ognition, but the honor was unhesitatingly declined. Grote was a statesmanly historian, distinct from the rhetorician, the journalistic story-teller, or the chronicler. His experiences and observation in the British Parliament, coupled with his extensive banking experience, gave him a commanding view of the people whose development he laboriously followed. As one writer puts it, his "noble personality gives weight to his every sentence, as an athlete's whole frame and training goes into each blow he strikes." "The Death, Character and Work of Alexander the Great" is well chosen by critics as an illustration of the literary method and style of the historian of Greece. Grote vividly features the intense sorrow felt by Alexander for the death of his friend Hephæstian, his gloom intensified by omens of coming ills; the brutalizing feasts following the obsequies; his own reckless part in the revelry, followed by unmeasured indulgences which resulted in a fever that, despite all efforts and prayers for his relief, proved fatal. CH XIII CHARLES SPRAGUE 1791-1874 HARLES SPRAGUE was a first-class banker and a second-grade poet. But it is no mean distinction to be ranked next in class to Bryant, Whittier, Longfellow and Lowell. Born in Boston near the close of the eighteenth century, he lived far on into the nineteenth. After receiving a common-school education, at an early age he entered a mercantile house. At the age of eighteen he was made teller of the State Bank of Boston. At twenty-one he engaged in business for himself. At twentythree he accepted the cashiership of the pioneer Giobe bank of Boston, and for forty years thereafter he served in that capacity. Like Halleck, he found his chief delight in versifying. In his time he was highly honored as an occasion poet and orator, and his verse was much admired and quoted. Many were the prophecies that his poetry would live. But, though his death occurred within the memory of men in middle life, the name of Charles Sprague is scarcely recalled by the present-day student of literature. Sprague first attracted attention as a poet by contributing elaborate prologues to the plays at the Park Theatre, New York, in 1821. His Shakespeare Ode, recited at the Boston Theatre in 1823, contains passages which bear not unfavorable comparison with certain odes found in all English anthologies. The banker-poet of Boston strikes the lyre boldly and with no uncertain touch. Hear his invocation: God of the glorious lyre! Whose notes of old on lofty Pindus rang, * Caught the glad echoes and responsive sang— We consecrate to thee and thine. When, through golden clouds descending, Thou did'st hold thy radiant flight, O'er Nature's lovely pageant bending, Till Avon rolled, all sparkling to thy sight! There on its banks, beneath the mulberry's shade, Then Shakespeare rose! Across the trembling strings His daring hand he flings, And, lo! a new creation glows! There, clustering round, submissive to his will, In subsequent stanzas the poet introduces Madness, Vengeance, Avarice, Hatred, Remorse, |