headlong upon iron spikes. If you have but five consolatory minutes between the desk and the bed, make much of them, and live a century in them, rather than turn slave to the booksellers. They are Turks and Tartars when they have poor authors at their beck. Hitherto you have been at arm's-length from them-come not within their grasp. I have known many authors want for bread-some repining, others enjoying the blessed security of a counting-house-all agreeing they had rather have been tailors, weavers-what not? -rather than the things they were. I have known some starved, some go mad, one dear friend literally dying in a workhouse. Oh, you know not -may you never know-the miseries of subsisting by authorship!... Keep to your bank, and the bank will keep you.' Bernard Barton followed the advice, and managed withal to publish ten volumes of verse between 1812 and 1845-he 'would never believe there could be too much poetry.' Several hymns by him are in general use, Lamp of our feet' and 'Walk in the light' being the most familiar. In 1824 some Quaker friends raised £1200 for him, and in 1846 Peel procured him a pension of £100 a year. FitzGerald prefixed an exquisite Memoir to his Remains (1849); and there is also Mr E. U. Lucas's Bernard Barton and his Friends (1894). To the Evening Primrose. Fair flower, that shunn'st the glare of day, Be thine the offering owing long I love to watch, at silent eve, The influence of that sight. I love at such an hour to mark Their beauty greet the night-breeze chill, For such, 'tis sweet to think the while, Is friendship's animating smile In sorrow's dark'ning shade. Thus it bursts forth, like thy pale cup, Glist'ning amid its dewy tears, But still more animating far, If meek Religion's eye may trace, The hope that as thy beauteous bloom Ebenezer Elliott (1781-1849) was born of mixed moss-trooper and yeoman ancestry at Masborough, now a suburb of Rotherham, in Yorkshire. A shy and morbid boy, who proved a dull pupil at four different schools, he worked in his father's foundry from his sixteenth to his twenty-third year, and threatened to become a 'sad drunken dog,' till the picture of a primrose in Sowerby's Botany 'led him into the fields, and poetry followed.' His Vernal Walk, written at sixteen, was published in 1801; to it succeeded Night (1818), The Village Patriarch (1829), Corn-law Rhymes and the Ranter (third ed. 1831), and other volumes. He had married early, and sunk all his wife's fortune in his father's business; but in 1821, with a borrowed capital of £100, he started on his own account as a bar-iron merchant at Sheffield, and throve exceedingly, 'making £20 a day sometimes without stirring from his counting-house, or ever seeing the goods he disposed of.' Though in 1837 he lost fully onethird of his savings, still in 1841 he was able to retire with £300 a year to a house of his own building at Great Houghton near Barnsley, and there he died. In his poems he saw the poor as miserable and oppressed, and traced most of the evils he deplores to the Corn-laws. These he affirmed to be the cause of all the crime that is committed;' 'agriculturists,' he maintained, 'ought not to live by robbing and murdering the manufacturers.' On the other hand, 'Capital has a right to rule the land,' and 'Competition is the great social law of God;' and he was neither anarchist nor collectivist What is a Communist? One who has yearnings The Corn-laws were denounced by him with a vehemence and a harshness of phraseology which most men cannot but feel as repulsive, even when they are recognised as the outcome of the irritated and inverted sympathies of an angry poet; and he had manifestly little or no humour. But his vigorous verses helped in no small degree to swell the cry which at length compelled the legislature to abolish all restrictions on the importation of corn. For thee, my country, thee, do I perform, Sternly, the duty of a man Lorn free, Heedless, though ass and wolf and venomous worm Shake ears and fangs, with brandished bray, at me. Elliott's imperfect but real endowment largely redeemed his errors of taste: his pictures of humble worth, his descriptions of English scenery, are excellent; he wrote from genuine feeling, and often rose to indisputable eloquence. The Corn-law Rhymer was honoured with critical notices from Southey, Bulwer Lytton, and Wilson, and became for a while almost as truly and popularly the poet of Yorkshire-of its heights, dales, and 'broad towns'-as Scott was the poet of Tweedside, or Wordsworth of the Lakes. To the Bramble Flower. Thy fruit full well the schoolboy knows, So put thou forth thy small white rose; Though woodbines flaunt and roses glow Amid all beauty beautiful, Thy tender blossoms are! How delicate thy gauzy frill! How rich thy branchy stem! How soft thy voice when woods are still, And thou sing'st hymns to them; While silent showers are falling slow, And 'mid the general hush, A sweet air lifts the little bough, Lone whispering through the bush! But thou, wild bramble! back dost bring, The fresh green days of life's fair spring And boyhood's blossomy hour. To gad with thee the woodlands o'er, The Excursion. Bone-weary, many-childed, trouble-tried! The young are with us yet, and we with them: Lo! where thy fisher-born, abstracted, takes, Dear children! when the flowers are full of bees; 'Tis passing sweet to wander, free as air, O Night's long-courted slumbers! bring no rest To men who laud man's foes, and deem the basest best! God! would they handcuff thee? and, if they could, To every field; and bid the warbling wood For love-sweet odours, where the woodbine blows Of the rich sky! Their gods are bonds and blows, They know ye not, ye flowers that welcome me, Blue Eyebright! loveliest flower of all that grow In flower-loved England! Flower, whose hedge-side gaze Awake, blue Eyebright, while the singing wave hair. Native Genius. O faithful love, by poverty embraced! And she, thy mate, when coldest blows the storm, When o'er thy bowed roof darkest falls the night. For richest gems, compared with her, are poor; Yet while in gloom your freezing day declines, Sweetly embroiders earth's white veil with green; And your broad branches, proud of storm-tried strength, And calmly wave, beneath the darkest hour, Let luxury, sickening in profusion's chair, And, while he feeds him, blush and tremble too! While round your hearth the woe-nursed virtues move, Burns, o'er the plough, sung sweet his wood-notes wild, Northumbrian vales! ye saw in silent pride, When, poor, yet learned, he wandered young and free, Scenes of his youth, where first he wooed the Nine, Born in a lowly hut an infant slept, And flow through mountains with a conqueror's pride: O'er grazing herds, lo! ships suspended sail, And Brindley's praise hath wings in every gale! The worm came up to drink the welcome shower; The lark was in the cloud; the woodbine hung Song from 'Corn-law Rhymes.' Child, is thy father dead? Father is gone! Why did they tax his bread? God's will be done! Mother has sold her bed; Father clamm'd thrice a week, God's will be done! Told what no tongue could speak: God's will be done! Doctor said air was best, Food we had none; Father, with panting breast, Groan'd to be gone : Now he is with the blestMother says death is best! We have no place of restYes, ye have one ! There are two poor Lives of Elliott, one by his son-in-law, John Watkins (1850), and another by 'January Searle' (George S. Phillips; 1850). See Carlyle's essay for the Edinburgh of July 1832, and Guest's History of Rotherham (1879). John Clare, the peasant poet, was born at Helpstone near Peterborough, 13th July 1793; his father was a helpless cripple and a pauper. John got some education by his own extra work as a plough-boy; from the labour of eight weeks he generally acquired as many pence as paid for a month's schooling. At thirteen he fell in with Thomson's Seasons, and hoarded up a shilling to purchase a copy; at daybreak on a spring morning he walked to Stamford-six or seven miles off-to make the purchase, and had to wait till the shops were opened. Returning to his native village with the precious purchase, as he walked through the green glades of Burghley Park he composed his first piece of poetry, the Morning Walk; and this was soon followed by the Evening Walk and other verses. A benevolent exciseman taught writing and arithmetic to the young poet, who continued his obscure but ardent devotion to his rural muse. In 1817, while working at Bridge Casterton in Rutland, he resolved to risk publishing a volume. By hard working day and night he saved a pound to print a prospectus; and a Collection of Original Trifles was announced to subscribers, the price not to exceed 3s. 6d. ‘I distributed my papers,' he says; 'but as I could' get at no way of pushing them into higher circles than those with whom I was acquainted, they consequently passed off as quietly as if they had been still in my possession, unprinted and unseen.' Seven subscribers in all proposed. But one of the prospectuses led to an acquaintance with Edward Drury, a bookseller in Stamford, and through his mediation the poems were published at London by Taylor and Hessey, who purchased them from Clare for £20. The volume was brought out in January 1820 as Poems descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, by John Clare, a Northamptonshire Peasant. The attention of the public was instantly awakened; magazines and reviews were unanimous in his favour; and soon he was in possession of a little fortune. Earl Fitzwilliam sent £100 to his publishers, which, with the like sum advanced by them, was laid out in the purchase of stock; the Marquis of Exeter allowed him an annuity of fifteen guineas for life; Earl Spencer a further annuity of £10; and various other contributions were received, so that the poet had a permanent yearly allowance of £45. He married his 'Patty of the Vale,' daughter of a neighbouring farmer; and in his native cottage at Helpstone, with his aged and infirm parents and his young wife by his side-all proud of his now successful genius -he basked in the sunshine of poetical felicity. His second venture, The Village Minstrel and other Poems (2 vols. 1821), raised his reputation. The first piece, in the Spenserian stanza, describes the scenes, sports, and feelings of rural life-the author himself sitting for the portrait of Lubin, the humble rustic who 'hummed his lowly dreams far in the shade where poverty retires.' Clare contributed short pieces to the annuals and other periodicals more careful and polished in diction; but the poet's prosperity was, alas! soon over. His discretion was not equal to his fortitude: he speculated in farming, wasted his little hoard, and amidst accumulating difficulties sank into nervous despondency and despair. For four years he was an inmate of Dr Allen's private asylum in Epping Forest, whence he escaped only to be taken to the Northampton lunatic asylum, and there he dragged on a miserable existence of twenty years-unvisited by wife, child, or friend, it is said—till May 1864. Poor Clare's muse was the true offspring of English country-life. He was a faithful painter of country scenes and occupations, and he noted every light and shade of his brooks, meadows, and green lanes. His imagery, drawn straight from nature, is varied and original; there is often a fine delicacy in his pieces; and not seldom he lights on really happy thoughts. What is Life? And what is Life? An hour-glass on the run, Its length? A minute's pause, a moment's thought. And Happiness? A bubble on the stream, That in the act of seizing shrinks to nought. And what is Hope? The puffing gale of morn, A long and lingering sleep the weary crave. To teach unthankful mortals how to prize Summer Morning. 'Tis sweet to meet the morning breeze, To entertain our wished delay- The wakening charms of early day! Now let me tread the meadow paths, Where glittering dew the ground illumes, As sprinkled o'er the withering swaths, Their moisture shrinks in sweet perfumes. And hear the beetle sound his horn, A hailing minstrel in the sky. First sunbeam, calling night away To see how sweet thy summons seems; Split by the willow's wavy gray, And sweetly dancing on the streams. Its silk thread glittering in the sun Roaming while the dewy fields 'Neath their morning burden lean, While its crop my searches shields, Sweet I scent the blossomed bean. Making oft remarking stops; Watching tiny nameless things Climb the grass's spiry tops Ere they try their gauzy wings. So emerging into light, From the ignorant and vain Fearful genius takes her flight, Skimming o'er the lowly plain. From The Woodman.' Far o'er the dreary fields the woodland lies, Rough is the journey which he daily goes; The woolly clouds, that hang the frowning skies, And smooth as glass the glibbed pool is froze; And dithering echo starts, and mocks the clamping sound. The Primrose. Welcome, pale primrose! starting up between How much thy presence beautifies the ground! Plucking the fairest with a rude delight: While the meek shepherd stops his simple song, To gaze a moment on the pleasing sight; O'erjoyed to see the flowers that truly bring The welcome news of sweet returning spring. The Thrush's Nest. Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush I watched her secret toils from day to day; How true she warped the moss to form her nest, And modelled it within with wood and clay. And by-and-by, like heath-bells gilt with dew, There lay her shining eggs as bright as flowers, Ink-spotted over, shells of green and blue : And there I witnessed, in the summer hours, A brood of nature's minstrels chirp and fly, Glad as the sunshine and the laughing sky. Dawnings of Genius. In those low paths which poverty surrounds, While moiled and sweating, by some pasture's side, Ideas picture pleasing views to mind, Dim burns the soul, and throbs the fluttering heart, The memory fails, and Fancy takes her flight: J. L. Cherry (1873). His books were bought from his widow, and ultimately presented to the Northampton Museum. Mr Norman Gale edited a selection from his poems in 1902. George Darley (1795-1846), poet and mathematician, was born in Dublin, and educated there at Trinity College. Against the wishes of his family he took to literature, and launched himself on London, where in 1822 he published The Errors of Ecstasie, a blank-verse dialogue between a mystic and a muse. He became one of the able band of writers for the London Magazine, started in 1820-'the only clever hand among them,' wrote Charles Lamb in 1825—and in its pages, under the pseudonym of John Lacy, his papers on the English dramatists appeared. The same magazine published his best story, Lilian of the Vale, which contains the well-known song, 'I've been roaming.' Some other tales were included in the volume of Labours of Idleness, issued under the pseudonym of Guy Perceval in 1826. In 1827 appeared Sylvia, or the May Queen, mentioned by Lamb in one of his letters as a 'very poetical poem.' Darley afterwards joined the staff of the Athenæum, where he showed himself a severe and captious critic, notably in a savage onslaught on Talfourd's Ion. Always shy and recluse in his habits, he was finally a victim of melancholy and nervous depression. His poems Nepenthe and The Lammergeyer were circulated privately, and his latter years saw the publication of two dramas, Thomas à Becket (1840) and Ethelstan (1841). Darley was a man of very various accomplishment-a respectable writer on mathematics as well as a keen and erudite critic, and, within a certain range, a true poet. A profound student of the older English literature, he |