TO A.D. 1825.]

I saw her upon nearer view,

A spirit, yet a woman too!

Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin-liberty;

A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,

Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.

And now I see with eye serene

The very pulse of the machine;

A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller between life and death;

The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.

Of the five children of the marriage, two died in 1812. Their health had been a cause of care. One of them (Catherine) died in June, when the family was living in the Grasmere Parsonage. The other (Thomas), a boy of six, who made it his care in the autumn to sweep fallen leaves from his little sister's grave, followed her in December. The mother could not remain in the Parsonage, with the little graves always in view, and a removal to some short distance from Grasmere seemed best. Therefore it was that, in the spring of 1813, the household was transferred to Rydal Mount, which became thenceforth Wordsworth's home until his death, in 1850.

RYDAL MOUNT.

In 1801 Walter Scott contributed "The Fire King," "Glenfinlas," "The Eve of St. John," and other short pieces, to M. G. Lewis's "Tales of Wonder." His first great success as a poet was won in 1805, by his first long romance-"The Lay of the Last Min

D'ye mind me, a sailor should be every inch

All as one as a piece of the ship,

And with her brave the world, without offering to flinch,

From the moment the anchor's a-trip;

As for me, in all weathers, all times, sides, and ends
Nought's a trouble from duty that springs;

For my heart is my Poll's, and my rhino's my friend's,
And as for my life, 'tis the King's.

Even when my time comes, ne'er believe me so soft

As for grief to be taken aback :

For the same little cherub that sits up aloft,
Will look out a good berth for poor Jack!

40

James Grahame, the author of longer poems on "The Sabbath" and "The Birds of Scotland," gave up practice at the bar for the service of the Church, and died in 1811 curate of Sedgfield, near Durham. His friend John Wilson (Christopher North, of Blackwood's Magazine) honoured his memory with an elegy that far outweighs the sneer of Byron at "sepulchral Grahame." Thus Grahame wrote of the thanksgiving of the fleet after the battle of Trafalgar, in October, 1805:

THE THANKSGIVING OFF CAPE TRAFALGAR.

Upon the high, yet gently rolling wave,
The floating tomb that heaves above the brave,
Soft sighs the gale, that late tremendous roared,
Whelming the wretched remnants of the sword.
And now the cannon's peaceful summons calls
The victor bands to mount their wooden walls,
And from the ramparts, where their comrades fell,
The mingled strain of joy and grief to swell:
Fast they ascend, from stem to stern they spread,
And crowd the engines whence the lightnings sped: 10
The white-robed priest his upraised hands extends,
Hushed is each voice, attention leaning bends;
Then from each prow the grand hosannas rise,
Float o'er the deep, and hover to the skies.
Heaven fills each heart; yet Home will oft intrude,
And tears of love celestial joys exclude.
The wounded man, who hears the soaring strain,
Lifts his pale visage, and forgets his pain;
While parting spirits, mingling with the lay,
On hallelujahs wing their heavenward way.

20

James Montgomery, born in 1771, son of a Moravian missionary in Ayrshire, was at a school in Yorkshire when both his parents died in the East Indies. He began life as assistant in a village shop, but found his way into the service of a Sheffield bookseller, who printed a newspaper which, in the days of the French Revolution, brought on him Government prosecution

TO AGNES.

"The Remains of Henry Kirke White," who died in 1806, aged twenty-one, were published, with a memoir, by kindly Robert Southey, who had been first to collect Chatterton's poems.

Kirke White was the son of a butcher at Nottingham, and was placed in early boyhood at a stockingloom, with the hope of getting him some day into a hosier's warehouse. But he yearned for "something to occupy his brain," and, at fifteen, was placed in the office of a respectable firm of attorneys at Nottingham. At seventeen he issued, in 1802, a little book of verse. A cruel review of it caused Southey to befriend him. Strong convictions of religion very soon afterwards led him to give up the law, and hope for entrance in some way to one of the universities. With an unsound constitution, he worked as no healthy youth should work. "He now allowed himself," says Southey, "no time for relaxation, little for his meals, and scarcely any for sleep. He would read till one, two, or three o'clock in the morning; then throw himself on the bed, and rise again to his work at five, at the call of a 'larum which he had fixed to a Dutch clock in his chamber. Many nights he never laid down at all." That sort of life means death. Means were found, by the aid of many friends, to enable Kirke White to go to St. John's College, Cambridge, and there he finished killing

person who, as Prince Regent, was then entitled to his little term of worship. Leigh Hunt became dear to John Keats, went to Italy, and was there a friend of Shelley and Byron, and afterwards lived on to the year 1859, working throughout his long and active career, in all that he wrote of prose or verse, with the temper of a poet. This is verse of his :

ABOU BEN ADHEM.

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 rais'd its head,

And with a look made of all sweet accord,

Answer'd, "The names of those who love the Lord." 10 "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 vanish'd. The next night It came again with a great wakening light, And show'd the names whom love of God had bless'd, And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.

The

Byron in 1800 was a boy of twelve, and Walter Scott a man of nine-and-twenty. Byron was born on the 22nd of January, 1788-the son of a dissolute father and a foolish mother, who parted from each other not very long after his birth. mother had been a Scotch heiress, but her fortune was squandered, and she went back, with the scrap of income that had been beyond her husband's reach, to live cheaply at Aberdeen. The old lord at Newstead, whose heir the boy became after his father's death, took no notice of mother or son. When George Gordon, whose mother had cast off even his father's name, became Lord Byron at the age of ten, there was a sudden change from poverty to wealth. Then followed education: preparation for Harrow; Harrow; Cambridge. At nineteen, when still a student at Cambridge, Byron published his exercises in verse as "Hours of Idleness." A touch of lordly conceit at the close of the preface to this little book caused the Edinburgh Review to laugh at it. Byron felt this, and it fetched out of him the first evidence of his power in the "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." In September, 1808, he had left Cambridge, and taken up his residence at Newstead, where he was preparing this piece of retaliation. In January, 1809, he came of age; on the 13th of March following he took his seat in the House of Lords; and three days afterwards his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" made its appearance. Nothing of its kind could be cleverer, although it was full of opinions that Byron's after knowledge caused him to retract. That does not matter to We should all be sorry to miss the lines that so ingeniously write down Wordsworth an idiot, and Coleridge an ass. Ridicule is without power to abase

us.