Chapter 8 No.8

We have still in our mind's eye, and very pleasantly, that quaint old clergyman of Hampshire, who wrote about the daws, and the swallows, and the fern-owl, in a way that has kept the name of Gilbert White alive, for a great many years.

And who that has read them can ever forget the stories of that winning Hampshire lady, whose fame takes on new greenness with every spring-time? Following upon our talk of this charming authoress, we had a little discursive mention, in our last chapter, of certain books which at the close of the last century, or early in this, were written for boys and girls; chiefest among these we noted those written by that excellent woman, Miss Edgeworth. We spoke of Miss Roche, who gushed over in the loves of Amanda and Mortimer-those fond and sentimental Children of the Abbey; and of Miss Porter, with her gorgeous heroics about Poland and Scotland, and of Mrs. Radcliffe's stunning Mysteries of Udolpho. We had a glimpse of the strange work and life of William Beckford-son of the rich Lord Mayor Beckford; and we closed our chapter over the grave of that brilliant poet and wrecked man Robert Burns.

That grewsome death of the great Scotch singer occurred in a miserable house of a disorderly street in Dumfries, within four years of the close of the last century; his children-without any mastership to control, and the love that should have guided dumb-wandering in and out; no home comforts about them; the very necessities of life uncertain and precarious; all hopes narrowed for them, and all memories of theirs full of wildest alternations of joyousness and fright.

A Banker Poet.

Samuel Rogers.

You have perhaps read and enjoyed a poem called The Pleasures of Memory. It has tender passages in it; it has an easy, melodious swing:-

"Twilight's soft dews steal o'er the village green,

With magic tints to harmonize the scene;

Stilled is the hum that thro' the hamlet broke,

When round the ruins of their ancient oak

The peasants flocked to hear the minstrel play

And games and carols closed the busy day.

*****

Up springs, at every step-to claim a tear,

Some little friendship formed and cherished here;

And not the lightest leaf, but trembling teems

With golden visions and romantic dreams.

This poem, with echoes of Goldsmith in it, with echoes of Dryden, with echoes of Cowper-all caught together by a hand that was most deft, and by a taste that was most fastidious-was written and published in London, four years before Burns died, by the poet-banker Samuel Rogers.[1] It is not a name that I feel inclined to glorify very much, or that should be honored with any large reverence; but it is brought specially to the reader's notice here, because the life, career, and accomplishment of the man offers so striking a contrast to that of the Scottish poet who was his contemporary. They were born within four years of each other. One under the bare roof of an Ayrshire cottage, the other amid the luxuries of a banker's home in London; one caught inspiration amongst the hills and the woods; the other was taught melody in the drawing-rooms and libraries of London; one wrested his conquests in the kingdom of song, single-handed; and the other, his lesser and feebler ones, bolstered with all the appliances that wealth could give, or long culture suggest. The poetry of the one is rich, individual, and spirited, with sources in nature and in the passions of the man; the poetry of the other has only those congruous and tamer harmonies, whose sources lie in the utterance of deeper and stronger singers before him. Yet the life of that Ayrshire poet was a miserable failure; and the life of this other, Samuel Rogers, was-as the world counts things-a complete success. No half-starved children pulled at his skirts for bread. All luxuries were about him, and from the beginning life flowed with him as calmly as a river.

Of his early history there is not much to be said. We know that he was born at Newington Green-an old suburb lying directly north of the city, toward Stamford Hill-and now engulfed by the tide of London houses; we know he studied at good schools there, and under careful teachers at home; we know that he used to read and love Dr. Beattie's minstrel; we know that once, in boyhood (he tells the story himself), craving a sight of the great Dr. Johnson, he went to his door, but scared by the first tap of the knocker, sidled away, and so never saw that literary magnate. It was a timidity that did not cling to Mr. Rogers; in all his later years no man in London was less afraid of the pounding of a knocker.

His first volume was printed in the very year on which the poor thin book of Burns's first poems saw the light at Kilmarnock. This, however, did not make his reputation; that came six years later with the Pleasures of Memory, of which I cited a fragment; and thereafter, all down through the earlier half of the present century, there was hardly a better known man in London than Samuel Rogers, banker and poet. He voyaged widely and brought back many spoils of travel; he had luxurious tastes and fed them with the utmost discretion. He had social ambition, and rare sagacity in selecting his companions, and in timing his courtesies; he flattered critics, and was obsequious to men with titles.

His house in St. James's-with its broad upper double window, looking out upon the Green Park-was known of all men. Before yet the days of bric-à-brac had come, it was filled with beautiful things and with trophies of art. It was not large nor pretentious; but on its walls were paintings, or sketches by Raphael, by Rubens, by Titian, by Gainsborough, by Rembrandt, and by Reynolds; and in its ante-rooms, marbles by Thorwaldsen and Canova. There were no children of the house, nor was there ever a wife there to aid, or to lord the master. Yet many a lady, ranking by title, or by cleverness, has enjoyed the dinners and the breakfasts for which the house was famous. The cooking was always of the best; the wines the rarest; the meats and fruits the choicest, and the porcelain superb. Like most who have richly equipped houses, he loved to have his fine things admired; and he loved to have his fine words echoed. Few foreigners of any literary distinction visited London from 1815 to 1850, without coming to a taste of the poet's hospitality, and to a taste too, very likely, of his pretty satire. His wit flashed more sharply in his talk than in his verse; and his dinner stories were fabulous in number, in piquancy, and in sting. Like all accomplished raconteurs, he must needs tell his good stories over and over, so that Rogers's butler, it was wittily said, was next best to Rogers.

He could hardly have been called a good-natured man, and was always, I think, keener for a good thing to say, than for a good thing to do. He gave, it is true, largely in charities; but in orderly, business-like ways and with none of the unction and kindly indirectness[2] which doubles the warmth of the best giving. All London knew him as a diner out, as a connoisseur, as an opera-goer, as a patron of clever people, as a friend to those in place, as a flaneur along Piccadilly. He was cool, unimpassioned, blasé in look, never doing openly discreditable things; and he carried his reputation for unmitigated respectability, for wealth, for sharp speeches, for cleverness, for sagacious charities, down to extreme age; dying as late as 1855, ninety-three years old.

Rogers' poems.

Though the poem entitled The Pleasures of Memory made his fame, a later descriptive poem, embodying the gleanings from a trip in Italy, is perhaps better known; and it enjoys the distinction of having been illustrated and printed at a cost of $70,000 of the banker's money. Fragments of that poem you must know; the story of Ginevra, perhaps, best of all; so daintily told that it is likely to live and be cherished as long as any of the bric-à-brac which the banker poet gathered in his travels. 'Tis a story of a picture that he saw-a "lady in her earliest youth."

"She sits inclining forward as to speak,

Her lips half open, and her finger up

As though she said-Beware! Her vest of gold

Broidered with flowers, and clasped from head to foot,

An emerald stone in every golden clasp,

And on her brow, fairer than alabaster,

A coronet of pearls.... Alone it hangs

Over a mouldering heirloom, its companion,

An oaken chest, half eaten by the worms.

*****

Just as she looks there in her bridal dress

She was all gentleness and gaiety.

*****

And in the lustre of her youth, she gave

Her hand with her heart in it, to Francesco.

Great was the joy; but at the bridal feast

When all sat down, the bride was wanting there,

Nor was she to be found! Her father cried

"'Tis but to make a trial of our love!"

And filled his glass to all; but his hand shook,

And soon from guest to guest the panic spread.

'Twas but that instant she had left Francesco

Laughing, and looking back and flying still,

Her ivory tooth imprinted on his finger.

But now, alas, she was not to be found;

Nor from that hour could anything be guessed

But that she was not! Weary of his life

Francesco flew to Venice, and forthwith

Flung it away in battle with the Turk.

Orsini lived; and long mightest thou have seen

An old man wandering as in quest of something-

Something he could not find-he knew not what

When he was gone, the house remained awhile

Silent and tenantless; then, went to strangers.

Full fifty years were past, and all forgot,

When on an idle day-a day of search

Mid the old lumber in the gallery-

That mouldering chest was noticed; and 'twas said

By one as young, as thoughtless, as Ginevra,

Why not remove it from its lurking-place?

'Twas done, as soon as said; but on the way

It burst-it fell; and lo, a skeleton,

With here and there a pearl, an emerald stone,

A golden clasp-clasping a shred of gold.

All else had perished, save a nuptial ring

And a small seal-her mother's legacy,

Engraven with a name-the name of both-

"Ginevra."

A pretty delicacy certainly goes to the telling of that story; but in the tale of Christabel and of the Ancient Mariner there is something more than delicacy-more of brain and passion and far-reaching poetic insight in the poet Coleridge, than in ten such men as Samuel Rogers.

Coleridge.

Coleridge.

Yet what a sad life we have to tell you of now! A life without any repose in it;-a life haunted and goaded by its own ambitions-a life put to wreck by lack of resolute governance-a life going out at last under the shadows of great clouds.

Coleridge[3] was the son of a humble, quiet, self-forgetting, earnest clergyman in the West of England; and the boy, having no other opportunity, came to be billeted upon that famous Christ Hospital school in London-whose boys in their ancient uniform of yellow stockings and blue coats, and bare heads, still provoke the curiosity of those western travellers who wander down Newgate Street, and gaze through the iron grill upon the paved approach-way.

He knew Lamb there-Charles Lamb, who in the Essays of Elia addresses to him that famous apostrophe: "Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the dayspring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before thee-the dark pillar not yet turned-Samuel Taylor Coleridge-Logician, Metaphysician, Bard!" Yet this pale-faced metaphysician and friend of Lamb gets severe beatings at the hands of the Greek master, though his sweet intonations make the corridors resound with the verse of Homer. At Cambridge, where he goes afterward for a time, he is cheated and bullied; his far-off and dreamy look upon the symphonies of a poetic world not qualifying him for the every-day contests of the cloisters; in the haze in which he lives, he loses scent of the honors he had hoped to win; there is no prospective fellowship and no establishment for him there. Disappointed and despairing he goes up to London and enlists as private in the dragoons under a feigned name; but friends detect and prevent the military sacrifice.

A little later, we find him in his own West of England again, at Bristol-whither we have wandered so often in search of poets-and he encounters Southey thereabout, whom he had met for the first time on a visit to Oxford in 1794; this brother poet being as hazy, and dreamy, and theosophic, and hopeful in those days as Coleridge himself. The two form a sort of garret partnership-lecture to the savages of surrounding towns-are inoculated both with the "fraternity and equality" fever which had grown out of the French Revolution-they believing that this French car of Juggernaut is to be dragged with its bloody wheels over the whole brotherhood of nations. In this faith they plot a settlement, in the new region-of which they know nothing, but the sweetly sounding name of Wyoming-upon the banks of the Susquehanna. There they would dig, and build cottages, and philosophize, and found Arcadia. With kindred poetic foresight, Coleridge marries in these days a bride as inexperienced and as poor as himself; and for a little time there is a one-volumed Arcadia on the banks of the Bristol Channel, with a lovely and pensive Sara for its presiding nymph. Only for those few early years does this nymph enter for much into the career of Coleridge. Domesticity[4] was never a shining virtue in him; and wife, and cottage, and Arcadia somehow fade out from the story of his life-as pointless, unsaving, and ineffective for him, all these, as the blurred lines with which we begin a story, and cross them out. Southey, with a practical old aunt to look sharply after his youngness, is quickly driven from his Arcadian feeding ground and for the present disappears.

But Coleridge is still in the wallow of his wild vain hopes and wild discourse, when he encounters another poet-his elder by a few years and of a cooler temperament-William Wordsworth; who about that time had established himself, with his sister Dorothy, upon the borders of Somersetshire. These two men, so unlike, cleave together from the beginning; there is a flagging now in the Unitarian discourses of Coleridge in country chapels; and instead, wanderings with the brother poets over the fair country ways that border upon the Bristol straits-looking off upon the green flats of Somerset, the tufted banks of the Avon, the shining of the sea, with trafficking ships, to the west. Out of these, and of their meditations grow the first book-a joint one-of Lyrical Ballads; its issue not making a ripple on the tide where Crabbe and Cowper were then afloat; and yet creating an epoch in the history of British verse. For in it was the story of the Ancient Mariner, and words therein that will never grow old:

"Farewell, farewell! but this I tell

To thee, thou wedding guest!

He prayeth well, who loveth well

Both man and bird and beast;

He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us

He made and loveth all!"

Yet the poet does still-from time to time wandering into country chapels-hammer at strange, irregular sermons, with a mixed metaphysics and poetry; and theologies of a dim vague sort which beat on ear and hearts, like sleet on slated roofs, and bring never a beam of that warming sunshine which lies in the lines I have quoted from the Mariner.

One wonders how he lived in those times; with no moneys coming from books; only driblets from his preachments; and with not enough of commercial aptitude in him to audit a grocer's bill. The Wedgewoods-so well known by their pottery-who have a quick eye for fine wares of all sorts-recognize his rare brain, and send him over to Germany, bestowing upon him an annuity, which enables him to forego his travelling priesthood, and gives him the means of visiting various cities of the continent.

The Wordsworths make the trip with him; and after a stay of a twelve-month-mostly in Gottingen-Coleridge returns, with his translation of Wallenstein; but this counts for little. A year later, he finds his way to Keswick-to a beautiful, wooded bay, where Southey ultimately established his anchorage for life;[5] the Wordsworths were not far off, at Grasmere; and Coleridge plans that weekly paper-The Friend (finding issue some years later) with wonderful things in it, which few people read then; and so fine-drawn, that few read them now. The damps of Keswick give him rheumatic pains, for which he uses protective stimulants; good Dorothy Wordsworth has fears thereanent, and regards hopefully his appointment to some civil station at Malta. But his impracticabilities lose him the place after a very short incumbency; he crosses to Italy; sees Naples, Amain, and Vesuvius; sees, and knows well at Rome, our American painter, Washington Allston. There are bonds of sympathy we might have looked for between the author of Monaldi and the author of Christabel.

In England again, the fogs bring back old rheumatic pains; the alienation from his wife is declaring itself in more unmistakable ways; and then, or thereabout,[6] begins that terrible slavery to opium, whose chains he wore thenceforth, some twenty years, and was not entirely free until death broke his bonds. There is a dreary, yet touching pathos in this confession of his-"Alas, it is with a bitter smile, a laugh of gall and bitterness, that I recall that period of unsuspecting delusion, and how I first became aware of the maelstrom, the fatal whirlpool to which I was drawing, just when the current was already beyond my strength to stem."

But against the circling terrors of that maelstrom he does make now and then gallant struggle-goes to the house of that kindly surgeon, Gillman, at Highgate, who is charged to guard him-does guard him with exceeding kindness; the servants have orders to watch him-to follow him in the street on his lecture days. But the cunning of a man crazed by his insatiate appetite outwits them; and over and over the turbid roll of his speech-with flashing splendors in it, that give no light-betrays him. And yet it was in those very days of alternate heroic struggle and of devilish yielding that he re-vamps and extends and retouches that sweet, serene poem of Christabel, with the pure, innocent, loving, trustful, winning, blue-eyed daughter of Sir Leoline praying under the oaks, and contrasted with her that graceful, mocking, radiant Geraldine-with smiles that enchant, and alabaster front, and undying graces, and wiles of the serpent, and the damps of the pit in her breath-as if the demon that pursued and pushed him to the wall had foreshadowed himself in that mocking and most beautiful Geraldine.

In those days, too, it was that the young Carlyle used to come to Highgate and watch those bulging eyes-pressed out with excess of brain substance behind them-and listen to his poetic convolutions of speech. "The eyes," he says, "were as full of sorrow as of inspiration. I have heard him talk with eager, musical energy two stricken hours, his face radiant and moist, and communicate no meaning whatsoever to any individual of his hearers, certain of whom-I for one-still kept eagerly listening in hope."

The very children of the neighborhood stood in awe of this wildish man-who seemed talking to the trees at times; and yet their awe was broken by fits of mocking courage, and they made faces at him across the high road. He died there at last-1834 was the year; within sight of the smoke of London and the dome of St. Paul's, toward which from Highgate there stretched in that day a long line of suburban houses, with scattered open fields, hedges, trees, flowers, and the hum of bees.

Charles Lamb.

Essays of Elia.

Among those who used to come somewhiles to follow that fine, confused stream of poetic talk which poured from Coleridge's lips, was Charles Lamb,[7] his old school-fellow and friend in the blue-coat days of Christ's Hospital. And what a strange, odd friendship it seems when we contrast the tender and delicious quietude of the Essays of Elia with the portentous flow of Coleridge's speech! A quiet little stream, purling with gentle bendings and doublings along its own meadows-mated against a river that whirls in mad career, flinging foam high into trees that border it, and only losing its turbidness when it is tided away into the sea, where both brook and river end.

Charles Lamb.

I love Charles Lamb and his writings so much, that I think everybody else ought to love them. There is not great weight in those essays of his; you cannot learn from them what the capital of Hindostan is, or what Buddhism is, nor the date of the capture of Constantinople. Measured by the Dry-as-Dust standard, and there is scarce more in them than in a field of daisies, over which the sunshine and the summer breezes are at play. But what delicacy there is! what a tender humor; what gentle and regaling lapses of quaint thought that beguiles and invites and is soothing and never wearies.

Lamb's poems are not of the best; they have a haltingness-like that in his speech,-with none of Rogers's glibness and currency, and none of his shallowness either. Constraint of rhyme sat on Elia no easier than a dress-coat. But in prose he was all at home; it purled from his pen like a river. It was quaint, kindly, utterly true-with little yaws of humor in it, filling his sails of a sudden, and stirring you to smiling outbreak-then falling away and leaving him to a gently undulating forward movement which charms by its quietude, serenities, and cheerfulness.

There was not much in his life to tell you of; no cannon firing, no drum beats, no moving splendors. A thin, kindly face he had, and thin figure too; in dark or grayish clothes ordinarily, that a clerk might wear; threadbare perhaps at the elbows; not a presentable man amongst swell people; never aspiring to be;-as distinct indeed as a brown hermit-thrush amongst chattering parrots. He has a stammer, too, as I have hinted, in his voice, which may annoy but never makes this quiet man ashamed; in fact, he deploys that stammering habit so as to allow of coy advance, and opportunity for pouncing with tremulous iteration upon his little jokelets, in a way to double their execution; he put it to service, too, in some of his tenderer stories, so as to make, by his very hesitancies, an added and most touching pathos.

He was of humble origin, his father a servitor about Temple Courts-only long gunshot away from Newgate Street; and when the son-through with his Christ Hospital schooling-came to have a small stipend (first, from the South Sea House and later from the East India Company), he had his little family-the only one that ever belonged to Charles Lamb-all about him in his lodgings in Little Queen Street. There was Mary, his sister, ten years older; his poor, bedridden mother, and his father, lapsing into dotage and only happy with cribbage-board at his elbow, and Charles or other good friend to make count. It was this quiet household on which a thunderbolt fell one day. This is Lamb's mention of it in a letter to Coleridge:-

"My poor dear, dearest sister, in a fit of insanity, has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a mad-house, from whence I fear she must be moved to a hospital. My poor father was slightly wounded. God has preserved to me my senses. Write as religious a letter as possible, but no mention of what is gone and done with."

And only a day after this, the weak old father, with his plastered head, is playing cribbage; and again, on another day, friends having come in-very many for those small rooms-and the last ceremonies not yet over, and they all sitting down at some special repast-Lamb bethinks himself of all that has happened, of what lies in the next room (he tells this in a letter to Coleridge), and rushes thither to kiss once more the cold face and to pray forgiveness that he has forgotten her so soon.

Poor Mary recovers; she lives for years with her brother; the horror of the past staying like a black dream in their thought-of which they dare not speak. And when new visitations of estrangement threaten, they two, brother and sister, walk away out from the streets-on to Edmonton, through green fields, by hedges, under trees which they much enjoy, to the doctor's strong guardianship and ward, until repose comes again and a return. Lamb at last goes to live at Enfield, which is close by Edmonton, north of London, that he may be near her prison-house at all times and seasons.

Yet in all these days when the pains and fears of that distracting life are resting on him, he is putting those tender and playful touches into the pleasant essays we know so well; conjuring for himself and for thousands everywhere a world of sunshine that shall overlap the dreary one in which he lives, and spend its graces and cheeriness upon the mind of the poor forlorn one, who with sisterly affection cleaves there and journeys meekly and obediently and sadly beside him.

I do not know how to trust myself to make a citation from those essays which shall carry to those not over-familiar some good hint of their qualities; but I venture upon a bit from his Dream-Children:-

"Then I told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W--; and as much as children could understand, I explained to them what coyness, and difficulty, and denial, meant in maidens-when suddenly, turning to little Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of re-presentment that I became in doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose that bright hair was; and while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding, till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which-without speech-strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech:-We are not of Alice, not of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice call Bartram father, we are nothing-less than nothing and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe, millions of ages, before we have existence and a name; and immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in my arm-chair-where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side."

Lamb was not deep-thoughted; he would have lost the trail in those meditations and searchings to which Coleridge in his cooler and clearer moments invited and led the way; but there was about him an individuality, a delicacy of thought, a quaint play of airy fancies, a beguiling inconsequence, that have made his path in letters a delightful one for thousands to follow.

I cannot leave his name without calling attention to the charming little stories of Mrs. Leicester's School-written by Charles Lamb and his sister jointly. They are-or profess to be-the tales told by school children themselves of their memories-whether sorrows or joys; and are so artless in their narrative, so pathetic often, that you cannot help but follow the trend of their simple language as you would follow a story which an older sister might tell you about your own homes and your own father and mother.

Those essays of Lamb may sometimes show a liking for things we cannot like; in his dealings with the old dramatists he may pour chirrupy praises where we cannot follow with ours. We may not be won over, though we see Marston through those pitiful eyes and the lens of that always tender heart. And why should we? That criticism is not the best which serves to put us in agreeing herds, and to leash us in a bundled cohesion of opinion; but it is better worth if it stimulate us by putting beside our individuality of outlook the warming or the chafing or the contesting individuality of another mind. There is never a time when Lamb's generous, kindly, witty opinions-whether about men or books, or every-day topics-will not find a great company of delighted readers, if not of ardent sponsors. Then, for style-what is to be said, except that it is so gracious, so winning, we are delighted with its flow, its cadences, its surprises, its charming lapses-like waves on summer beaches-or like an August brook, prattling, babbling, and finding spread and pause in some pellucid, overshadowed pool-where we rest in fulness of summery content.

He was never a strong man physically, and his poor thin form vanished from the sight of men in 1834, six months after Coleridge died; and the poor sister-unaware what helplessness and loneliness had fallen on her, lingered for years in blessed ignorance; she then died; and so we turn over that page of English letters on which are scored Elia and the Tales of Shakespeare and pass to others.

Wordsworth.

A lake poet.

On the 29th day of June, just half a century ago, upon a beautiful sunny afternoon-most rare in the Lake Counties of England-I had one of the outside places upon an English coach, which was making its daily trip from Kendal, along the borders of Lake Windermere, and on by Grasmere and under the flank of Helvellyn, to Derwent-Water and Keswick. I stopped halfway at the good inn of the "Salutation" in Ambleside, with the blue of Windermere stretching before me; and in the twilight took a row upon the lake-the surface being scarce ruffled, and the shores, with their copses of wood, and their slopes of green lawn, as beautiful as a dream.

"I dipped my oars into the silent lake,

And as I rose upon the stroke, my boat

Went heaving thro' the water like a swan."

Wordsworth.

The words were Wordsworth's[8] own; and this was his country; and he who was counted the King-poet in those College Days which were not then long behind me, was living only a little way off. From different points in the embowered roads I could catch a glimpse of the light in his window, at Rydal Mount. Stratford had been seen indeed, but there were only memories there; and Abbotsford, but Scott and the last of his family were gone; and Olney, but Cowper had been silent a matter of forty years; and here, at last, I was to come into near presence of one of the living magicians of English verse-in his own lair, with his mountains and his lakes around him. But I did not interview him: no thought of such audacity came nigh me: there was more modesty in those days than now. Yet it has occurred to me since-with some relentings-that I might have won a look of benediction from the old man of seventy-five, if I had sought his door, and told him-as I might truthfully have done-that within a twelvemonth of their issue his beautiful sextette of "Moxon" volumes were lying, thumb-worn, on my desk, in a far-off New England college-room; and that within the month I had wandered up the Valley of the Wye, with his Tintern Abbey pulsing in my thought more stirringly than the ivy-leaves that wrapped the ruin; and that only the week before I had followed lovingly his White Doe of Rylstone along the picturesque borders of Wharfdale, and across the grassy glades of Bolton Priory and among the splintered ledges

"Where Rylstone Brook with Wharf is blended."

Poets love to know that they have laid such trail for even the youngest of followers; and though the personal benedictions were missed, I did go around next morning-being Sunday-to the little chapel on the heights of Rydal, where he was to worship; and from my seat saw him enter; knowing him on the instant; tall (to my seeming), erect, yet with step somewhat shaky; his coat closely buttoned; his air serious, and self-possessed; his features large, mouth almost coarse; hair white as the driven snow, fringing a dome of baldness; an eye with a dreamy expression in it, and seeming to look-beyond, and still beyond. He carried, too, his serious air into his share of the service, and made his successive responses of "Good Lord deliver us!" and "Amen!" with an emphasis that rung throughout the little chapel.

I trust the reader will excuse these personal reminiscences, which I write down to fix in mind more distinctly the poet, whose work and life we have only space to glance at now, and whose name will close the roll of poets for the present volume.

His Poems.

There is, and always has been, on the part of too many admirers of Wordsworth a disposition to resent any depreciation or expression of dissent from fullest praise, which has counted against his reputation. We do not like-any of us-to be forced into our admiration of this or that poet, and will not be, for long whiles together. There is no bolstering of bad work that will make it permanently sound; so, too, what good things are done-whatever opposing sneers or silence may do-will surely, some day or other, be found out. A book or a poem that needs careful and insistent pilotage by critics, into the harbor of a great Fame, will not be so sure of safe anchorage and good holding-ground as one that drifts thither under stress of the unbroken, quiet, resistless tide of a cultivated popular judgment. Wordsworth's place is a very high one; some things he has done are incomparable; some altitudes of thought he has reached range among the Miltonic heights. But he has printed-as so many people have-too much. His vanities-which were excellently well developed-seem to have made him insensible to any demerits in his own work and incapable of believing that hand or brain of his could do aught that was not so far above common level as to warrant its acceptance by the world. I think he was conscientious in this; I do not believe that, like many an author, he put before us what he knew or suspected to be inferior, simply because he knew it would be devoured. There was none of that dishonesty in Wordsworth. He religiously believed that even "Peter Bell" and the dreariest lines of the "Idiot Boy" had a mission.

If Wordsworth had possessed Browning's sense of humor, he would have withdrawn an eighth of his published works; if he had possessed Hood's sense of humor, I think he would have withdrawn a third. Humor is a great and good shortener. Humor seeks to provoke mirth and ripples of cheery satisfaction, so it shuns length and prosiness. Humor is a charming quality in either preacher or poet; and brevity is one of the best parts of humor; indeed brevity and humor always lock hands. Unfortunately, Wordsworth had no humor. Again, that too free and lax play of language in Wordsworth-that told nothing vital, but only served to tie together, by loose and swaying looplets, the flashing jewels wherein his real genius coruscated and crystallized-not only fatigued us who followed and wanted to follow, but it filled the master's time and books and thought to the neglect of that large entertainment of some systematized purpose-some great, balanced, and concreted scheme of poetic story, which he always hinted at, but never made good. Take that budget of verse which went toward the making of the "Recluse"-how incomplete; how unfinished even in detail; yet splashed up and down with brilliancies of thought and fancy; with here and there noble, statuesque, single figures; like a great antechamber, detaining us with its diverting objects, with interposed, wearisome, official talk-we all the while hoping to fare through to some point where we shall see the grandeur of the house and take in reverently its great proportions, and pay homage to the master. But we never come to those Arcana; we end in waiting; great, fine bursts of song, and of glowing narrative-sun, mountains, and clouds giving us august attendance-but no mapping of a whole, whose scheme is fitly balanced, and whose foundations bear up a completed body and dome, with cross and crown. But though his languors of language, his prosiness, his self-satisfaction do madden one to damnatory speech, yet when his song breaks out at its best-seeming to tie the upper mysterious world to this mundane level-to make steps of melody and of heavenly lift to invite and charm as toward the Infinite, we are ashamed of our too easy discomfiture:-

"Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

"O joy! that in our embers

Is something that doth live,

That Nature yet remembers

What was so fugitive!

The thought of our past years in me doth breed

Perpetual benediction: nor indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blest;

"But for those first affections,

Those shadowy recollections,

Which be they what they may,

Are yet a fountain light of all our day,

Are yet a master light of all our seeing;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make

Our noisy years seem moments in the being

Of the Eternal silence: truths that wake,

To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,

Nor man, nor boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy.

Can utterly abolish or destroy!

Hence in a season of calm weather

Though inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

Which brought us hither,

Can, in a moment travel thither,

And see the children sport upon the shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore."

These verses belong to an ode that should never be forgotten when we reckon up the higher reaches of the poetic tides of this generation.

I am disposed to think that all of us, as we grow older, come into larger and fuller appreciation of the wonderful intuitions of this poet and of his marvellous grasp of all the subtler meanings in Nature's aspects. Certainly those lines composed above Tintern Abbey, do not offer food for babes. Only older ones know that-

"Nature never did betray

The heart that loves her; 'tis her privilege,

Through all the years of this our life, to lead

From joy to joy; for she can so inform

The mind that is within us, so impress

With quietness and beauty, and so feed

With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,

Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,

Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all

The dreary intercourse of daily life,

Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb

Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold

Is full of blessings."

So, too, in the Excursion, whose mention we perhaps dwelt upon too lightly-that grand Wordsworthian mating of man with Nature is always shining through the poet's purpose, and gleaming along his lines: a deep and radical purpose it is; all else sways to it; all else is dwarfed and made small in the comparison. Hence, poor Mary Lamb is half-justified in her outcry-that under its dominance a poor dweller in town has hardly "a soul to be saved."[9] Grand, surely, are many of his utterances, morally and intellectually, and carrying richest adornments of poesy to their livery; immortal-yes; yet not favorites for these many generations: too encumbered; sheathed about with tamer things, that will not let the sword of his intent gleam with a vital keenness and poignancy. Always the great lesson which the stars and the mountains and rolling rivers sing-sing in his lines; but buttressed with over-much building up of supporting and flanking words. Always the grand appeal to man's moral nature and instincts is imminent; always the verse radiant with the beguiling lights which he has set to burn upon the hills and in the skies; but, too often, even the sunset glories pall, and weary with their over-painting and golden suffusions of language.

If one is tempted to go back to the contemporary criticism of the Excursion, he should temper the matter-of-fact admeasurement and antipathies of Jeffrey in the Edinburgh, with the kindlier and more feeling discourse of Charles Lamb in the Quarterly (1814). And of this latter, it is to be remembered that its warm unction and earnestness were very much abated by editorial jugglery. Lamb never forgave Gifford for putting "his d--d shoemaker phraseology instead of mine;" and in an explanatory letter to Wordsworth he tells him that many passages are cut out altogether, and "what is left is of course the worse for their having been there," and in a wonderful figure continues,-"the eyes are pulled out, and the bleeding sockets are left."

Personal History.

Wordsworth was a Cumberland man by birth, and from the very first opened his young eyes upon such scenes as lay along the Derwent. His father was an attorney-at-law and agent for the Lonsdale estates; nor does the poet fail to assure us in his autobiographic notes-with a pride that is only half veiled-of the gentle blood that flowed in his mother's veins. But the family purse was not plethoric; and-his father dying, when Wordsworth was only fourteen-it was through the kindness of his uncles that he had his "innings" at Trinity College, Cambridge, and felt his poetic pulses stirred by the memory of such old Cambridge men as Milton, and Waller, and Gray. The flat meadows bordering the Cam were doubtless tame to his Cumberland eyes, nor do University memories count for much in irradiating his future work; perhaps the brightest gleam that comes from those cloistered sources upon his verse is that which is reflected from the wondrous vaulted ceiling of King's College Chapel:-

"That branching roof

Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells

Where light and shade repose, where music dwells,

Lingering and wandering on as loth to die."

A vacation passed in the mountains of Switzerland sharpened an appetite for travel upon the Continent; and thither he went shortly after taking his degree (1791); was in Orleans and in Paris the succeeding year; caught the fever of those revolutionary times, and for a while seriously entertained the purpose of throwing himself into the swirl of that tide of Girondism which was to fall away so shortly after, leaving tracks of blood.

There was a short stay in London on his return-counting for very little in the story of his life. Westminster Bridge and A Farmer of Tilsbury Vale are all that bring a glimmer of remembrance to the lover of his books, out of the tumult and roar of "Lothbury" and Cheapside. Thereafter came the quiet life in Dorsetshire with his good sister Dora-where his poetic moods first came to print-and where Coleridge found him (1796) and cemented that friendship which drew him next year into Somersetshire-a friendship, which, with one brief interruption, that promised a bitter quarrel-lasted throughout their lives. There-at Alfoxden, in Somersetshire-was forged that little book of Lyrical Ballads, containing the Ancient Mariner and Tintern Abbey-the best possible types of the respective powers of the two poets.

In 1799 Wordsworth established himself at Grasmere, in Westmoreland, his sister remaining-as she always did-a beloved inmate of his home. In 1802 he married, most fortunately, a woman who was always sympathetic and kindly, as well as an excellent and devoted mother of the children born to them;[10] moreover, she was exceptionally endowed to stimulate and give range to his poetic ambitions. Between Grasmere or its neighborhood, and the better-known home of Rydal Mount, the poet passed the remainder of his life. There were, indeed, frequent interludes of travel-to Scotland, to Leicestershire, to Southern England, to Ireland, and the Continent-from all which places he came back with an unabated love for the lakes and mountains which bounded his home. Never did there live a more exalted lover of Nature; and specially for those scenes of Nature which cradled him in infancy and which cheered his manhood. Without being largely experienced in the devices of gardening craft, he yet gave frequent and profitable advice to those among his friends who were building up homes in the surrounding lake district; and the Beaumont family of Leicestershire show with pride a winter garden at Coleorton, which is an evergreen remembrancer of the poet's skill and taste. He resented all undue interference with natural surfaces; his art was the larger art of winning one to the reasonableness and beauty of nature's own purposes.

Not a resident in the neighborhood of Ambleside but knew his gaunt figure stalking up and down the hills; yet not counted over-affable; the villagers report him-"distant, vera distant. As for his habits he had none-niver knew him wi' a pot i' his hand or a pipe i' his mouth." And another says-"As for fishing, he hadn't a bit of fish in him, hadn't Wordsworth-not a bit o' fish in him!"[11] This sounds strangely to one familiar with Lines to gold and silver fish in a glass globe.

Certainly he did not love babble nor little persiflage; he had neither the art to coin it nor the humor to redeem it. But he was capable of sensible, heavily-charged talk, even upon practical themes, showing a capacity for, and a habit of, consecutive and logical thinking. Often reading and discoursing on poets and their work, but chary of any exuberance of praise; if ever cynical, tending that way under such provocation. Not indisposed-for small cause-to recite from Wordsworth (as Emerson tells us in the story of his first visit to Rydal Mount); but reciting well, and putting large, dashing movement into the verse-as of faraway rebounding water-falls. His egotism, though not easily kept under, was not riotously exacting or audacious; one could see at the bottom of it-not the little vanities of a flibbertigibbet, but respect and reverence for his inborn seership and for his long priesthood at the altar of the Muses.

He had no musical ear, no power of distinguishing tunes, yet was rapt into ecstatic fervor by the near and sweet warbling of a bird. Books he loved only for their uses; he favored no finical "keeping" of them, but plunged into an uncut volume with a smeared fruit-knife-if need were. Southey dreaded his visits to his Keswick library, saying he was "like a bear in a tulip garden." He was parsimonious too; generosity in praise, or in purse, was unknown to him; and he had stiff school-mastery ways with youngish men-craving oblation and large tokens of respect. De Quincey said he never offered to carry a lady's shawl; hardly offered a hand to help her over a stile. He was not mobile, not adaptive, not gossipy; last of men for a picnic or a tea-party. His shaking of hands was "feckless;" which to a Scottish ear means a hand-shake not to be run after and with no heartiness in its grip. That home of Rydal Mount was a modest and charming one; within-severely simple; in abstemiousness the poet was almost an anchorite: without-a terrace walk, a velvety stretch of turf, mossy vases, a dial, a few patches of flowers, grayish house-walls on which the clambering vines took hold, quaint stone chimney-tops on which the lichens clung and around which the swallows played, views of Rydal Water, glimpses of Windermere, of Nab-scar, and of nearer heights crowned with foliage.

Wordsworth was never a man of large means; his poems gave only small moneyed returns; nor did he care overmuch for expensive indulgences; travelling was his greatest and most coveted luxury. All new scenes in nature came to his eye as so many new phases of his oldest and tenderest friend.

For a considerable period he was in receipt of a small revenue from a local Commissionership of Stamps, and during the last eight years of his life received a pension of ￡300 from the Government. A year after the grant, upon the death of Dr. Southey, he was, through the urgence of friends, and at the solicitation of Sir Robert Peel, induced to accept the post of Poet Laureate-going up to London, at the age of seventy-three, to kiss the hand of the young Queen, in recognition of that honor. This young Queen, then in her twenty-fourth year, was her present gracious lady, Victoria, who had succeeded to her bluff sailor-uncle, William IV., in 1837, and to her sorrier uncle, George IV., who had died in 1830.

Wordsworth was among those stately country gentlemen who believed that with the passage of the great Reform Bill of 1832, England was about to enter upon her decadence. Like many another poet, he had faith in established privileges, and faith in grand traditions. He bestirred himself, too, in the latter years of his life, to defeat-if it might be-the scheme for pushing railways across his quiet and beautiful region among the lakes of Westmoreland and Cumberland. Happily he did not live to see the desecration of his charming solitudes; it would have made him wroth to watch the wreaths of vapor from the engines floating around the chimney-tops of Rydal Mount.[12] The lines he wrote fifty years before his death, he lived by to the last:-

"To her fair works did Nature link

The human soul that thro' me ran;

And much it grieved my heart to think

What man has made of man.

The budding twigs spread out their fan

To catch the breezy air;

And I must think, do all I can,

That there was pleasure there."

He had not only a poet's, but a Briton's love for that old England-of mossy roofs, and park lands, and smoking chimneys, and great old houses, and gnarled oaks, and way-side cottages. He cherished all Raskin's antipathy to huge manufacturing centres, and the din of machinery and trip-hammers; he would have no pounding to fright the cuckoos, and no reservoirs among the hills to choke the rills; but everywhere the brooks purling their own murmurous ways through leafy solitudes and sweet, open valleys.

Well, those are the sights that win most, I think, toward the celestial visions which the good poet always cherished, and which symbolized best the "dear Jerusalem,"-

"Along whose streets, with pleasing sound,

The living waters flow,

And on the banks, on either side.

The trees of life do grow."

Only the name-William Wordsworth-is graven upon the simple stone which marks the poet's grave, in a corner of the church-yard at Grasmere; and the bodies of wife and children lie grouped there beside him.

[1] Samuel Rogers, b. 1768; d. 1855. His Pleasures of Memory, published 1792; Italy, 1822-28.

[2] Crabb Robinson, chap. ix., 1881, p. 165, vol. ii., says he "was noted for his generosity toward poor artists." The story he tells in confirmation is, that Sir Thomas Lawrence appeared at his door and begged him to save the president of the Royal Academy from disgrace, which must follow except a few thousands were raised next day; he (Sir Thomas) offering his paintings, drawings, etc., in guarantee. Crabb Robinson continues that "Rogers saw Lord Ward [a nobleman of great wealth] next day and arranged for the advance by him;" an advance that never brought loss to either Ward or Rogers. The latter's "generosities" were a good many of them of this color; i.e., securing advances which were pretty sure to be repaid.

[3] S. T. Coleridge, b. 1772; d. 1834. Many of his works edited by H. N. Coleridge, husband of his only daughter Sara. Special mention should be made of the Coleridgean labors of that indefatigable worker, the late J. Dykes Campbell.

[4] He had a son Hartley, whom Crabb Robinson describes in 1816 as "one of the strangest boys I ever saw. He has the features of a foreign Jew, with starched and affected manners." He also speaks of the other son, Derwent, as a "hearty boy, with a good-natured expression." The daughter-afterward Mrs. Henry Nelson Coleridge, editress of many of her father's works (continues Robinson), "has a face of great sweetness."

[5] Southey did not go to Keswick to reside until 1803-4. Coleridge, however, was there as an occupant of a portion of the future Southey home in 1800. Southey paid him a visit in the summer of 1801. See Traill, chap. v. See also Memorials of Coleorton, passim.

[6] Probably some time between 1803 and 1806.

[7] Charles Lamb, b. 1775; d. 1834.

[8] William Wordsworth, b. 1770; d. 1850. Evening Walk published 1793; Lyrical Ballads (in conjunction with Coleridge), 1798; Excursion, 1814; White Doe of Rylstone, 1815; first collected edition of poems, 1836-37; Life by W. H. Myers; a much fuller, but somewhat muddled one, by William Knight, 3 vols,, 8vo, 1889. Dowden's edition of Wordsworth's poems (Aldine Series) is latest and best.

[9] See Lamb's Letters, cited in Knight, vol. ii., p. 235.

[10] His wife was Mary Hutchinson, of Penrith. Their children were John, b. 1803; Dorothy, b. 1804 (became Mrs. Quinlan and died before her father); Thomas, b. 1806; Catharine, b. 1808; and William, b. 1810-the last being the only one who survived the poet.

[11] This based on "Mr. Rawnsley's Gleanings amongst the Villagers." See Athen?um, February 23, 1889.

[12] There is a very interesting account of Wordsworth's home life, etc., in Miss Martineau's Autobiography, vol. i., p. 504 et seq.-but very much colored, as all her pictures are, by her own megrims and disposition to sneer at all the world-except Miss Martineau.

INDEX.

Adams, John, 187.

Addison, Joseph, 4.

Aikin, Dr., 273-276.

Allston, Washington, 316.

Anne, Queen, the times of, 1-3.

Austen, Jane, her life and personality, 265-267; opinions of Walter Scott, Macaulay, and Miss Mitford concerning, 266, 267; her Pride and Prejudice, 268; Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, 268, 269; her qualities, 270, 271; burial-place, 270.

Austen, Lady, and William Cowper, 246, 247.

Barbauld, Mrs., 273-276.

Beauclerk, Topham, 114-116.

Beckford, William, and his Vathek, 285-291.

Bentley, Richard, his Siris: A chain of Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries concerning the Virtues of Tarwater, 9; writes on the Epistles of Phalaris, 9-11; his family, 10; portrait of, 10, 11; as a writer and as a man, 11, 12.

Berkeley, George, his Theory of Vision, 4; his career, 4-9; his verse, 5; his sermons, 6; The Minute Philosopher, 7; his family, 7; his philosophy, 9.

Blair, Hugh, 230.

Blounts, Alexander Pope and the, 34.

Boswell, James, and his Life of Dr. Johnson, 118-122.

Boufflers, Madame de, and David Hume, 150.

Burke, Edmund, 112, 113; his words concerning Beauclerk's widow, 115; his burial-place, 145.

Burney, Frances, and Dr. Johnson, 138, 142, 164, 165; her stories, 165; Evelina, 165-168; Camilla, 168; her Diary, 168-169; last years, 170, 171.

Burns, Robert, his poetry, 291; his career, 292-297; his death, 298, 301; compared with Samuel Rogers, 302, 303.

Camilla, Miss Burney's, 170.

Carlyle, Thomas, his words concerning Coleridge, 318.

Castle of Otranto, The, Walpole's, 84.

Chatterton, Thomas, the young poet, 202-205; his end, 205, 206, 209; and Horace Walpole, 206-209; the Rowley Poems, 207, 208; compared with Poe, 210.

Chesterfield, Lord, and Dr. Johnson, 97, 98.

Children of the Abbey, Miss Roche's, 282, 283.

Christabel, Coleridge's, 317, 318.

Coach, the Venetian, 3.

C?lebs, Hannah More's, 175, 176.

Coleridge, S. T., 298, 299; his life, 309-317; Lamb's apostrophe to, 310; and Southey, 311, 312; and Wordsworth, 313; his Ancient Mariner, 314, and Washington Allston, 316; his opium habit, 316, 317; his Christabel, 317; Carlyle's words concerning, 318; his death, 318.

Collins, William, 100-163; his Ode to Evening, 163, 180.

Coverley, Sir Roger de, 2.

Cowper, William, his family and education, 239, 240; his love affair, 240; mental trouble, 241, 242; and Mrs. Unwin, 243-245, and Rev. John Newton, 245; John Gilpin's Ride, 245, 246, and Lady Austen, 246; The Task, 240, 247; on American affairs, 248; later life, 249-253; his Homer, 250, 251; his place as a poet, 254-256.

Crabbe, George, compared with Pope, 232, 233; his birth and early work, 233-235; private chaplain to the Duke of Rutland, 235, 236; his life and character, 237, 238.

Curchod, Mademoiselle, afterward Madame Necker, 123.

Day, Thomas, and Sandford and Merton, 271-273.

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbons's History of, 125, 127, 130.

Edgeworth, Maria, 277-281.

Ernest, Augustus, Duke of Brunswick, 57.

Evelina, Miss Burney's, 165-168.

Evenings at Home, by Dr. Aikin and Mrs. Barbauld, 273-276.

Ferguson, Robert, 229.

Fielding, Henry, his coarseness, 67, 68; his character and ancestry, 68; his schooling, 69; his dramatic work, 69, 70; his Joseph Andrews, Amelia, and Tom Jones, 71, 72; his marriage, 70, 71; his death, 72.

Fox, Charles James, 188-192.

Franklin, Benjamin, and Miss Burney, 166; his words concerning George III., 184.

Freeman, Edward, his words concerning Gibbon, 128.

Garrick, David, at Dr. Johnson's school, 91, 92; as a boy, 116; a member of the "Literary Club, " 116; as an actor, 117, 118; his death, 138; Hannah More and, 173, 174.

George I., ancestry, 57; comes to England, 58; his character, 58; his wife, 58, 59.

George II., 59-61; his reign, 61.

George III., character and personality of, 181-187.

Gibbon, Edward, birth, parentage, and education, 122; his love for Mlle. Curchod, afterward Madame Necker, 133, 124; a member of the "Literary Club, " 124, 127; as an author, 124, 125; his Decline and fall of the Roman Empire, 125, 127-130; as a man, 125, 126; in Paris, 126; his burial-place, 145.

Goldsmith, Oliver, a member of the "Literary Club, " 130, 131; as a writer, 132, 133; his death, 133, 134; his burial-place, 144, 145.

Gray, Thomas, birth, parentage, and education, 79, 80; opinions of his work, 80; his fastidious refinement, 80-82; the Elegy churchyard, 82; and the Rowley Poems, 208.

Halket, George, 229.

Hayley, William, a friend of Cowper's, 249.

Hesketh, Lady, her interest in Cowper, 250, 252.

Homer, Pope's translation of, 43-45; Cowper's translation, 250, 251.

Honeycomb, Will, 2.

Hume, David, compared with Gibbon, 145, 146; his birth and early years, 146-148; his Political Discourses, 148; his History of England, 146, 149, 150, 156, 157; and Madame de Boufflers, 150; in Paris, 151-154; ambassador to the Court of France, 152; did not love England, 152, 153; his home in Edinboro', 154, 155; his death, 155, 156, 179; his words concerning James Macpherson, 226.

John Gilpin's Ride, Cowper's, 245, 246.

Johnson, Samuel, his birth, parentage, and early career, 88-90; his marriage, 90, 91; his boarding-school, 91; his personal appearance, 91; goes to London, 91, 92; his Irene, 90, 92, 96, 97; and Richard Savage, 92-94; his London, 94, 95; his Vanity of Human Wishes, 95, 96; his Prologue spoken at Drury Lane, 96; his Dictionary, 97, 98; his letter to Lord Chesterfield, 98; in poverty, 102; death of his wife, 104; and Miss Williams, 104, 105; his power felt, 105; his Rasselas, 105-108; his friendship with Sir Joshua Reynolds, 108, 109; Boswell's Life of, 118-122; and the Thrales, 135-137, 139, 140; his journey to the Hebrides, 137, 138; his last years, 137-143; his burial-place, 145; Hannah More and, 173; his reply to James Macpherson, 225, 226.

Joseph Andrews, Fielding's, 177.

Kames, Lord, 230.

Lamb, Charles, his words on Burns, 299; his apostrophe to Coleridge, 310; his writings, 319, 320, 323-326; his personality, 320, 321; his family afflictions, 321-323; his death, 326.

Lamb, Mary, 321-323, 326.

"Literary Club, " the, 111.

London Bridge, 103.

Macaulay, T. B., on Boswell, 119; his opinion of Jane Austen, 266.

Mackenzie, Henry, 230.

Macpherson, James, and the Ossian poems, 221-227; his life, 224, 225; his habits and disposition, 226, 227.

Mitford, Miss, her words concerning Jane Austen, 266, 267.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, her birth, parentage, and early life, 21, 22; her marriage, 22; her letters, 21, 23, 28; has her son inoculated for smallpox, 23, 24; Pope's admiration for, 23-25; quarrels with Pope, 25, 26; a favorite of George I., 26; her later life, 27-30; Horace Walpole's words concerning, 30, 52, 53.

More, Hannah, her words concerning Dr. Edward Young, 20; her youth, 171, 172; her pension, 172; acquaintance with Garrick and Johnson, 173, 174; her tragedy of Percy, 174; as a worker, 175; her C?lebs, 175, 176; her goodness, 175-178; Thackeray's reference to, in The Newcomes, 177, 178; her age, 180.

Mysteries of Udolpho, Radcliffe's, 284, 285.

Necker, Madame, 123, 124.

Newton, Rev. John, of Olney, and William Cowper, 245.

Night Thoughts, Young's, 15, 16, 18-30.

Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen's, 269.

Nugent, Dr., 114.

Ode to Evening, Collins's, 163.

Ossian's Poems, 221-227; the Ossianic Hermitage, 257, 258.

Percy, Hannah More's tragedy, 174.

Persuasion, Jane Austen's, 268, 269.

Pitt, William, 192-195.

Pope, Alexander, his admiration for Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 23-25; familiar couplets of, 31; his infirmity and personal appearance, 31, 32; his birth and early years, 33, 34; and the Blounts, 34; his poetic methods, 35-39: his Essay on Criticism, 36; his Windsor Forest, 36; his Rape of the Lock, 36, 39-42; writes for the Spectator, 38, 39; his translation of Homer, 43-45; his house and friends at Twickenham, 45-50; his last days, 48-51, 53.

Porter, Jane, her Thaddeus of Warsaw, 283, 284; her Scottish Chiefs, 284.

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen's, 268.

Radcliffe, Ann Ward, her Mysteries of Udolpho, 284, 285.

Rambler, The, 98.

Ramsay, Allan, 228.

Rape of the Lock, Pope's, 36, 39-42.

Rasselas, Dr. Johnson's, 105-108.

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 108-111.

Richardson, Samuel, a printer and book-seller, 62; his friends, 63, 64; as a writer of letters, 63-66; the father of the novel, 66, 67; assists Dr. Johnson, 102.

Robertson, Dr., 230.

Roche, Maria Regina, her Children of the Abbey, 282, 283.

Rogers, Samuel, his Pleasures of Memory, 301, 302, 307-309; compared with Burns, 302, 303; his career and character, 303-307.

Rousseau, J. J., 154.

Rowley Poems, The, 208.

Ruskin, John, on Gibbon's style, 128.

Sandford and Merton, Day's, 271-273.

Savage, Richard, and Dr. Johnson, 92, 94.

Scott, Walter, his opinion of Jane Austen, 266; his translation of Leonora, 298.

Scottish Chiefs, Jane Porter's, 284.

Selborne, Natural History of, White's, 260-262.

Shenstone, William, 158-160, 180.

Sheridan, Thomas Brinsley, 195-202; as an orator, 199, 200; his end, 201, 202, 219.

Smibert, John, his painting of Berkeley and family, 7.

Smith, Adam, 230.

Sophia, grand-daughter of James I. and mother of George I., 57.

Southey, Robert, and Coleridge, 311, 312.

Sterne, Laurence, his death, 211, 212; his style, 212-214; his burial-place, 215; his character and habit, 215, 216; his literary pilferings, 216, 217; pathos of his life, 217, 218, 220.

Stoke-Pogis Churchyard and Gray's Elegy, 82.

Stuart, Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, 55, 56.

Stuart, Elizabeth, daughter of James I., 57.

Stuart, Henry, 56.

Stuart, James Edward, the Pretender, 53-55.

Swift, Dean, and Pope's Homer, 44.

Thackeray, W. M., and Hannah More, 177, 178.

Thaddeus of Warsaw, Jane Porter's, 283, 284.

Thomson, James, his boyhood, 73; brings his poetry to London, 73, 74; his Winter, 74, 75; befriended by Pope, 76; his Liberty and Castle of Indolence, 77, 78; his burial-place, 101.

Thrales, The, and Dr. Johnson, 135-137, 139, 140.

Turk's Head Club, The, 111 et seq.

Unwin, Mrs., and William Cowper, 243-245, 252, 253.

Vanhomrigh, Miss, 4, 5.

Vathek, Beckford's, 285-288.

Walpole, Horace, his words concerning Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 30; his parentage and life at Twickenham, 83, 84, 87, 88; his Castle of Otranto, 84; his letters, 85-87; his words concerning Gibbon, 125; and the poet Chatterton, 206-209.

Watts, Isaac, associations of the name, 12, 13; birth, parentage, and education, 13, 14; Bryant's admiration for, 14; his hymns, 14, 15; endowed with a home, 15.

Westminster Bridge, 103.

White, Gilbert, and the Natural History of Selborne, 259-264; his house, 264.

Williams, Miss, and Dr. Johnson, 104, 105.

Wordsworth, William, 298; and Coleridge, 313; the author's personal reminiscence of, 327-330; his poetry, 330-337; his parentage and early years, 337-340; his marriage, 340; his love of Nature, 340, 341; personal traits, 341-343; his home at Rydal Mount, 343, 344; his pension, 344; made Poet Laureate, 344; opposed to railways and manufactures, 345, 346; his burial-place, 347.

Young, Dr. Edward, his Night Thoughts, 15, 16, 18-20; his birth, parentage, and early work, 16; his Last Day, 17; his marriage, 18; back at court, 19, 20; Hannah More's words concerning, 20.

[Transcriber's note: the source book's odd-numbered pages had varying headers. In this etext, they have been converted to sidenotes and placed where appropriate.]