Envoy. Where are the secrets it knew? Weavings of plot and of plan? -But where is the Pompadour, too? This was the Pompadour's Fan! A Garden Song. Here, in alleys cool and green, Here be shadows large and long; Here be spaces meet for song; Grant, O garden-god, that I, Now that none profane is nigh, Now that mood and moment please,Find the fair Pierides! In After Days. In after days when grasses high Though ill or well the world adjust I shall not question or reply. I shall not see the morning sky; I shall not hear the night-wind sigh; But yet, now living, fain were I Saying 'He held his pen in trust To Art, not serving shame or lust.' Will none? Then let my memory die In after days! The Letter. 'Dear John (the letter ran), it can't, can't be, For Father's gone to Chorley Fair with Sam, And Mother's storing Apples,-Prue and Me Up to our Elbows making Damson Jam: But we shall meet before a Week is gone,"Tis a long Lane that has no turning," John! 'Only till Sunday next, and then you'll wait Behind the White-Thorn, by the broken StileWe can go round and catch them at the Gate, All to Ourselves, for nearly one long Mile; Dear Prue won't look, and Father he'll go on, daughter, She first Thackeray,' is Thackeray's eldest Anne Isabella, and was born in 1837. appeared as an author in vol. i. of the Cornhill (1860) with 'Little Scholars.' To this sketch succeeded a dozen or more volumes of novels, tales, biographical essays, and other varied work, of which may be mentioned The Story of Elizabeth (1863); The Village on the Cliff (1867); Old Kensington (1873); Miss Angel (1875; its heroine Angelica Kauffmann); Mrs Dymond (1885); Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, and Browning (1892); Lord Tennyson and his Friends (1893); Chapters from some Memoirs (1895); and her dainty modern recasts of such old-world stories as 'Bluebeard' and 'Cinderella.' Tender, delicate, harmonious, her books are feminine as are very few women's books. In 1877 she married her cousin, Mr Richmond Thackeray Ritchie. Mary Elizabeth Braddon was born in Soho Square, London, in 1837, the daughter of a London solicitor; and her brother has been Prime Minister of Tasmania, and first representative of Tasmania in the Commonwealth Parliament. She early showed a turn for literature, which she indulged by sending verses and miscellaneous contributions to a Brighton newspaper. Neither a comedietta brought out at the Strand in 1860, a volume of verse, nor one or two novels had had much success, when, in 1862, Lady Audley's Secret, the story of a golden-haired murderess, attained an enormous popularity, in three months reaching its eighth three-volume edition. Aurora Floyd (1863) was little less popular. Of some sixty novels by her -almost all of them sensational, melodramatic, ingenious in plot, and carefully constructed so as to lead up to an unforeseen dénouement-one of the best is Ishmael (1884), a tale of the Second Empire, which depends not so much on sensation as on character. But her men and women are conventional. She has no deep insight into life, and though her fertility of invention is marvellous, her style has no literary charm. His Darling Sin (1899), The Infidel (1900), The Conflict (1903), well illustrated the author's unabated command of her powers. Her dramas (Griselda, The Missing Witness) have the same merits and defects as her novels. Several of her works appeared in Temple Bar, St James's Magazine, and Belgravia, of which last magazine she was for some years editor. In 1874 she married the publisher, Mr John Maxwell (1825-95), but to her wide circle of readers always remained 'Miss Braddon.' Augusta Webster (1837-94), the daughter of Vice-Admiral Davies, was born at Poole, and in 1863 married Mr Thomas Webster, solicitor and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. She wrote reviews marked by intellectual power, sympathetic insight, and literary finish for the Examiner, and a novel, Lesley's Guardians. Her translations of Prometheus Vinctus and Medea (1866) were models in their kind. Her original poetic work, which showed from the first exceptional accomplishment, began with Blanche Lisle (under a pseudonym), and included Dramatic Studies (1866), Portraits (1870), A Book of Rhyme (1881), and the dramas The Auspicious Day (1874) and The Sentence (1887). Rhoda Broughton, the daughter of a clergyman and born in North Wales in 1840, secured notice in 1867 by two novels in a vein then unusual-Cometh up as a Flower and Not Wisely but Too Well-lively in action, brisk in description, piquant, and skilfully piloting her characters through risky situations. Red as a Rose is She (1870) was equally popular; and when Foes in Law and Lavinia appeared in the first years of the twentieth century, Miss Broughton had amused a large circle of readers by a succession of nearly a score of novels, some of which were less effective than her first efforts. Ouida, her own childish mispronunciation of 'Louisa,' is the pseudonym under which Mdlle. de la Ramée has made herself conspicuous as the author of more than forty novels, not to speak of dramatic sketches, critical studies, and contributions to magazines. Spite of her French name, she comes on her father's side of Suffolk farming stock, though her mother was French; she was born about 1840 at Bury St Edmunds, lived long in London, and from 1874 made her home in Italy, first at Florence, then at Lucca. She was writing for Colburn's New Monthly and Bentley's Magazine as early as 1860; and among the most successful and characteristic of her novels are Strathmore (1865), Idalia (1867), Under Two Flags (1868; generally accounted her best), Puck (1869), Folle From a Photograph by Elliott & Fry. Farine (1871), Pascarel (1873), Ariadne (1877) Moths (1880), Guilderoy (1889), The Silver Chris (1891), and The Massarenes (1897). In Bim Stories for Children (1882), she essayed a very dif ferent kind of work. Ouida has always please the crowd better than the critics. Her stories hav verve and go; she envelops her handsome rake and women with a past in a certain glamour and treats several sides of life with a franknes till her time rare amongst English women writers she often attains to the picturesque, is not seldor truly tender, is sometimes powerful, and ha created one or two attractive characters. B. she has no profound insight into the huma heart; she is hardly less amazingly inaccurat in matters of ordinary observation than of literar allusion; her characters are often convention and her stories unreal; her ideals are alway tawdry or unwholesome, and her style is whol without beauty or distinction. She feels keen to the point of extravagance on vivisection an the grievances of the Italian peasantry under th new régime, and has expounded her views large both in her novels and in magazine articles. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, son of a Sussex squire, was born in 1840, studied at Stonyhurst and Oscott, was for twelve years in the diplomatic service, and in 1877-81 made those travels in Arabia and the Moslem East of which the books on the Bedouins and on Nejd, by his wife, Lady Anne Blunt (daughter of Lord Lovelace), are a brilliant record. He was an equally enthusiastic supporter of the Nationalist movements in Egypt (under Arabi Pasha) and in Ireland, and was in Kilmainham for holding a meeting in a proclaimed district. His Love Sonnets of Proteus (1880) as poems are not always perfect in form, but are vital, personal, introspective, modern, accomplished; and besides printing his views on Islam and India, he has published In Vinculis (prison poems), Esther, The Stealing of the Mare (with Lady Anne), Griselda, and Satan Absolved, and some miscellaneous poems. A collection of his poetry was edited in 1898 by Mr Henley and Mr Wyndham. Frederic William Henry Myers (18431901), son of an Anglican clergyman (author of Catholic Thoughts on the Bible and other works), was born at Keswick, and educated at Cheltenham College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1864, and was made Fellow and classical lecturer in 1865. In 1872 he became a school inspector under the Education Department, an office held until the year before his death, which occurred at Rome. He wrote several volumes of poetry, the first of which was St Paul (1867); published a collection of Essays, Classical and Modern (1883), which shows fine critical insight; and contributed the monograph on Wordsworth to the series of English Men of Letters.' He was best known, however, as one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research in 1882, and as joint-author of some of its publications, including Phantasms of the Living (1886); in his last work, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, he summed up what he accepted as the positive results of such researches. William Black (1841-98) was born in Glasgow, where he received his education, and studied art at a government school with the view of becoming a landscape-painter. Instead, however, he adopted journalism, having written for the Glasgow Weekly Citizen before his removal to London in 1864, the year in which he made his first-and wholly unsuccessful-effort in fiction, a story called James Merle. During the PrussoAustrian war of 1866 he proved his exceptional gifts as special war correspondent on the staff of the Morning Star; and in a novel, Love or Marriage (1868), he utilised some of his experiences. In Silk Attire (1869) and Kilmeny (1870) proved more successful than the previous work; but it was A Daughter of Heth (1871) that established his reputation with the novel-reading public. The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton (1872) is founded on an actual driving excursion between London and Edinburgh, and obtained praise from Ruskin. A Princess of Thule (1873) is perhaps the best of all his many romances, with its vivid transcripts of Hebridean sunsets and scenery, its quaint Gaelic-English; above all, its exquisite heroine. Soon after this Black, who had been sub-editor of the Daily News for five years, gave up journalism for the career of a novelist; and amongst the Princess of Thule's many successors are Macleod of Dare (1878), which ends tragically; White Wings (1880); Shandon Bells (1882); Yolande (1883); Judith Shakespeare (1884), with WILLIAM BLACK. From a Photograph by Elliott & Fry. Shakespeare himself for one of the characters; White Heather (1886); In Far Lochaber and The Strange Adventures of a House Boat (1888); Stand Fast, Craig Royston (1890); Highland Cousins (1894); and Wild Eelin (1898). He was more skilful in describing scenery and communicating its chain than in creating character or working out an inevitable plot. His popularity was great and well deserved, but can hardly be said to have outlived him. William Clark Russell, born of English parentage in New York in 1844, is the son of Henry Russell, the well-known singer and composer of 'A Life on the Ocean Wave' and other familiar melodies. Educated in England and France, he went to sea in the British merchant service at the age of thirteen, and served as a sailor for seven years. Afterwards he took to journalism, and finally to fiction, wherein he has turned his nautical experience to good account in a long series of breezy sea-stories beginning with John Holdsworth, Chief Mate (1874), and The Wreck of the Grosvenor (1877), and continuing in An Ocean Tragedy (1890), The Convict Ship (1894), The Last Entry (1897), and The Ship's Adventure (1899). He has also reprinted some volumes of collected articles and papers, and written biographies of Nelson and Collingwood. Andrew Lang was born at Selkirk in 1844, and was educated at Edinburgh Academy, at St Andrews University, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he took a classical first-class, and was elected Fellow of Merton College in 1868. Choosing a literary career, or marked by literature for her own, he soon became one of the busiest as well as the brightest writers in the world of London journalism, and one of the most versatile and many-sided of English bookmen. He treats the most varied subjects with the same light, humorous touch, and he touches nothing which he does not adorn. He often expounds very serious and heart-felt convictions in a sprightly, airy, or even paradoxical manner, and in controversy contrives playfully to deal quick and deft and heavy strokes. He took a foremost part in the long debate with Professor Max Müller and his school about the interpretation of mythology and folk-tales, and it may safely be said that to his brilliant polemic fell most of the honours of the field. He was made LL.D. of St Andrews in 1885, and in 1888 was elected the first Gifford lecturer at that university. His poetical work included Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872), Ballades in Blue China (1880), Helen of Troy (1882), Rhymes à la Mode (1884), Grass of Parnassus (1888; largely a new edition of Ballads and Lyrics), and Ballades of Books (1888). Critics professed to trace the influence of Rossetti and Swinburne in Mr Lang's poetry, but were willing to concede to him a wonderful power of uttering his own subtle imaginations in wellmarked cadences, in short, clear-ringing phrases. The Ballades of 1880 were among the first illustrations in English verse of the experiments in old French measures made in France by De Banville. The Ballades in Blue China are not without the qualities of serious poetry. The fairy poem, 'The Fortunate Isles,' amongst the 'ballads and verses vain' of the Rhymes à la Mode, is a beautiful and sustained effort of pure fantasy, controlled by a something deeper underlying it. Custom and Myth (1884) and Myth, Ritual, and Religion (2 vols. 1887) were at once recognised as solid contributions to the study of the philosophy and religion of primitive man, written with unusual directness and vigour, and lightened up by a wealth of felicitous illustration. Admirably clever and entertaining volumes, on subjects ranging from pure literature, from folklore and primitive religion, down to the byways of bibliographers and the gossip of the day, are The Library, In the Wrong Paradise, Books and Bookmen, Letters to Dead Authors, Letters on Literature, Lost Leaders, Old Friends: Essays in Epistolary Parody-all issued between 1880 and 1890. He translated with exquisite skill Aucassin and Nicolette, produced the faultless edition of Perrault's Popular Tales, and selected the fairy-tales forming the Blue Fairy Book, the New Fairy Book, and other like collections. Cock Lane and Common Sense and The Book of Dreams and Ghosts illustrate his interest in occultism and his open mind on the problems of the 'sub-liminal' region. The Making of Religion and Magic and Religion, arising out of his appointment as Gifford lecturer at St Andrews, continued his researches and speculations on the deepest questions of life. The Monk of Fife was a notable novel, and his Life of J. G. Lockhart a still more notable biography. A less congenial piece of work was the life and letters of Lord Iddesleigh. If his history of St Andrews was a somewhat slight piece of work, his books on Prince Charles Edward, on Pickle the Spy, and on the Companions of Pickle were based largely on original documents. The Mystery of Mary Stuart has much of the fascination of its subject; and his History of Scotland from the Roman occupation (vols. i. and ii., 1900– 1903) constitues an important-though not unbiassed-piece of historical work. A book on Tennyson is but one of many contributions to literary criticism. He himself translated Theocri tus, Bion, and Moschus, and the Homeric Hymns; shared (with Messrs Butcher, Leaf, and Myers) in exceptionally scholarly and graceful prose translations of the Odyssey and the Iliad, and edited the Border' Scott, the 'Gadshill' Dickens, and a selection from Burns; and has written for the Encyclopædia Britannica, for Chambers's Encycl pædia, and (on Ballads) for the present work. Ballade to Theocritus in Winter. Envoy. Master, when rain, and snow, and sleet Twilight, and Tweed, and Eildon Hill, You tell me that the voice is still That should have welcomed me. Robert Bridges, born in 1844 the son of a Kentish squire, studied at Eton and Corpus Christi, Oxford, qualified in medicine at Bartholomew's, and for some years practised in that and other London hospitals till 1882, when he retired. For a dozen years before that he had been known as a cultured and scholarly poet of indisputable and unique gifts; his lyrics give him a place apart from contemporaries, and some of them have a charm hardly equalled since the Elizabethan days. The Growth of Love, Prometheus the Fire-giver (1883), Eros and Psyche (1885), are amongst his nameworthy poems; and his plays include Nero (1885), Achilles in Scyros (1890), Palicio, Ulysses, The Christian Captives, The Humours of the Court, The Feast of Bacchus (1889). He has shown rare sympathy and insight as a critic in his essay on Keats; and by his examination of Milton's prosody and other studies on verse forms, he has shed much light on the mysteries and fascinations of the subtlest metrical rhythms and harmonies. Sometimes he seems to defy his own lessons; at times his verses are apparently written to illustrate his theories; and some of his experiments such as the 'Peace Ode' in 1903, written so that if English were spelt as it is or should be pronounced, the syllables would scan according to the laws of Greek prosody'-must be pronounced scholarly, ingenious, and original rather than inspired, happy, or melodious. William Minto (1845-93), born near Alford in Aberdeenshire, was educated at Aberdeen and Merton, Oxford, and after editing the Examiner and doing other journalistic work in London, from 1880 was Professor of Logic and English at Aber deen. His Manual of English Prose Literature (1872) became a standard book; his Characteristics of the English Poets (1874) proved him a sympathetic critic; and he wrote the Defoe for the 'Men of Letters' series. His two novels (1886 and 1888) did not attract much notice. Alexander Anderson, born at Kirkconnel in Dumfriesshire in 1845, laboured for nearly twenty years as surfaceman on the railway near his native place, but found time to cherish his joy in poetry not merely by the diligent study of English and Scottish literature, but by reading the greater French, Italian, and German poets in their own tongues. He had published two collections of poems when in 1880 he was summoned to a post in the Library of the Edinburgh University; and there he has continued ever since, save during three years when he was secretary to the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh (1883-86). His bestknown volumes are Songs of the Rail (3rd ed. 1881) and Ballads and Sonnets (1879). He has contributed much verse to the magazines, and has printed (privately) a volume of translations from Heine. Though he has done justice to the poetry of the railway and of the railway-man's life, his themes embrace most of those that most nearly touch the human heart. Only part of his poems are written in the Scottish vernacular, the rest being in excellent nervous English. Sidney Colvin, born at Norwood in 1845, studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and has been Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge, (1873-85), and Keeper of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. He has written much on art criticism for the magazines and reviews, issued a History of Engraving in England, published Lives of Landor and Keats, and edited Keats's letters and R. L. Stevenson's letters and the Edinburgh edition of his works. George Edward Bateman Saintsbury, born at Southampton in 1845, was educated at King's College School, London, and Merton College, Oxford. In 1868-76 he was a schoolmaster at Manchester, Guernsey, and Elgin, but soon after established himself as one of the most active critics of the day; in 1895 he became Professor of English Literature at Edinburgh. All his work is characterised by fullness of knowledge, definiteness of judgment, wealth of illustrative allusion, and energy-if not grace-of style. He has been an active contributor to the greater magazines (of Macmillan's he was for some time editor) and to encyclopædias-this work contains four valuable articles by him. Amongst his works are two on the history of French literature; books on Dryden, Marlborough, Scott, and Matthew Arnold; essays on English literature and on French novelists; a volume of Corrected Impressions; a Short History of English Literature, besides histories of Elizabethan and of nineteenth-century literature; some of the little books on 'Periods of |