English Lands Letters and Kings

n of Hampshire, who wrote about the daws, and the swallows, and the fern-owl,

st 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

entury; 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

nker

el R

ed The Pleasures of Memory. It has tender pas

dews steal o'er t

nts to harmon

hum that thro'

e ruins of th

ocked to hear t

carols close

*

every step-to

ndship formed an

htest leaf, but

isions and ro

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 on

d 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

ch 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 tr

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 foreign

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, bl

rs'

on 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 tha

lining forwar

f open, and

said-Beware! H

wers, and clasped

one in every

ow, fairer th

pearls....

ing heirloom,

t, half eaten

*

oks there in h

gentleness

*

stre of her y

her heart in i

joy; but at th

wn, the bride w

o be found! H

make a trial

lass to all; but

uest to guest t

instant she had

looking back a

th imprinted

, she was not

hour could any

was not! Wear

w to Venice,

y in battle

nd long mightes

ering as in que

ould not find-

ne, the house

ntless; then, w

rs were past,

idle day-a

lumber in

chest was notice

g, as thoughtl

e it from its

soon as said;

fell; and lo

here a pearl, a

p-clasping a

erished, save

seal-her mot

h a name-the

nev

and of the Ancient Mariner there is something more than delicacy-more of brain and passion

eri

eri

;-a life haunted and goaded by its own ambitions-a life put to wreck by lack of

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 hea

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 con

s 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

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,

arewell! but

thou wedd

well, who

and bird

best, who

both grea

ar God who

and love

h a mixed metaphysics and poetry; and theologies of a dim vague sort which beat on ear and hearts, like sleet on s

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

mere; 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 appoin

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 b

tite 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 daug

n 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 ho

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

les

s of

. 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 d

les

tan 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 sunshin

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

ngst 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 t

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 fat

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 sligh

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 t

nt 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

says 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

ays which shall carry to those not over-familiar some good hint of

came 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 w

ler and clearer moments invited and led the way; but there was about him an individuality, a delicacy of thought, a quaint

ofess 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 can

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

ed; and the poor sister-unaware what helplessness and loneliness had fallen on her, lingered for years in blessed ignorance; she t

dsw

ke p

om 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

oars into the

e upon the s

hro' the water

dsw

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

Brook with Wha

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

o fix in mind more distinctly the poet, whose work and life we have only space to

Po

oem 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

llized-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

ntire for

n utter n

clouds of glo

, who is

that in

ing that

ure yet

s so fu

our past years

enediction:

is most worth

hose first

dowy reco

they what

ntain light o

ter light of

rish, and have

rs seem momen

l silence: tr

rish

istlessness, no

an, n

t is at enm

y abolish

season of c

nland fa

e sight of th

ought us

moment tra

ildren sport u

ghty waters rol

er be forgotten when we reckon up the higher

nderful intuitions of this poet and of his marvellous grasp of all the subtler meanings in Nature's aspects

never di

loves her; 'tis

years of this

joy; for she

t is within

ss and beaut

ghts, that neit

nor the sneers

where no kindn

ntercourse o

evail against

aith, that all

of ble

s 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

ly (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

nal H

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 G

branch

scooped into te

shade repose, wh

wandering on a

is degree (1791); was in Orleans and in Paris the succeeding year; caught the fever of those revolutionary times, and for a while seriously enter

de. 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 inter

he 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

-"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

ets 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 v

im; 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

care overmuch for expensive indulgences; travelling was his greatest and most coveted luxury. A

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 recogn

and 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 se

r works did

oul that th

grieved my h

has mad

twigs spread

the bre

think, do

was pleas

-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 cu

rd the celestial visions which the good poet always che

treets, with p

ing wat

banks, on e

of life

ch marks the poet's grave, in a corner of the church-yard at Grasmer

1855. His Pleasures of Memory,

he 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 wea

ridge, husband of his only daughter Sara. Special mention should be made of t

Jew, with starched and affected manners." He also speaks of the other son, Derwent, as a "hearty boy, with a good-natured expression." The

as an occupant of a portion of the future Southey home in 1800. Southey paid him a vis

me time between

Lamb, b. 1

rsion, 1814; White Doe of Rylstone, 1815; first collected edition of poems, 1836-37; Life by W. H. Myers; a much fuller, but somew

ers, cited in Knigh

othy, b. 1804 (became Mrs. Quinlan and died before her father); Thomas, b. 1806; Cath

s Gleanings amongst the Villagers

eau's Autobiography, vol. i., p. 504 et seq.-but very much colored, as all her pictures

DE

, Joh

n, Jos

Dr.,

Washing

n, the tim

lay, and Miss Mitford concerning, 266, 267; her Pride and Prejudice, 268; Persua

and William Co

, Mrs.,

, Topham,

iam, and his V

es concerning the Virtues of Tarwater, 9; writes on the Epistles of Phalaris,

eer, 4-9; his verse, 5; his sermons, 6; The Minute

, Hug

xander Pope

nd his Life of Dr

ame de, and Da

ords concerning Beauclerk's wi

165; her stories, 165; Evelina, 165-168; Camill

areer, 292-297; his death, 298, 301;

Miss Burn

his words concern

ranto, The,

end, 205, 206, 209; and Horace Walpole, 206-209;

Lord, and Dr.

Abbey, Miss Ro

Coleridge'

the Ven

nnah More'

1, 312; and Wordsworth, 313; his Ancient Mariner, 314, and Washington Allston, 316; his o

100-163; his Ode t

, Sir Ro

s. Unwin, 243-245, and Rev. John Newton, 245; John Gilpin's Ride, 245, 246, and Lady Austen, 246; The Task,

and early work, 233-235; private chaplain to the Duke

elle, afterward M

d Sandford and

Roman Empire, Gibbons's

h, Maria

tus, Duke of

iss Burney

y Dr. Aikin and Mrs

n, Robe

68; his schooling, 69; his dramatic work, 69, 70; his Joseph Andrew

les James

ss Burney, 166; his words

his words conce

y, 116; a member of the "Literary Club, " 116; as an act

mes to England, 58; his cha

59-61; his

acter and persona

Necker, 133, 124; a member of the "Literary Club, " 124, 127; as an author, 124, 125; his Decline a

Club, " 130, 131; as a writer, 132, 133; hi

opinions of his work, 80; his fastidious refinement, 80

, Geor

m, a friend of

er interest in C

ion of, 43-45; Cowper'

omb, W

ngland, 146, 149, 150, 156, 157; and Madame de Boufflers, 150; in Paris, 151-154; ambassador to the Court of France, 152; did no

Ride, Cowper

f 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 friendsh

rews, Fiel

, Lor

leridge, 310; his writings, 319, 320, 323-326; his personali

ry, 321-

Club, "

Bridg

swell, 119; his opinio

ie, Hen

oems, 221-227; his life, 224, 225;

words concerning Ja

1, 23, 28; has her son inoculated for smallpox, 23, 24; Pope's admiration for, 23-25; quarrels with Pope,

aintance with Garrick and Johnson, 173, 174; her tragedy of Percy, 174; as a worker, 175; her C?lebs

dolpho, Radcli

Madame,

, of Olney, and W

s, Young's, 1

bbey, Jane A

t, Dr

ning, Coll

-227; the Ossianic

ah More's t

Jane Austen'

illiam,

rth 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

us of Warsaw, 283, 284;

judice, Jane

d, her Mysteries o

er, T

, Alla

Lock, Pope's

r. Johnson'

Sir Joshua

s friends, 63, 64; as a writer of letters, 63-66; the

son, D

, her Children of t

301, 302, 307-309; compared with Burns, 3

u, J. J

Poems,

, on Gibbon'

Merton, Day

rd, and Dr. J

of Jane Austen, 266; his

efs, Jane Po

al History of,

William, 15

195-202; as an orator, 199,

painting of Berke

, Ada

r of James I. and mot

rt, and Coler

burial-place, 215; his character and habit, 215, 216; his lit

urchyard and G

dward, the Young

eth, daughter

, Henr

Edward, the Pr

, and Pope'

M., and Hannah

rsaw, Jane Por

, 73, 74; his Winter, 74, 75; befriended by Pope, 76; his Li

d Dr. Johnson, 1

Club, The,

William Cowper, 2

igh, Mi

eckford's

age and life at Twickenham, 83, 84, 87, 88; his Castle of Otranto, 84; his lett

, parentage, and education, 13, 14; Bryant's admirati

ter Brid

atural History of Selborn

, and Dr. John

ge and early years, 337-340; his marriage, 340; his love of Nature, 340, 341; personal traits, 341-343; his home at Rydal Moun

, parentage, and early work, 16; his Last Day, 17; his marriage

ges had varying headers. In this etext, they have been