born wanderer of the mountain air;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,</div> -<div class="verse">Still in his beams Mendeli’s marbles glare,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_65" id="Footnote_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> I cite that part of the “Dream” which, though written -much time after, was declared by the poet, and by both -friends and foes, to represent faithfully his attitude—both -moral and physical—on the occasion of his marriage.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_66" id="Footnote_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> This poem appeared about the middle of April, 1816. -The final break in his relations with Lady Byron had occurred, -probably, in early February of the same year. On -December 10, 1815, his daughter Ada was born; and on -April 25th, next ensuing, he sailed away from England -forever. Byron insisted that the poem (“Fare thee well”), -though written in sincerity, was published against his inclinations, -through the over-zeal of a friend.—<cite>Moore’s Life</cite>, p. -526, vol. i.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_67" id="Footnote_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> Percy Bysshe Shelley, b. 1792; d. (by drowning in Gulf -of Spezia) 1822. <cite>Queen Mab</cite>, pub. 1821 (but privately -printed 1813); <cite>Alastor</cite>, 1816; <cite>Laon and Cythna</cite> (afterward -<cite>Revolt of Islam</cite>), 1818; <cite>Adonais</cite>, 1821. <cite>Life</cite>, by Mrs. -Shelley, 1845; Hogg’s <cite>Life</cite>, 1858; Rossetti’s, 1870. Besides -which there is biographic material, more or less full, by -Forman, Trelawny, McCarthy, Leigh Hunt, Garnett, and Jeaffreson -(<cite>Real Shelley</cite>). <cite>Life</cite>, in <cite>English Men of Letters</cite>, by -the late John Addington Symonds; and in 1886, Professor -Dowden’s work.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_68" id="Footnote_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> Rossetti, in <cite>Ency. Britannica</cite>, says, “in Christ Church, -Newark”—as to which item (repeated by Dowden) there has -been some American wonderment!</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_69" id="Footnote_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> July, 1804, to July, 1810; <cite>Athenæum</cite>, No. 3,006, June, -1885.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_70" id="Footnote_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> William Godwin, b. 1756; d. 1836. <cite>Political Justice</cite>, 1793; -<cite>Caleb Williams</cite>, 1794. William Austen (author of <cite>Peter -Rugg</cite>), in his <cite>Letters from London</cite>, 1802-3, describes a visit -to Godwin at his cottage—Somerston; notices a portrait of -“Mary” (Mrs. Shelley) hanging over the mantel.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_71" id="Footnote_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> Miss Martineau (p. 304, vol. ii., <cite>Autobiography</cite>) says -that Godwin told her he wrote the first half of <cite>Caleb Williams</cite> -in three months, and then stopped for six—finishing it in -three more. “This pause,” she says, “in the middle of a -work so intense, seems to me a remarkable incident.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_72" id="Footnote_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> Separation took place about the middle of June, 1814; -she destroyed herself, November 10, 1816. At one time there -had been ugly rumors that she was untrue to him; and there is -some reason to believe that Shelley once entertained this belief, -but there is no adequate testimony to that end; Godwin’s -<i lang="la">dixit</i> should not count for very much. Dowden leaves -the matter in doubt.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_73" id="Footnote_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> I am reminded that Macready’s impersonation of Werner -was a noted and successful one. <cite>Sardanapalus</cite> and the <cite>Two -Foscari</cite> enlisted also the fervor of this actor’s dramatic indorsement. -But these all—needed a Macready.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_74" id="Footnote_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> Very full account of the Chancery proceedings in respect -to children of Shelley may be found in Professor Dowden’s -biography. By this it would appear that by decision of Lord -Eldon (July 25, 1818) Shelley was allowed to see his children -twelve times a year—if in the presence of their regularly -appointed guardians (Dr. and Mrs. Hume).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_75" id="Footnote_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> John Keats, b. 1795; d. 1821. First “collected” <cite>Poems</cite>, -1817; <cite>Endymion</cite>, 1818; second volume of collected <cite>Poems</cite>, -1820; <cite>Life and Letters</cite>—Lord Houghton (Milnes), 1848.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_76" id="Footnote_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> “Ode to a Nightingale,” vi.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_77" id="Footnote_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> In letter 573, to Murray (Halleck Col., date of Genoa, -November, 1822), Byron says: “I see somebody represents -the Hunts and Mrs. Shelley as living in my house; it is a -falsehood.… I do not see them twice a month.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_78" id="Footnote_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> Professor Hoppin, in his honest and entertaining <cite>Old -England</cite>, speaks of it (p. 258) as “a dull, dirty village,” and—of -the church—as “most forlorn.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_79" id="Footnote_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> <cite>Gray Days and Gold</cite>; chapter viii. Macmillan, 1896.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_80" id="Footnote_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> This relates, of course, to the condition of the Abbey in -the days of Byron’s childhood. Colonel Wildman, a distinguished -officer in the Peninsular War, who succeeded to -the ownership (by purchase) about 1817, expended very -large sums upon such judicious improvements as took away -its old look of desolation.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_81" id="Footnote_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> <cite>Croker Papers</cite>, chapter xviii. Closing of Session of 1833. -Croker would have spoken more gently of him in those latter -days, when the king turned his back on Reformers.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_82" id="Footnote_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> The <cite>Penny Magazine</cite> appeared first in 1832; the <cite>Cyclopædia</cite> -in the following year.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_83" id="Footnote_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> The reduction of tax from 4<i>d.</i> to 1<i>d.</i> took place in -1836.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_84" id="Footnote_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> Thomas Babington Macaulay, b. 1800; d. 1859. <cite>History -of England</cite>, 1848-55-61. <cite>Lays of Ancient Rome</cite>, 1842. -His <cite>Essays</cite> (published in America), 1840. Complete <cite>Works</cite>, -London, 8 vols., 1866. <cite>Life</cite>, by Trevelyan, 1876.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_85" id="Footnote_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> Greville (<cite>Journal of Queen Victoria’s Time</cite>, vol. i., p. -369) speaks of a dinner at Lady Holland’s—Macaulay being -present—when her ladyship, growing tired of the eloquence -of Speakers of the House of Commons and Fathers of the -Church, said: “Well, Mr. Macaulay, can you tell us anything -of dolls—when first named or used?” Macaulay -was ready on the instant—dilated upon Roman dolls and -others—citing Persius, “<i lang="la">Veneri donato a virgine puppæ</i>.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_86" id="Footnote_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> See <a href="#Page_116">p. 116</a>, <cite>Ante</cite>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_87" id="Footnote_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> <cite>Memoirs and Correspondence</cite>, 1885.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_88" id="Footnote_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> Lang’s <cite>Lockhart</cite>, p. 42, vol. ii.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_89" id="Footnote_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> Frederick Marryat, b. 1792; d. 1848; R. N., 1806; -Commander, 1815; resigned, 1830. <cite>Frank Mildmay</cite>, 1829; -<cite>Midshipman Easy</cite>, 1836; <cite>Peter Simple</cite>, 1837; <cite>Jacob Faithful</cite>, -1838; <cite>Life</cite>, by his daughter, Florence, 1872.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_90" id="Footnote_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> <cite>Diary in America</cite>, by Captain F. Marryat, 1839.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_91" id="Footnote_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> William Harrison Ainsworth, b 1805; d. 1882. <cite>Rookwood</cite>, -1834—chiefly notable for its wonderful description of -Dick Turpin’s ride—upon Black Bess—from London to -York. <cite>Tower of London</cite>, 1840.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_92" id="Footnote_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> G. P. R. James, b. 1801; d. 1860. <cite>Richelieu</cite> (first novel), -1829; <cite>Darnley</cite>, 1830; <cite>One in a Thousand</cite>, 1835; <cite>Attila</cite>, -1837. His books count far above a hundred in number: -Lowndes (Bohn) gives over seventy titles of novels alone. -What he might have done, with a modern type-writer at command, -it is painful to imagine.</p> - -</div> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span></p> - -<h2>INDEX.</h2> - -<ul> - -<li class="ifrst">Abbotsford, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">the author’s visit to, <a href="#Page_67">67 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>; <a href="#Page_81">81</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Abou-ben-Adhem,” <a href="#Page_152">152</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Adam Bede,” <a href="#Page_287">287</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Adonais,” <a href="#Page_232">232</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Ainsworth, W. H., <a href="#Page_283">283</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Alastor,” <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Alison, Rev. Archibald, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Anacreon,” Moore’s, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Ancient Mariner, Rime of the,” <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Arnold, Dr., his experience with the young princes, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Aylmer, Rose, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">“Battle of Blenheim, The,” <a href="#Page_9">9</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Battle of Hohenlinden,” Campbell’s, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Battle of Ivry, The,” <a href="#Page_264">264</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Beaconsfield, Lord. <a href="#Disraeli"><i>See</i> Disraeli.</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Blackwood’s Magazine</cite>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>; <a href="#Page_46">46</a>; <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Blessington, Lady, <a href="#Page_174">174 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">her many fascinations, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">her downfall, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>; <a href="#Page_242">242</a>; <a href="#Page_259">259</a>; <a href="#Page_264">264</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Border Minstrelsy,” Scott’s, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Boswell, Gifford’s satire on, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Bowles, Caroline, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Bowles, William Lisle, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Brougham, Henry, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his connection with the <cite>Edinburgh Review</cite>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">becomes Lord Chancellor, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his manner in Parliament, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his fervid oratory, <a href="#Footnote_39">108, note</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his many quarrels, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his death, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>; <a href="#Page_113">113</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his famous defence of Queen Caroline, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>; <a href="#Page_177">177</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his criticism of Byron, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>; <a href="#Page_255">255</a>; <a href="#Page_265">265</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Brown, Dr. Thomas, his connection with the <cite>Edinburgh Review</cite>, <a href="#Footnote_38">107, note</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Browning, Robert, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Bulwer">Bulwer-Lytton, Edward L., <a href="#Page_178">178</a>; <a href="#Page_254">254</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Byron, Lord, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his satire on Scott, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Leigh Hunt’s quarrel with, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his opinion of Moore, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">compared with Moore, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his break with George IV., <a href="#Page_168">168</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">leaves England, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his family history, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his boyhood, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his controversy with Brougham, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his unfortunate marriage, <a href="#Page_201">201 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">in London, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">separates from his wife, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">leaves England, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his foreign tour, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">meets Shelley, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>Shelley’s influence on, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">in Italy, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his scepticism, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">at Shelley’s funeral, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his character, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">sails for Greece, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his death, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>; <a href="#Page_249">249</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">“Caleb Williams,” <a href="#Page_219">219</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Campbell, Thomas, his primness, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his first poem, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his clear field in 1799, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his work in prose and poetry, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">compared with Scott, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>; <a href="#Page_82">82</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Canning, George, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Carlyle, Thomas, his mildness towards Southey, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his criticism of Scott’s work, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>; <a href="#Page_288">288</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Caroline, Queen, marries the Prince, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">separates from her husband, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">her trial, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Chalon, A. E., <a href="#Page_183">183</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Charlotte, Princess, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Chaworth, Mary, Byron’s poem to, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>; <a href="#Page_250">250</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Childe Harold,” <a href="#Page_195">195</a>; <a href="#Page_238">238</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Cochrane, Lord, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Cockburn, Lord, his account of Jeffrey, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Coleridge, Hartley, his home, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Southey’s letter to, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Coleridge, S. T., his separation from his wife, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his intercourse with Southey, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">with Southey at Greta Hall, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">chafes at Southey’s odes, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">compared with Southey, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>; <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Confessions of an Opium Eater, The,” <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Croker, John Wilson, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his criticism of Macaulay, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Croker Papers, The,” <a href="#Footnote_5">18, note</a>; <a href="#Page_279">279</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">“Daniel Deronda,” <a href="#Page_287">287</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">De Quincey, Thomas, his home, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Robinson’s description of, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his early years, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">settles near Grasmere, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his affection for Catharine Wordsworth, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his marriage, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his laudanum drinking, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his “Reminiscences,” <a href="#Page_37">37</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">last years and death of, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his assertion as to the appreciation of Wordsworth in 1802, <a href="#Footnote_20">56, note</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Derwent Water, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>; <a href="#Page_5">5</a>; <a href="#Page_6">6</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Devereux,” <a href="#Page_178">178</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Dickens, Charles, his caricature of Leigh Hunt, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Disowned, The,” <a href="#Page_178">178</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx" id="Disraeli">Disraeli, Benjamin, his foppishness, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his antecedents, <a href="#Page_180">180 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his literary work, <a href="#Page_182">182 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his ability as Lord Beaconsfield, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>; <a href="#Page_201">201</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Doctor, The,” Southey’s, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Don Juan,” <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">D’Orsay, Comte, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Dwight, Timothy, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><cite>Edinburgh Review</cite>, founded by Smith and Jeffrey, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Endymion,” <a href="#Page_230">230</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Erskine, William, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Examiner, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">“First Gentleman of Europe, The,” <a href="#Page_165">165</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Fitzherbert, Mrs., <a href="#Page_120">120 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fox, Charles, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Francesca da Rimini</cite>, Leigh Hunt’s, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Frankenstein,” <a href="#Page_250">250</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Franklin, Benjamin, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Gamba, Count, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span>“Gebir,” Landor’s, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">George III., loses his reason, <a href="#Footnote_5">17, note</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Scott’s allusions to, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>; <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">George IV., appointed Regent, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his friendliness toward Sir Walter Scott, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his later laxity, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his unfortunate situation, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">ascends the throne, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">last days of, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Gertrude of Wyoming,” <a href="#Page_54">54</a>; <a href="#Page_57">57</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Gifford, William, <a href="#Page_114">114 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>; <a href="#Page_163">163</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Godwin, Mary, elopes with Shelley, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Godwin, William, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Gordon, General, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Gore House, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Grasmere, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Greta Hall, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Greville, Charles, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Hallam, Arthur, Tennyson’s lament for, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Hallam, Henry, his serenity, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">contrasted with Hazlitt, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>; <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Hawthorne, Nathaniel, his account of Leigh Hunt, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Hazlitt, William, his cynicism, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his friendship with the Lambs, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his strenuous personality, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Helvellyn, Mt., <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Holland, Lady, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>; <a href="#Page_213">213</a>; <a href="#Page_264">264</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Holland, Lord, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Horner, Francis, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Hours of Idleness,” <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Hucknall-Torkard, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Humphreys, David, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Hunt, Isaac, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Hunt, John, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Hunt, Leigh, imprisonment of, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his American blood, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his first writings, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his pretty phrases, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his easy methods of living, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his poetry, <a href="#Page_148">148 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his opinion of Moore, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>; <a href="#Page_163">163</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">compared with Hazlitt, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">compared with Shelley, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his friendship for Shelley, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">at Shelley’s funeral, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>; <a href="#Page_269">269</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">“Idler in Italy, The,” Lady Blessington’s, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Imaginary Conversations,” Landor’s, <a href="#Footnote_4">16, note</a>; <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Ingersoll, Robert, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“In Memoriam,” <a href="#Page_173">173</a>; <a href="#Page_232">232</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Irish Avatar, The,” Byron’s, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Isle of Palms, The,” John Wilson’s, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">James, G. P. R., <a href="#Page_283">283</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Japhet in Search of a Father,” <a href="#Page_281">281</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Jeffrey, Francis, his association with Sydney Smith, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his criticism of Southey and Wordsworth, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">marries Miss Wilkes, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">becomes Lord Jeffrey, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>; <a href="#Page_113">113</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Jersey, Lady, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“<cite>Julia de Roubigné</cite>,” Mackenzie’s, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Keats, John, his school days, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">publishes “Endymion,” <a href="#Page_230">230</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">goes to Italy, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his death, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Keble, John, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Kehama, The Curse of,” Southey’s, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Kenilworth,” <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span>Keswick, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>; <a href="#Page_8">8</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Knight, Charles, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Knight’s Quarterly Magazine</cite>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">“Lady of the Lake, The,” <a href="#Page_65">65</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Lake Country, The, <a href="#Page_1">1 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Lalla Rookh,” <a href="#Page_153">153</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">great success of, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Lamb, Charles, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his opinion of Southey, <a href="#Footnote_4">16, note</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his friendship with Hazlitt, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Lamb, Mary, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Landor, Walter Savage, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>; <a href="#Page_18">18</a>; <a href="#Page_20">20</a>; <a href="#Page_56">56</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his lack of popularity, <a href="#Page_125">125 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his fondness for the country, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his “Gebir,” <a href="#Page_129">129</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">goes abroad, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">in Italy, <a href="#Page_132">132 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his genius for skimming, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his domestic troubles, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his old age and death, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">strange contrasts in, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">compared with Byron, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>; <a href="#Page_228">228</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Lang, Andrew, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>; <a href="#Page_280">280</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Lansdowne, Lord, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>; <a href="#Page_265">265</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Laon and Cythna,” <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Last Days of Pompeii, The,” <a href="#Page_179">179</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Lay of the Last Minstrel, The,” <a href="#Page_60">60</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Byron’s satire on, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Lays of Ancient Rome,” <a href="#Page_263">263</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Lockhart, J. G., his work on the <cite>Quarterly Review</cite>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">quotation from Lang’s “Life” of, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Scott’s dying words to, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>; <a href="#Page_280">280</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Lycidas,” <a href="#Page_232">232</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Lytton, Lord, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>. <a href="#Bulwer"><i>See also</i> Bulwer-Lytton.</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Macaulay, Thomas Babington, his ancestry, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">at the university, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his first writings, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">supports the Reform Bill, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">finishes his “Lays of Ancient Rome,” <a href="#Page_267">267</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">in Parliament, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his great History, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">elevated to the peerage, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his death, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Macaulay, Zachary, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Mackenzie, Henry, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Mackintosh, Sir James, his political career, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">failure of his literary plans, <a href="#Page_105">105 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Man of Feeling, The,” Mackenzie’s, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Manfred,” <a href="#Page_215">215</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Markham, Dr., <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Marmion,” <a href="#Page_61">61</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Marryat, Frederick, goes to sea, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his books, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Mavrocordatos, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Melbourne, Lord, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>; <a href="#Page_265">265</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Midshipman Easy,” <a href="#Page_281">281</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Milbanke, Miss, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>; <a href="#Page_250">250</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Milbanke, Sir Ralph, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Moore, Thomas, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>; <a href="#Page_101">101</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his acquaintance with Leigh Hunt, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his success in society, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his impressions of America, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his domestic relations, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his great reputation, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his melodious songs, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>; <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">More, Mrs. Hannah, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Murder as a Fine Art,” appears in <cite>Blackwood’s</cite>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Murray, John, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">starts <cite>The Quarterly</cite>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>; <a href="#Page_160">160</a>; <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><cite>New Monthly Magazine, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Newman, Cardinal, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>Newspapers, marvellous increase in circulation of, from 1836 to 1838, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Newstead Abbey, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“<cite>Noctes Ambrosianæ</cite>,” <a href="#Page_31">31</a>; <a href="#Page_42">42</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“North, Christopher,” <a href="#Page_40">40 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">O’Connell, Daniel, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Old Mortality,” <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Paine, Thomas, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Peel, Sir Robert, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>; <a href="#Page_255">255</a>; <a href="#Page_259">259</a>; <a href="#Page_265">265</a>; <a href="#Page_271">271</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Pelham,” <a href="#Page_178">178</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Penny Cyclopædia, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Penny Magazine, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Peter Bell,” Lamb’s and Robinson’s opinions of, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Peter Simple,” <a href="#Page_282">282</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Pleasures of Hope, The,” <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Political Justice,” <a href="#Page_219">219</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Pusey, Dr., <a href="#Page_254">254</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><cite>Quarterly, The</cite>, founding of, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Quarterly Review, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Queen Mab,” <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Reform Bill, The, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>; <a href="#Page_253">253</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Revolt of Islam, The,” <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Rienzi,” <a href="#Page_179">179</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Robinson, Henry Crabb, his friendship with Southey, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his “Diary and Reminiscences,” <a href="#Page_26">26</a>; <a href="#Page_264">264</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Roderick the Goth,” Southey’s, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Rogers, Samuel, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Ruskin, John, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Rydal, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Scott, Anne, death of, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Scott, Charles, death of, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Scott, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his boyhood, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his first poems appear, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">compared with Campbell, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his marriage, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">genealogy of, <a href="#Footnote_23">72, note</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">the charm of his stories, <a href="#Page_73">73 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his love of pageantry, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his management of the Edinboro’ reception to the King, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his visit to the Mediterranean, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his death, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>; <a href="#Page_82">82</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his opinion of Gifford, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his admiration for Moore, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>; <a href="#Page_168">168</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Shelley, Percy Bysshe, his early life, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his marriage and unhappiness, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">elopes with Mary Godwin, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">meets Byron, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his influence on Byron, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his scepticism, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his death and pagan burial, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his character, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Smith, Goldwin, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>; <a href="#Page_183">183</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Smith, Sydney, settles in Edinboro’, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">assists in founding <cite>The Edinburgh Review</cite>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">goes to London, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his ministerial career, <a href="#Page_97">97 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his famous “Dame Partington” simile, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his wit, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his praise of Moore, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>; <a href="#Page_177">177</a>; <a href="#Page_264">264</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Southey, Robert, <a href="#Page_5">5 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his early life, <a href="#Page_11">11 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">settles at Keswick, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">appointed Poet Laureate, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">compared with Coleridge, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">refuses a baronetcy, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">death of, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>; <a href="#Page_56">56</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">meets Landor at Como, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>; <a href="#Page_168">168</a>; <a href="#Page_177">177</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Shelley’s acquaintance with, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Byron’s satire on, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>; <a href="#Page_228">228</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Staël, Madame de, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>; <a href="#Page_215">215</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Stamp Tax, The, effect of its reduction on the newspapers, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span>Stanley, Lord, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Stewart, Dugald, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>; <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Story, W. W., Landor’s connection with, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Strawberry Hill, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Swan Inn, The, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">“Talisman, The,” <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Tennyson, Lord, his grief at the death of Arthur Hallam, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his dramas, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>; <a href="#Page_288">288</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Thackeray, W. M., <a href="#Page_287">287</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Thalaba,” <a href="#Page_13">13</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">profits on, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Thrale, Madame, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Tintern Abbey,” Wordsworth’s, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Trelawney, E. J., <a href="#Page_235">235</a>; <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Trumbull, John, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Victoria, Queen, beginning of her reign, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">her accession, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">her marriage, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>; <a href="#Page_287">287</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Vision of Judgment, A,” <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Vivian Grey,” <a href="#Page_182">182</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Wellington, Duke of, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>; <a href="#Page_255">255</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">West, Benjamin, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>; <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Wilkes, John, <a href="#Footnote_32">94, note</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">William IV., <a href="#Page_81">81</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his nerve and pluck, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his lack of ceremony, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">some events of his time, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“William and Helen,” Scott’s, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Wilson, James, <a href="#Footnote_12">41, note</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Wilson, John, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>; <a href="#Page_36">36</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his character, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his writings in <cite>Blackwood’s</cite>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his diaries, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">becomes a professor, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his success, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>; <a href="#Page_82">82</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Windermere, <a href="#Page_2">2 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Wishing Gate, The,” <a href="#Page_4">4</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Wollstonecraft, Mary, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Wordsworth, Catharine, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Wordsworth, Dorothy, <a href="#Footnote_14">43, note</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Wordsworth, William, his opposition to railways, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his grave, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his attitude toward Southey’s odes, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his account of Southey’s last years, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>; <a href="#Page_30">30</a>; <a href="#Page_31">31</a>; <a href="#Page_32">32</a>; <a href="#Page_56">56</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his unlikeness to Scott, <a href="#Page_61">61 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>; <a href="#Page_168">168</a>; <a href="#Page_228">228</a>.</li> - -</ul> - -<p> </p> -<p> </p> -<hr class="full" /> -<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS: THE LATER GEORGES TO VICTORIA***</p> -<p>******* This file should be named 54143-h.htm or 54143-h.zip *******</p> -<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> -<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/5/4/1/4/54143">http://www.gutenberg.org/5/4/1/4/54143</a></p> -<p> -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed.</p> - -<p>Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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