near the door, he said to them with a placid smile, 'You see, gentlemen, the advantage of being in the secret. Good-night. No man,' says Mr Adam of his speech and whole conduct that evening, 'ever showed more calmness, cheerfulness, and serenity. The temper of his whole family was the same. I dined with them that day, and was witness to it.' Thus ended Lord North's administration of twelve years. It is certainly strange, on contemplating these twelve years, to find so many harsh and rigorous measures proceed from the most gentle and good-humoured of Prime Ministers. Happy had but greater firmness in maintaining his own opinions been joined to so much ability in defending opinions even when not his own! (From the History of England, Chap. LXV.) Charles Swain (1801–74), a Manchester man, was originally a clerk in a dye-work, but after his thirtieth year became connected with a large engraving and lithographing business, of which he was ultimately the proprietor. He had begun to send poetry to the magazines, and in 1827 published Metrical Essays, the first of a series of volumes of poetry, including Rhymes for Childhood and Dramatic Chapters, Poems, and Songs; besides The Mind and other Poems (1832), which reached a sixth edition in 1873, and Songs and Ballads (his twelfth volume, 1867), which was in a fifth edition in 1877. A Life was prefixed to an edition of his poems-mostly marked by sweetness, grace, and melody-published in the United States in 1887, at which date a Civil List pension was conferred on him at home. Thomas Cooper (1805-92), the Chartist poet, who lived to be called the 'last of the Chartists' and to write Thoughts at Fourscore, was born at Leicester in 1805, and was apprenticed to a shoemaker at Gainsborough, where he became the friend of Thomas Miller (see below). Spite of hard labour and insufficient food (he often swooned when he tried to take his cup of oatmeal gruel at the end of the day's work), he would rise at three in the morning to teach himself Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and French; and he became a schoolmaster at twenty-three, and about the same time a local Methodist preacher. He found time for very wide and varied reading in history and English literature; and after reporting for some of the newspapers in the Midlands, he became leader of the Leicester Chartists in 1841, and was an active editor of tracts. He lectured in the Potteries during the riots in August 1842, was arrested on a charge of conspiracy and sedition, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment in Stafford jail. Here he wrote The Purgatory of Suicides, a poem in the Spenserian stanza, and Wise Saws and Modern Instances, a series of tales, which were both published in 1845. In prison he had become a pronounced sceptic, though he never taught 'blank atheism,' he says; and the reading of George Eliot's translation of the Leben Jesu made him for years a whole-hearted disciple of Strauss. In 1846 appeared his Baron's Yule Feast, a Christmas Rhyme, and a series of papers headed 'Condition of the People of England' in Douglas Jerrold's Newspaper. In 1848 he began to lecture on history and politics in London; set up the Plain Speaker and Cooper's Journal, two short-lived penny weeklies; and published two novels, Alderman Ralph (1853) and The Family Feud (1854)In 1855 a new religious life dawned for him: he utterly recanted his sceptical views and doubts, became a zealous Christian, and joining the Baptists, was an effective and acceptable preacher. He was always an honest, if impulsive, thinker, and was latterly a sincere but old-fashioned Radical. In 1867 his friends purchased an annuity for him. He published his Autobiography in 1872; The Paradise of Martyrs, an unfinished poem, in 1873; and an edition of his Poetical Works in 1878; and in the last year of his life he got a Civil Service pension of £200. The Purgatory of Suicides, the chief occupation of his prison life, was also Cooper's most notable production. In the prison he was ultimately allowed to have his books, to read Gibbon through for the second time, to revel in Shakespeare and Milton, and to commit to memory, out of Chambers's Cyclopædia of English Literature, 'portions of almost every English poet of eminence.' Already in his reporter days he had 'conceived as in an instant an epic wherein the souls of suicidal kings and other remarkable personages should be interlocutors on some high theme or themes,' and had resolved on The Purgatory of Suicides as the title for it. It was primarily a vision of suicides, including all he could remember, but omitting, to his subsequent regret, Lord Clive and Uriel Acosta, whose history had specially impressed him, though in prison he had forgotten his name. Oppressed with the cruelties, baseness, horrors, shams, hypocrisies, and injustices of his own and past times-especially those which the poor suffer at the hands of the rich-the poet is driven to ask, 'Is life worth having?' and to sympathise with those who in despair have succumbed to fate by shortening their own lives. poem does not deal much with suicide; it is a 'mind-history,' and is largely an impeachment of oppression, a claim of human rights, a denunciation of priestcraft, bad government, Castlereagh, Union workhouses, and slavery black and white; and there are still pretty strong traces of his early scepticism, conscientiously permitted to stand by the author after reconversion, as being part of his actual history. Disraeli (Beaconsfield), Dickens, and Jerrold encouraged the convict-poet, and in the Purgatory Carlyle found 'indisputable traces of genius-a dark, Titanic energy struggling there for which we hope there will be clearer daylight by-and-by.' But the too-friendly critic not unwisely advised him to say what he had to say in prose: probably he too saw that the ten books of Spenserian stanzas were long and wearisome. There are touches of true sentiment in the 'prison rhyme,' But the much sound sense, not a little acute argument, and some bombastic rhetoric, but only a little poetry. Probably Cooper's best work was in some of his prose addressed to working-men. The first verses of one of Cooper's 'Chartist hymns,' 'sung to the noble air of the Old Hundredth,' ran as follows (somewhat like the corresponding work of the Corn-Law rhymer, page 231): God of the earth, and sea, and sky, Sadness and gloom pervade the land; From The Purgatory of Suicides.' To quench the nobler spark within, in dungeon'd gloom? From out that beaming look, to know what thoughts Like thee, loved bird, to breathe sweet Freedom's balmy air. Sweet childhood's sacred one! The hawthorns bend With sacrilegious heart and hand, should rob Of pies and crows? Flee-loved one!--thou hast heard Hie where young hearts gush taintless joy intense, And, 'mid their rapture, pour thy heart's mellifluence! Thomas Miller (1807-74) was the son of a Gainsborough wharfinger, who, during a visit to London in 1810, left his lodgings on the morning of the Burdett riots, and was never heard of again. The fatherless boy, having learnt at school 'to write a very indifferent hand, and to read the Testament tolerably,' was apprenticed to a basketmaker in his native town. While working at his trade in Nottingham he submitted his poems to Thomas Bailey, a journalist, whose son was the author of Festus; and Bailey encouraged Miller to publish Songs of the Sea Nymphs (1832). Shortly. afterwards he removed to London, hoping to contribute to the magazines; but he had a weary wait for recognition, and had to earn his living by working at his old trade. Having one day sent to Lady Blessington some baskets containing verses, he was welcomed to her house. Often,' he wrote, 'have I been sitting in Lady Blessington's splendid drawing-room in the morning, and talking and laughing as familiarly as in the old house at home; and on the same evening I might have been seen on Westminster Bridge, between an apple-vendor and a baked-potato merchant selling my baskets.' About 1845 he was enabled, mainly through the assistance of Samuel Rogers, to start business as a bookseller and publisher in Newgate Street; but, failing to succeed, soon devoted himself entirely to writing. Ultimately he had produced not fewer than forty-five volumes, including several works of fiction, in which country characters and scenes are drawn with skill. His best-known novel is Royston Gower, or the Days of King John (1838); another tale is Gideon Giles the Roper. A volume of Rural Sketches was largely circulated, as were most of his books dealing with the country. He contributed leading articles to the London daily papers, reviews to the Athenæum, and much miscellaneous prose and poetry to the periodicals, but died in poverty. James Ballantine (1808–77), author of 'Ilka blade o' grass keps its ain drap o' dew' and other Scotch songs, was born in Edinburgh and trained as a house-painter; but having studied drawing and painting, became conspicuous as a reviver of the art of glass-painting. Some of his best-known songs and ballads are to be found in two prose volumes, The Gaberlunzie's Wallet (1843) and The Miller of Deanhaugh (1845). William Harrison Ainsworth (1805–82), the son of a wealthy Manchester solicitor, was educated at the grammar school and articled to a solicitor, and, on his father's death in 1824, went up to London to finish his legal studies; but two years later he married a publisher's daughter, and himself turned publisher for eighteen months. He had written some magazine articles prior to 1823, so that his first-born was not Sir John Chiverton (1826), an anonymous novel bepraised by Scott (partly, it seems, the work of John Partington Aston). His earliest hit was Rookwood (1834), with its vivid narrative of Dick Turpin's ride to York. In the interest and rapidity of his scenes and adventures, Ainsworth showed some dramatic power, but little originality or felicity in humour or character. His romance, Crichton (1837), is founded on the marvellous history of the 'Admirable' Scot; and later works were Jack Sheppard (1839), a sort of Newgate romance; The Tower of London, Guy Fawkes, Old St Paul's, Windsor Castle, The Lancashire Witches, The Star Chamber, The Flitch of Bacon, The Spendthrift, &c. There are rich, copious, and brilliant descriptions in some of these stories, but both their æsthetic value and their moral tendency were-and are now-open to much criticism; there are certainly too many WILLIAM HARRISON AINSWORTH. From a Print in the British Museum after the Portrait by Maclise. scenes of low but successful villainy, too many ghastly and unrelieved details of human suffering. As romances, they abound in incident, and are elaborately and ingeniously constructed, but in their strongest situations are often frankly incredible; and the style, especially in the conversations, is artificial and stilted to a degree. Even in the most appalling crises his characters 'reply to one another in the affirmative' and call a church the sacred pile or the reverend structure. When a beautiful girl is being roasted alive in a burning house one friend says to another, 'I will ascertain' how the case stands; and 'having learned to his great satisfaction what had occurred' (viz., that she has been saved), 'he flew back and briefly explained the situation of the parties.' The most intimate dialogue also is innocently constructed so as 'to explain the situation of the parties' to the reader, and to expound incidents not elsewhere recorded. The author is fond of such participial constructions as 'knocking at the door, an elderly servant appeared,' when it On the night of their liberation, Chowles and Judith proceeded to the vaults of Saint Faith's, to deposit within them the plunder they had obtained in the prison. They found them entirely deserted. Neither verger, sexton, nor any other person was to be seen, and they took up their quarters in the crypt. Having brought a basket of provisions and a few bottles of wine with them, they determined to pass the night in revelry; and, accordingly, having lighted a fire with the fragments of old coffins brought from the charnel, they sat down to their meal. Having done full justice to it, and disposed of the first flask, they were about to abandon themselves to unrestrained enjoyment, when their glee was all at once interrupted by a strange and unaccountable noise in the adjoining church. Chowles, who had just commenced chanting one of his wild melodies, suddenly stopped, and Judith set down the glass she had raised to her lips untasted. What could it mean? Neither of them could tell. It seemed like strains of unearthly music, mixed with shrieks and groans as of tortured spirits, accompanied by peals of such laughter as might be supposed to proceed from demons. 'The dead are burst forth from their tombs,' cried Chowles, in a quavering voice, and are attended by a legion of evil spirits.' 'It would seem so,' replied Judith, rising. 'I should like to behold the sight. Come with me.' 'Not for the world!' rejoined Chowles, shuddering; 'and I would recommend you to stay where you are. You may behold your dead husband among them.' 'Do you think so?' rejoined Judith, halting. 'I am sure of it,' cried Chowles, eagerly. Stay where you are stay where you are.' As he spoke, there was another peal of infernal laughter, and the strains of music grew louder each moment. 'Come what may, I will see what it is,' said Judith, emptying her glass, as if seeking courage from the draught. Surely,' she added, in a taunting tone, ‘you will come with me.' 'I am afraid of nothing earthly,' rejoined Chowles'but I do not like to face beings of another world.' 'Then I will go alone,' rejoined Judith. 'Nay, that will never be,' replied Chowles, tottering after her. As they opened the door and crossed the charnel, such an extraordinary combination of sounds burst upon their ears that they again paused, and looked anxiously at each other. Chowles laid his hand on his companion's arm, and strove to detain her, but she would not be stayed, and he was forced to proceed. Setting down the lamp on the stone floor, Judith passed into the subterranean church, where she beheld a sight that almost petrified her. In the midst of the nave, which was illumined by a blue glimmering light, whence proceeding it was impossible to determine, stood a number of grotesque figures, apparelled in fantastic garbs, and each attended by a skeleton. Some of the latter grisly shapes were playing on tambours, others on psalteries, others on rebecs-every instrument producing the strangest sound imaginable. Viewed through the massive pillars, beneath that dark and ponderous roof, and by the mystic light before described, this strange company had a supernatural appearance, and neither Chowles nor Judith doubted for a moment that they beheld before them a congregation of phantoms. An irresistible feeling of curiosity prompted them to advance. On drawing nearer, they found the assemblage comprehended all ranks of society. There was a pope in his tiara and pontifical dress; a cardinal in his cap and robes; a monarch with a sceptre in his hand, and arrayed in the habiliments of royalty; a crowned queen; a bishop wearing his mitre, and carrying his crosier; an abbot likewise in his mitre, and bearing a crosier; a duke in his robes of state; a grave canon of the church; a knight sheathed in armour; a judge, an advocate, and a magistrate, all in their robes; a mendicant friar and a nun; and the list was completed by a physician, an astrologer, a miser, a merchant, a duchess, a pedlar, a soldier, a gamester, an idiot, a robber, a blind man, and a beggar-each distinguishable by his apparel. By-and-by, with a wild and gibbering laugh that chilled the beholders' blood, one of the tallest and grisliest of the skeletons sprang forward, and beating his drum, the whole ghostly company formed, two and two, into a line-a skeleton placing itself on the right of every mortal. In this order, the fantastic procession marched between the pillars, the unearthly music playing all the while, and disappeared at the further extremity of the church. With the last of the group the mysterious light vanished, and Chowles and his companion were left in profound darkness. 'What can it mean?' cried Judith, as soon as she recovered her speech. Are they human or spirits?' · 'Human beings don't generally amuse themselves in this way,' returned Chowles. But hark!-I still hear the music. They are above-in Saint Paul's.' 'Then I will join them,' said Judith. I am resolved to see the end of it.' 'Don't leave me behind,' returned Chowles, following her. 'I would rather keep company with Beelzebub and all his imps than be alone.' Both were too well acquainted with the way to need any light. Ascending the broad stone steps, they presently emerged into the cathedral, which they found illumined by the same glimmering light as the lower church, and they perceived the ghostly assemblage gathered into an immense ring, and dancing round the tall skeleton, who continued beating his drum, and uttering a strange gibbering sound, which was echoed by the others. Each moment the dancers increased the swiftness of their pace, until at last it grew to a giddy whirl, and then, all at once, with a shriek of laughter, the whole company fell to the ground. Chowles and Judith then, for the first time, understood, from the confusion that ensued and the exclamations uttered, that they were no spirits they had to deal with, but beings of the same mould as themselves. Accordingly, they approached the party of masquers, for such they proved, and found on inquiry that they were a party of young gallants, who, headed by the Earl of Rochester -the representative of the tall skeleton-had determined to realise the Dance of Death, as once depicted on the walls of an ancient cloister at the north of the cathedral, called Pardon-churchyard, on the walls of which, says Stowe, were 'artificially and richly painted the Dance of Macabre, or Dance of Death, commonly called the Dance of Paul's, the like whereof was painted about Saint Innocent's at Paris. The metres, or poesy of this dance,' proceeds the same authority, were translated out of French into English by John Lydgate, monk of Bury; and with the picture of Death leading all estates, painted about the cloister, at the special request and expense of Jenkin Carpenter, in the reign of Henry the Sixth.' At some brilliant experiments in academic journalism. Apis Matina, his first venture, was followed in 1820 by The Etonian, which was printed by Charles Knight, and ran for ten months. Trinity College, Cambridge, which he entered in 1821, Praed won the Chancellor's medal twice with poems on 'Australasia' and 'Athens,' and contributed prose and verse to Knight's Quarterly Magazine. The Brazen Head, which reached its third number, was another of his ventures in the periodical line in 1826. At that time he was tutor to a son of Lord Ailesbury. In 1829, having obtained a college fellowship, he was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple, and next year entered the House of Commons as member for the rotten borough of St Germans in Cornwall. At Cambridge, in the Union debates, he had been a Whig champion against the Tory Macaulay, but in Parliament the positions of the two were reversed. Praed lost his seat on the passing of the Reform Act, but afterwards re-entered Parliament as member succes The sively for Great Yarmouth and Ailesbury. Duke of Wellington employed him in some pamphleteering work, and he was Secretary to the Board of Control in 1834-35; but although his maiden speech in Parliament had been greeted with applause, he failed to win distinction in politics. He died of consumption at the fatal age of thirty-seven. Praed's poems were collected and published first in America in 1844; the earliest authorised edition in England, with a Memoir by Derwent Coleridge, appeared only in 1864, and was followed in 1887 and 1888 by his prose essays and his political squibs. These last were accounted too goodnatured to be effective, and it is on his dainty vers de société and his essays in what has been called 'metrical genre-painting' that his poetic reputation rests. The best of his verses-The Vicar, for example, and Quince-show a mingling of humour, wit, and pathos perhaps more refined, though less intense and vital, than is found in Hood-a poet to whom in some regards Praed bears a notable resemblance. Most of his society verses are mere trifles, but everywhere, even in his charades, one finds delicate good taste and finished execution. His skill as a metrist within certain limits is unfailing, but here again he shows a narrower range and a less vigorous energy than Hood. In the world of English literature he stands in a small group apart-almost a coterie-with Locker Lampson and Calverley and their like, and as yet he is perhaps the greatest of the band. The Vicar. Some years ago, ere time and taste And roads as little known as scurvy, St Mary's Hill and Sandy Thicket Was always shown across the green, And guided to the Parson's wicket. Back flew the bolt of lissom lath; Fair Margaret, in her tidy kirtle, Led the lorn traveller up the path, Through clean-clipt rows of box and myrtle; And Don and Sancho, Tramp and Tray, Upon the parlour steps collected, Wagged all their tails, and seemed to say, 'Our master knows you—you 're expected.' Uprose the Reverend Dr Brown, Uprose the Doctor's winsome marrow; The lady laid her knitting down, Her husband clasped his ponderous Barrow; Whate'er the stranger's caste or creed, Pundit or Papist, saint or sinner, He found a stable for his steed, And welcome for himself, and dinner. If, when he reached his journey's end, And warmed himself in Court or College, He had not gained an honest friend, And twenty curious scraps of knowledge,— If he departed as he came, With no new light on love or liquor,Good sooth, the traveller was to blame, And not the Vicarage, nor the Vicar. His talk was like a stream, which runs With rapid change from rocks to roses : It slipped from politics to puns, It passed from Mahomet to Moses; Beginning with the laws which keep The planets in their radiant courses, And ending with some precept deep For dressing eels or shoeing horses. He was a shrewd and sound Divine, Of loud Dissent the mortal terror; And when, by dint of page and line, He 'stablished Truth, or startled Error, The Baptist found him far too deep; The Deist sighed with saving sorrow; And the lean Levite went to sleep, And dreamed of tasting pork to-morrow. His sermon never said or showed That Earth is foul, that Heaven is gracious, Without refreshment on the road From Jerome, or from Athanasius: And sure a righteous zeal inspired The hand and head that penned and planned them, For all who understood admired, And some who did not understand them. He wrote, too, in a quiet way, Small treatises and smaller verses, And sage remarks on chalk and clay, And hints to noble Lords-and nurses; True histories of last year's ghost, Lines to a ringlet, or a turban, And trifles for the Morning Post, And nothings for Sylvanus Urban. He did not think all mischief fair, Although he had a knack of joking; He did not make himself a bear, Although he had a taste for smoking; And when religious sects ran mad, He held, in spite of all his learning, That if a man's belief is bad, It will not Le improved by burning. And he was kind, and loved to sit In the low hut or garnished cottage, And praise the farmer's homely wit, And share the widow's homelier pottage: At his approach complaint grew mild; And when his hand unbarred the shutter, The clammy lips of fever smiled The welcome which they could not utter. He always had a tale for me Of Julius Cæsar, or of Venus ; From him I learnt the rule of three, Cat's cradle, leap-frog, and Quæ genus: I used to singe his powdered wig, |