THE

POETICAL WORKS

OF

HENRY KIRKE WHITE.

Account of the Life of Henry Kirke White.

BY ROBERT SOUTHEY.

Not alone by the Muses,

But by the Virtues loved, his soul in its youthful aspirings
Sought the Holy Hill, and his thirst was for Siloah's waters.
Vision of Judgment.

No marble marks thy couch of lowly sleep,
But living statues there are seen to weep.
Affliction's semblance bends not o'er thy tomb,
Affliction's self deplores thy youthful doom!

BYRON.

he was about seven, he would creep unperceived into the kitchen, to teach the servant to read and write; and he continued this for some time before it was discovered that he had been thus laudably employed. He wrote a tale of a Swiss emigrant, which was probably his first composition, and gave it to this servant, being ashamed to show it to his mother. The consciousness of genius is always at first accompanied with this diffidence, it is a sacred, solitary feeling. And perhaps, no forward child, however extraordinary the promise of his childhood, ever produced anything truly great.

It fell to my lot to publish, with the assistance of her voice before she could rouse him." When of my friend Mr. Cottle, the first collected edition of the works of Chatterton, in whose history I felt a more than ordinary interest, as being a native of the same city, familiar from my childhood with those great objects of art and nature by which he had been so deeply impressed, and devoted from my childhood with equal ardor to the same pursuits. It is now my fortune to lay before the world some account of one whose early death is not less to be lamented, as a loss to English literature, and whose virtues were as admirable as his genius. In the present instance there is nothing to be recorded, but what is honorable to himself and to the age in which he lived; little to be regretted, but that one so ripe for heaven should so soon have been removed from the world.

HENRY KIRKE WHITE, the second son of John and Mary White, was born in Nottingham, March 21st, 1785. His father was a butcher; his mother, whose maiden name was Neville, is of respectable Staffordshire family.

When Henry was about six, he was placed under the Rev. John Blanchard, who kept, at that time, the best school in Nottingham. Here he learnt writing, arithmetic, and French. When he was about eleven, he one day wrote a separate theme for every boy in his class, which consisted of about twelve or fourteen. The master said he had never known them write so well upon any subject before, and could not refrain from exFroin the years of three till five, Henry learnt to pressing his astonishment at the excellence of read at the school of Mrs. Garrington; whose name, Henry's. It was considered as a great thing for unimportant as it may appear, is mentioned be- him to be at so good a school, yet there were some cause she had the good sense to perceive his extra-circumstances which rendered it less advantageordinary capacity, and spoke of what it promised ous to him than it might have been. Mrs. White with confidence. She was an excellent woman, and had not yet overcome her husband's intention of he describes her with affection in his poem upon breeding him up to his own business; and by an Childhood. At a very early age his love of read-arrangement which took up too much of his time, ing was decidedly manifested; it was a passion to and would have crushed his spirit, if that "mountwhich everything else gave way. "I could fancy," ing spirit" could have been crushed, one whole says his eldest sister, "I see him in his little chair, day in the week, and his leisure hours on the with a large book upon his knee, and my mo- others, were employed in carrying the butcher's ther calling, 'Henry, my love, come to dinner;' basket. Some differences at length arose between which was repeated so often without being re- his father and Mr. Blanchard, in consequence of garded, that she was obliged to change the tone which Henry was removed.