App.

Fear not, love; a thousand oaths

You swear the girl's your child,
And that you sold her to Virginius' wife,
Who passed her for her own. Is that your oath?
Slave. It is my oath.

App. Your answer now, Virginius.
Vir.
Here it is! [Brings Virginia forward.
Is this the daughter of a slave? I know
'Tis not with men as shrubs and trees, that by
The shoot you know the rank and order of

The stem. Yet who from such a stem would look
For such a shoot. My witnesses are these—
The relatives and friends of Numitoria,
Who saw her, ere Virginia's birth, sustain
The burden which a mother bears, nor feels
The weight, with longing for the sight of it.
Here are the ears that listened to her sighs
In nature's hour of labour, which subsides
In the embrace of joy-the hands, that when
The day first looked upon the infant's face,
And never looked so pleased, helped them up to it,
And blessed her for a blessing. Here, the eyes

That saw her lying at the generous

And sympathetic fount, that at her cry
Sent forth a stream of liquid living pearl

To cherish her enamelled veins. The lie

Is most unfruitful, then, that takes the flower-
The very flower our bed connubial grew-
To prove its barrenness! Speak for me, friends;
Have I not spoke the truth?

I feel for you; but though you were my father,
The majesty of justice should be sacred-
Claudius must take Virginia home with him!

Vir. And if he must, I should advise him, Appius,
To take her home in time, before his guardian
Complete the violation which his eyes
Already have begun.-Friends! fellow-citizens !
Look not on Claudius-look on your Decemvir!
He is the master claims Virginia !

The tongues that told him she was not my child
Are these-the costly charms he cannot purchase,
Except by making her the slave of Claudius,
His client, purveyor, that caters for

His pleasure-markets for him, picks, and scents,
And tastes, that he may banquet-serves him up
His sensual feast, and is not now ashamed,

In the open, common street, before your eyes-
Frighting your daughters' and your matrons' cheeks
With blushes they ne'er thought to meet-to help him
To the honour of a Roman maid! my child!
Who now clings to me, as you see, as if

This second Tarquin had already coiled

His arms around her. Look upon her, Romans!
Befriend her! succour her! see her not polluted
Before her father's eyes!-He is but one.

Tear her from Appius and his Lictors while

She is unstained.-Your hands! your hands! your hands Citizens. They are yours, Virginius.

Deserted -Cowards! traitors!
But for a moment! I relied on you;
Had I relied upon myself alone,

I had kept them still at bay! I kneel to you—
Let me but loose a moment, if 'tis only

To rush upon your swords.

Troops in the Forum!

If you have heard me,

App.

Away with him!

You need not,

I have; if not, I'll speak again.
App.

Virginius; I had evidence to give,

Which, should you speak a hundred times again, Would make your pleading vain.

Take Icilius hence;

Virginius and the girl.-Delay not, slaves.

Vir. Let them forbear awhile, I pray you, Appius:

It is not very easy. Though her arms

Are tender, yet the hold is strong by which

She grasps me, Appius-forcing them will hurt them;
They'll soon unclasp themselves. Wait but a little
You know you 're sure of her!

App.
I have not time
To idle with thee; give her to my Lictors.
Vir. Appius, I pray you wait! If she is not
My child, she hath been like a child to me
For fifteen years. If I am not her father,
I have been like a father to her, Appius,
For e'en so long a time. They that have lived
For such a space together, in so near
And dear society, may be allowed
A little time for parting. Let me take

[Virginia, shrieking, falls half-dead upon
her father's shoulder.

Vir. Another moment, pray you. Bear with me
A little-'tis my last embrace. 'Twon't try
Your patience beyond bearing, if you're a man!
Lengthen it as I may, I cannot make it
Long.—My dear child! My dear Virginia !
There is only one way to save thine honour-
Tis this.

[Stabs her. Lo, Appius, with this innocent blood I do devote thee to the infernal gods!

If they dare

To tempt the desperate weapon that is maddened
With drinking my daughter's blood, why, let them: thus
It rushes in amongst them. Way there! Way!

Knowles's Dramatic Works were collected (3 vols.) in 1843; of a Life by his son (1872) only twenty-five copies were printed.

Basil Hall (1788-1844), writer of travels, was born in Edinburgh, the son of Sir James Hall of Dunglass, chemist and founder of experimental geology. Basil entered the navy in 1802, and in 1816 commanded a sloop in the naval escort of Lord Amherst's mission to Peking, visiting Corea, then a region hardly known, and described for the first time in his Voyage of Discovery to Corea (1818). He also wrote a Journal on the Coast of Chili, Peru, and Mexico in 1820-22; Travels in North America in 1827-28, a vivacious work whose free criticisms of things American gave great offence in the United States; and Fragments of Voyages and Travels (1831-40). Schloss Hainfeld (1836) was a semi-romance, and Patchwork (1841) a collection of tales and sketches. Hall died insane in Haslar Hospital.

Bryan Waller Procter ('Barry Cornwall;' 1787-1874) was born at Leeds, and educated at Harrow, with Byron and Peel for schoolfellows. Articled to a solicitor at Calne, about 1807 he came to London to live, and in 1815 began to contribute poetry to the Literary Gazette. In 1816 he succeeded by his father's death to about £500 a year, and in 1823 married Basil Montagu's step-daughter, Anne Benson Skepper. He had meanwhile published four volumes of poems, and produced a tragedy, Mirandola (1821), at Covent Garden, the success of which was largely due to the acting of Macready and Charles Kemble. Procter was called to the Bar in 1831, from 1832 to

1861 was a Metropolitan Commissioner of Lunacy. In 1857 a windfall came to Procter and other poets. Mr John Kenyon, a wealthy West Indian gentleman, fond of literary society and author of a Rhymed Plea for Tolerance, bequeathed over £140,000 in legacies to friends and writers whom he admired. Thus to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a sum of £4000 was allotted; to her husband, £6500; and to Procter also £6500. Procter's works, published under the pseudonym 'Barry Cornwall' (a faulty anagram of his real name), comprise Dramatic Scenes (1819), A Sicilian Story and Marcian Colonna (1820), The Flood of Thessaly (1823), and English Songs (1832), besides memoirs of Edmund Kean (1835) and Charles Lamb (1866). The poems are rarely more than studies or graceful exercises, harmonious echoes of bygone and contemporary singers. Yet Barry Cornwall' will

be remembered as the man whom every one loved that company including a hundred of the greatest of the century. His daughter Adelaide earned an independent right to a place in such His a cyclopædia as the present (see below). Bryan Waller Procter: an Autobiographical Fragment, was edited in 1877 by Coventry Patmore; and the Academy for 17th March 1888 had a long article on Mrs Procter.

Address to the Ocean.

O thou vast Ocean! ever-sounding sea!
Thou symbol of a drear immensity!
Thou thing that windest round the solid world
Like a huge animal, which, downward hurled
From the black clouds, lies weltering and alone,
Lashing and writhing till its strength be gone.
Thy voice is like the thunder, and thy sleep
Is as a giant's slumber, loud and deep.
Thou speakest in the east and in the west
At once, and on thy heavily-laden breast
Fleets come and go, and shapes that have no life
Or motion, yet are moved and meet in strife.
The earth hath nought of this: no chance or change
Ruffles its surface, and no spirits dare
Give answer to the tempest-wakened air;
But o'er its wastes the weakly tenants range
At will, and wound its bosom as they go:
Ever the same, it hath no ebb, no flow:
But in their stated rounds the seasons come,
And pass like visions to their wonted home;
And come again, and vanish; the young Spring
Looks ever bright with leaves and blossoming;
And Winter always winds his sullen horn,
When the wild Autumn, with a look forlorn,
Dies in his stormy manhood; and the skies
Weep, and flowers sicken, when the summer flies.
Oh! wonderful thou art, great element ;
And fearful in thy spleeny humours bent,
And lovely in repose; thy summer form
Is beautiful, and when thy silver waves
Make music in earth's dark and winding caves,
I love to wander on thy pebbled beach,
Marking the sunlight at the evening hour,
And hearken to the thoughts thy waters teach-
Eternity Eternity-and Power.

Marcelia.

It was a dreary place. The shallow brook
That ran throughout the wood, there took a turn
And widened: all its music died away,
And in the place a silent eddy told

That there the stream grew deeper. There dark trees
Funereal cypress, yew, and shadowy pine,
And spicy cedar-clustered, and at night
Shook from their melancholy branches sounds

And sighs like death: 'twas strange, for through the day
They stood quite motionless, and looked, methought,
Like monumental things, which the sad earth
From its green bosom had cast out in pity,
To make a young girl's grave. The very leaves
Disowned their natural green, and took black

And mournful hue; and the rough brier, stretching
His straggling arms across the rivulet,

Lay like an armed sentinel there, catching

With his tenacious leaves, straws, withered boughs,
Moss that the banks had lost, coarse grasses which
Swam with the current, and with these it hid
The poor Marcelia's death-bed. Never may net
Of venturous fisher be cast in with hope,
For not a fish abides there. The slim deer
Snorts as he ruffles with his shortened breath
The brook, and panting flies the unholy place,
And the white heifer lows, and passes on:
The foaming hound laps not, and winter birds
Go higher up the stream. And yet I love
To loiter there and when the rising moon
Flames down the avenue of pines, and looks
Red and dilated through the evening mists,
And chequered as the heavy branches sway
To and fro with the wind, I stay to listen,
And fancy to myself that a sad voice,
Praying, comes moaning through the leaves, as 'twere
For some misdeed. The story goes that some
Neglected girl-an orphan whom the world
Frowned upon-once strayed thither and 'twas thought
Cast herself in the stream. You may have heard
Of one Marcelia, poor Nolina's daughter, who
Fell ill and came to want? No! Oh, she loved
A wealthy man who marked her not. He wed,
And then the girl grew sick, and pined away,
And drowned herself for love.

An Invocation to Birds.

Come, all ye feathery people of mid air,
Who sleep 'midst rocks, or on the mountain summits
Lie down with the wild winds; and ye who build
Your homes amidst green leaves by grottos cool:
And ye who on the flat sands hoard your eggs
For suns to ripen, come! O phoenix rare!
If death hath spared, or philosophic search
Permit thee still to own thy haunted nest,
Perfect Arabian-lonely nightingale !
Dusk creature, who art silent all day long,
But when pale eve unseals thy clear throat, loosest
Thy twilight music on the dreaming boughs
Until they waken. And thou, cuckoo bird,
Who art the ghost of sound, having no shape
Material, but dost wander far and near,
Like untouched echo whom the woods deny
Sight of her love-come all to my slow charm!
Come thou, sky-climbing bird, wakener of morn,
Who springest like a thought unto the sun,

And from his golden floods dost gather wealth-
Epithalamium and Pindarique song —

And with it enrich our ears; come all to me,
Beneath the chamber where my lady lies,
And, in your several musics, whisper-Love!

King Death.

King Death was a rare old fellow,

He sat where no sun could shine,
And he lifted his hand so yellow,
And poured out his coal black wine!
Hurrah for the coal-black wine!

There came to him many a maiden
Whose eyes had forgot to shine,
And widows with grief o'erladen,
For a draught of his coal-black wine.
Hurrah for the coal-black wine!

All came to the rare old fellow,

Who laughed till his eyes dropped brine, And he gave them his hand so yellow, And pledged them in Death's black wine. Hurrah for the coal-black wine!

The Nights.

Oh, the Summer night

Has a smile of light,

And she sits on a sapphire throne;
Whilst the sweet winds load her
With garlands of odour,

From the bud to the rose o'erblown!

But the Autumn night
Has a piercing sight,

And a step both strong and free ;
And a voice for wonder,
Like the wrath of the thunder,
When he shouts to the stormy sea!

And the Winter night
Is all cold and white,
And she singeth a song of pain;
Till the wild bee hummeth,
And the warm Spring cometh,
When she dies in a dream of rain!

Oh, the night brings sleep
To the greenwoods deep,

To the bird of the woods its nest;

To care soft hours,

To life new powers,

To the sick, the weary-rest!

Song for Twilight.

Hide me, O twilight air!

Hide me from thought, from care,

From all things foul or fair,

Until to-morrow!
To-night I strive no more;
No more my soul shall soar;
Come, sleep, and shut the door
'Gainst pain and sorrow!
If I must see through dreams,
Be mine Elysian gleams,
Be mine by morning streams
To watch and wander;
So may my spirit cast
(Serpent-like) off the past,
And my free soul at last

Have leave to ponder.

And shouldst thou 'scape control,
Ponder on love, sweet soul;
On joy, the end and goal

Of all endeavour :

But if earth's pains will rise
(As damps will seek the skies),
Then night, seal thou mine eyes,
In sleep for ever.

Amelia. Wide awake.

There are the stars abroad, I see. I feel As though I had been sleeping many a day. What time o' the night is it?

And bright; and so, at last, my spirit is.
Whether the heavens have influence on the mind
Through life, or only in our days of death,
I know not; yet, before, ne'er did my soul
Look upwards with such hope of joy, or pine
For that hope's deep completion. Marian!
Let me see more of heaven. There-enough.
Are you not well, sweet girl?

Mar.
O yes, but you
Speak now so strangely: you were wont to talk
Of plain familiar things, and cheer me now
You set my spirit drooping.

Amel.
I have spoke
Nothing but cheerful words, thou idle girl.
Look, look above! the canopy of the sky,
Spotted with stars, shines like a bridal dress :
A queen might envy that so regal blue
Which wraps the world o' nights. Alas, alas!
I do remember in my follying days
What wild and wanton wishes once were mine,
Slaves-radiant gems-and beauty with no peer,
And friends (a ready host)-but I forget.

I shall be dreaming soon, as once I dreamt,
When I had hope to light me. Have you no song,
My gentle girl, for a sick woman's ear?

There's one I've heard you sing: 'They said his eye'—
No, that's not it: the words are hard to hit.
'His eye like the midday sun was bright '-

Mar. There is another verse, of a different air, But indistinct-like the low moaning

Of summer winds in the evening: thus it runs—

They said he died upon the wave,

And his bed was the wild and bounding billow; Her bed shall be a dry earth grave:

Prepare it quick, for she wants her pillow.
Amel. How slowly and how silently doth time
Float on his starry journey! Still he goes,
And goes, and goes, and doth not pass away.
He rises with the golden morning, calmly,
And the moon at night. Methinks I see
Him stretching wide abroad his mighty wings,

Floating for ever o'er the crowds of men,
Like a huge vulture with its prey beneath.
Lo! I am here, and time seems passing on:
To-morrow I shall be a breathless thing
Yet he will still be here; and the blue hours
Will laugh as gaily on the busy world
As though I were alive to welcome them.
There's one will shed some tears.

Poor Charles ! Did you not call? My thoughts

Charles (entering). I am here.
Amel. You come in time.

Were full of you, dear Charles. Your mother-now
I take that title--in her dying hour

Has privilege to speak unto your youth.

There's one thing pains me, and I would be calm.

My husband has been harsh unto me--yet
He is my husband; and you 'll think of this
If any sterner feeling move your heart?

Seek no revenge for me. You will not?— Nay,
Is it so hard to grant my last request?
He is my husband: he was father, too,

Of the blue-eyed boy you were so fond of once.
Do you remember how his eyelids closed
When the first summer rose was opening?
'Tis now two years ago-more, more : and I—
I now am hastening to him. Pretty boy!
He was my only child. How fair he looked
In the white garment that encircled him !---
'Twas like a marble slumber; and when we
Laid him beneath the green earth in his bed,
I thought my heart was breaking--yet I lived:
But I am weary now.

Indeed you must not.

Ch.
Amel. Well, then, I will be silent; yet not so.
For ere we journey, ever should we take

A sweet leave of our friends, and wish them well,
And tell them to take heed, and bear in mind
Our blessings. So, in your breast, dear Charles,
Wear the remembrance of Amelia.
She ever loved you-ever; so as might
Become a mother's tender love-no more.
Charles, I have lived in this too bitter world
Now almost thirty seasons: you have been
A child to me for one third of that time.
I took you to my bosom when a boy,

Who scarce had seen eight springs come forth and vanish.
You have a warm heart, Charles, and the base crowd
Will feed upon it, if—but you must make

That heart a grave, and in it bury deep
Its young and beautiful feelings.

Ch. Is it then so?
O mother, mother!
Oh for some blinding tears to dim my eyes,
So I might not gaze on her! And has death
Indeed, indeed struck her-so beautiful;
So wronged, and never erring; so beloved
By one-who now has nothing left to love?
O thou bright heaven! if thou art calling now
Thy brighter angels to thy bosom-rest;
For lo the brightest of thy host has gone-
Departed-and the earth is dark below,
And now-I'll wander far and far away.
Like one that hath no country. I shall find
A sullen pleasure in that life, and when

My soul is sick and faint.
I-I cannot weep.

I say, 'I have no friend in all the world,'

My heart will swell with pride, and make a show

Unto itself of happiness; and in truth

There is, in that same solitude, a taste
Of pleasure which the social never know.
From land to land I'll roam, in all a stranger,
And, as the body gains a braver look

By staring in the face of all the winds,

So from the sad aspects of different things My soul shall pluck a courage, and bear up Against the past. And now-for Hindustan. Bernard Barton (1784-1849), the Quaker poet, was born in London of Cumbrian parentage. His mother died in bearing him, his father about 1791; and Bernard, brought up by his step-mother at Tottenham, and sent to a Quaker school at Ipswich, was from

1798 to 1806 in

a shop at Halstead. He then went to Woodbridge, married, turned coal and corn merchant, lost his wife (1808), and, after a year as a tutor at Liverpool, returned to Woodbridge as clerk in a bank; there he continued until two days before his death. He left a daughter, Lucy, who married Edward FitzGerald, the translator of Omar Khayyám. Barton more than once thought of giving up business for a literary life. Byron in 1812 remonstrated: 'Do not renounce writing,' he said, 'but never trust entirely to authorship. If you have a profession, retain it; it will be, like Prior's fellowship, a last and sure resource.' Charles Lamb, too, in 1823 wrote to him: Throw yourself on the world, without any rational plan of support beyond what the chance employ of booksellers would afford you!!! Throw yourself rather, my dear sir, from the steep Tarpeian rock slap-dash