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WORDSWORTH COLLECTION

MADE BY

CYNTHIA MORGAN ST. JOHN ITHACA, N. Y.

THE GIFT OF

VICTOR EMANUEL

CLASS OF 1919 1925

A BOOK OF MEMORIES.

A Book of Memories

GREAT MEN AND WOMEN OF THE AGE

FROM PERSONAL ACQUAINTANCE.

By S. C. hall, F.S.A., Etc.

SECOND EDITION.

" History may be formed from permanent monuments and records, but lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less and less, and in a short time is lost for ever." — Dr. Johnson.

" We have undertaken to discourse here for a little on Great Men, their manner of appearance in our World's business, how they have shaped themselves in the World's history, what ideas men formed of them, what Work they did." — Carlyle : Hero Worship.

LONDON: VIRTUE AND COMPANY, Limited, 26, IVY LANE,

PATERNOSTER ROW. 1

1877. i I .• i\ - , i\ V

i)o

T^

LONDON :

PKIVTKM BY VIKTUE AND CO , I.JMlTKn,

CITV UOAD.

^t'

THE FEIENDS

WHO YET EEMAIN TO ME,

THESE MEMOEIES

OF

THE FRIENDS

WHO HAVE PASSED FEOM EARTH,

INTEODUCTION.

]Y opportunities of personal intimacy with the distinguished men and women of my time have been frequent and pecuhar. There are few by whom the present century has been made famous with whom I have not been acquainted — either as the editor of works to which they were contributors,'^ as associates in general society, or in the more familiar inter- course of private life.

It will be obvious that there are not many to whom the task I undertake is possible. To have been 2^erscm(dly acquainted with a large proportion of those who head the epoch, infers a youth long past, yet passed under circumstances such as could have been enjoyed by few. Some of whom I write had " put on immortality " before the greater number of my readers were born : one generation has passed away, and another has attained its prime, since the period to which I take them back ; for I write only of the Departed — only of those who, bequeathing to us the rich fruitage of their lives, — •

' Leaving us heirs to amplest heritages Of all the best thoughts of the greatest sages,"-

teach from their tombs, for ever and for ever. Peoples, Nations, and Ages — the hundreds of millions who speak the Anglo-Saxon tongue.

My aim has been to do with the pen what the Artist does with the pencil — to supply a series of written poetkaits — a purpose that may be accomplished,

" Whether the instruments of words we use. Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues ; "

and thus to bring before my readers mighty "makers" of the past; empowering them to realise, or correct, the portraits they have drawn in their minds of the

* The Amulet, from 1826 to 1836. The Nevi Monthly Magnzine, from 1830 to 1836. The Booh of Gems of Poets ond Artists (1838), to which nearly all the then. li\ing Poets contributed autobiographies. The Art- Journal, from 1839 to 1876.

Authors whose works have been sources of their solace, their instruction, their amusement, or their joy. With that view I have not only given my own recollec- tions of the persons pictured, but the descriptions of others.

If in these "Memories" there be found any value, it will be m this — the leadhig feature of the Work.

I do not forget that at the Feast of Poets my seat was below the salt ; but

" They also serve who only stand and wait."

As the on-looker at a banquet will observe much the guests may fail to see— so I hope I have noted, and can communicate, many incidents and facts that will interest those who, when they read the Works of immortal Authors, desire to know some- thing of " the outer man."

I have generally abstained from reference to the Works of those of whom I give " Memories," assuming that the reader is sufficiently acquainted with them.'^'

These " Memories " will derive much of their value from the aid I receive from my wife. We have worked together for more than fifty years : with very few exceptions my acquaintances were hers. I have had no hesitation in availing myself of her co-operation in this undertaking ; have freely quoted her views of the characters I depict; and occasionally called upon her for her "Memories" to add to mine. We have avoided reference to ourselves, except in cases where such reference was necessary to elucidate the text. It was impossible to describe our intercourse with the people we have known — with whom we have been, more or less, associated — and to ignore the circumstances by which such intercourse was induced and continued.

We anticipate, however, full acquittal of egotism or presumption.

It may be desirable to add that we have never kept notes, not having foreseen a time when our Ke collections of the " Great People " with whom it was our privilege

* I have frequently given to Literary Institutions these " Memories " condensed as a "Lecture." Several of them have been published in the Art-Journal. Such I have carefully revised ; in several instances subjecting them to the corrections of persons often the nearest and dearest to those whose portraits I have given— by whom I have been materially assisted, and whose comments have greatly encoui-aged me in my interesting task ; taking due care —as far as it was possible— to secure accuracy for my statements, descriptions, and details. Thus, I submitted proofs— of Moore to Mrs. Moore and her nephew ; of Southey to his daughter and son-in-law ; of Coleridge to his son, the Eev. Derwent Coleridge ; of Wordsworth to his two sons ; of Campbell to his physician and executor, Dr. Beattie ; of Wilson to his daughter, Mrs. Gordon ; of Montgomery to his fiiend, John Holland ; of Allan Cunningham to his two sons ; of Thomas Hood to his son and daughter ; of Maria Edgeworth to her brother and her nephew ; of Horace Smith to his daughter ; of James Hogg to his biographer ; of Lady Morgan to her niece and her biographer, Geraldine Jewsbury ; of Mrs. Hemans to her son and the husband of her sister ; of Leigh Hunt to his son and biographer, &c. &c. &c.

INTRODUCTION. IX

to be acquainted migM become interesting and instructive. Moreover, we have pre- served but few of tbe many letters we received. It was our rule to destroy such as we thought ought not to be retained ; we have given freely to collectors of Auto- graphs ; while, with a carelessness we deplore, we have destroyed manuscripts and communications we would now give much to have kept.

The homage I offer is to the past ; the heroes I worship are the departed ; the friends I call to memory are those of whom all mankind are heirs, — Men and Women who for the World's behoof have " penned and uttered wisdom," and Avho, " by written records " which the Destroyer can never "raze out," have inculcated the great lesson so happily conveyed in four expressive lines by one on whom their mantle has descended, and who is the poet of England no less than of America : —

" Lives of g:reat men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of Time."

Be theirs the "Perpetual Benediction," of which the greatest of them all speaks — theirs, who have made mankind then- debtors to the end of Time.

S. C. Hall.

NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

IINCE the first edition of tliis work was publisliecl — in 1871 — the names of many illustrious men and women are added to the list of ' ' the depai-ted." Among them are — the first Lord Lytton, "William Charles Macready, Bryan Waller Procter (" Barry Cornwall"), Livingstone, John Forster, Dr. Guthrie, Harriet Martineau, F. W. Fairholt, Captain Chamier, Colonel Meadows Taylor, Sir Charles Wheatstone, Edward William Lane, Sir William Wilde, Eobert Graves, M.P., Peter Cunningham, Robert Chambers, Hawthorne, Charles Knight, Charles Kingsley and Henry Kingsley ; and in Art, Foley, M 'Dow ell, Westmacott, Lough, and Noble among sculptors ; and the painters Sir Edwin Landseer, Sir George Harvey, and others.

Most of those I name were my contemporaries, and all of them my own personal acquaintances or friends. I am forbidden, by the limited size of this book, to add to the Memories it contains. Memories of them. At no distant period I may, however, be permitted to do that which I cannot now do ; for, if life and power be continued to me, I shall publish before I die the ' ' Eecollections OF A Long Life." It is only just to say I was stimulated to undertake that work by Messrs. Appleton, the eminent publishers of New York ; and I hope I may do it.

Here, it must suffice to state that I was a Parliamentary reporter in 1823 ; that I became a member of the Inner Temple in 1824; and that I knew, somewhat intimately, Ireland sixty years ago, having resided some years in

XU NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

that country in my early youth. : that between the publication of my first book — in 1-820 — and my latest, in 1 876, there are fifty-six years ; that I have been an editor upwards of half a century ; and that I have conducted the Art-Journal, which I originated in 1839, during thirty-seven years.

My memory furnishes me with much — as to events and persons — that I humbly think cannot fail to have public interest sufficient to justify the under- taking that will mainly occupy the residue of my life.

There are few now living who can go so far back in the personal history of their own time ; and though I may not lead my readers through the high- ways of the world, I have reason to believe — and to expect — that the bye-ways, (they may be such by comparison) through which I shall hope to conduct them, will be fertile of much that is interesting and useful during my lengthened and active career as "by profession a Man of Letters."

	MEMOEIES
(FROM PERSONAL ACQUAINTANCE)
	PAGE		PAGE
Thomas Moore	1	Bernard Barton .	. 180
Samuel Taylor Coleridge . . 27	Joseph Wiffin	. 182
Edward Irving	. 48	James Fenimore Cooper	. 182
Charles Lamb	'. 51	Washington Irving	. 184
William Hone	.62	Nathaniel Hawthorne .	. 184
William Godwin .	. 63	N. P. Willis	. 184
Thomas Noon Talfourd	. 64	Lydia H. Sigourney	. 184
William Hazlitt .	. 65	Robert Southey .	. 185
Jeremy Bentham .	. 66	Caroline Bowles .	. 198
Hannah More	. .67	Walter Savage Landor	. 208
Robert Hall	. 77	Sydney, Lady Morgan .	. 214
Adam Clarke	. 79	John Banim .	. 227
James Montgomery	. 81	Gerald Griffin .	. 229
Robert Montgomery	. 89	Samuel Lover	. 231 -
John Holland	. 93	George Croly	. 232
JOSIAH CONDER	. 95	Charles Maturin .	. 234
Ebenezer Elliott ,	. 97	Richard Lalor Shiel .	. 234
John Clare .	. 107	Thomas Colley Grattan	. 235
Maria Edgeworth	. 109	James Emerson Tennent	. 235
Barbara Hofland .	. 122	Sheridan Knowles	. 236
Grace Aguilar	. 124	William Carleton	. 237
Catherine Sinclair	. 126	Francis Mahony .	. 237
Jane and Anna Maria	Porter . 128	Eyre Evans Crowe	. . 240
Thomas Hood	. 185	Robert Walsh	. 240
Theodore Hook .	. 147	John Edward Walsh .	. 240
Richard Harris Barhas	I . .156	Leigh Hunt.	. 243
Tom Hill .	. .157	James and Horace Smith	. 257
William Maginn .	. 158	G. P. R. James .	. 263
John Poole .	. 160	L^TiTiA Elizabeth Landon	. 265
Thomas Haynes Bayly	. 162	Samuel Laman Blanchard	. 282
Amelia Opie .	. 167	Douglas Jerrold .	. 285
Elizabeth Fry	. 171	William Jerdan .	. 285

xiv	MEMORIES.	1
	PAGE		PAGE M
William Wordswobth .	. 290	James Hogg .	. 383
John Wilson	. 320	John Galt .	. 396
Thomas Pringle .	. 331	William Motherwell .	. 397
John Gibson Lockhaet	. 332	David Macbeth Moir .	. 398
Sir Walter Scott	. 337	William Edmonstone Aytoun . 398
Francis Jeffrey .	. 338	Lady Blessington	. 399
George Crabbe	. 340	Sydney Smith	. 408
Joanna Baillie	. 344	Theobald Mathew	. 412
Thomas Campbell	. 346	Frederika Bremer	. 415 1
Henry Hart Milman .	. 359	Adelaide Anne Procter	. 420 1
Henry Hallam	. 361	Allan Cunningham	• 422 1
Lord Macaulay	. 361	T. K. Hervey	. 431
Felicia Hemans .	. 363	Samuel PtOGERS	. 432
Mary Jane Jewsbury .	. 372	Mary Russell Mitford	. 438
Anna Jameson	. 374	Ugo Foscolo	. 450
Julia Paedoe	. 376	Charles Dickens .	. 454
William Lisle Bowles	. 377
MEMOEIES OF AKTISTS
(FROM	PERSONAL ACQUAINTANCE).
	PAGE		PAGE
Daniel Maclise .	. 241	Clarkson Stanfield	. 476
Sir Thomas Lawrence .	. 405	William Muller .	. 477
Benjamin West .	. 464	John Constable .	. 479
Martin Archer Shee .	. 464	Sir David Wilkie	. 480
Charles Lock Eastlake	. 465	William Allan .	. 481
John Henry Fuseli	. 466	William Etty	. 481
John Flaxman	. 466	William Mulready	. 482
J. M. W. Turner	. 467	Francis Danby	. 483
Benjamin Puobert Haydon	. 468	J. D. Harding	. 483
Samuel Prout	. 473	C. R. Leslie	. 484
William Hilton .	. 474	Thomas Uwins	. 485
David Roberts	. 474	John Gibson	. 486
John Martin	. 476	James Ward	. 486
	&c. &c. &c.

MEMORIES.

THOMAS MOOEE.

'ANY years have gone — more than half a century, indeed — since I had first the honour to converse with the poet Thomas Moore. Afterwards it was my privilege to know him intimately. He seldom, of later years, visited London without spending an evening at our house ; and in 1845 we passed a week at his cottage, Sloperton — his happy home in Wiltshire.

" In my kalendar, There are no wliiter days ! "

The poet has himself noted the time in his Diary (Nov.

1846), and the terms in which he refers to our visit

cannot but have gratified us much. ' In the year 1822 I made his acquaintance in Dublin^

while I was a casual resident there. Moore was in the full ripeness of middle age : then, as ever, " the poet of all circles, and the idol of his own." As his visits to his native city ware few and far between, the power to see him, and especially to hear him, were boons of magnitude. It was indeed, a treat when, seated at the piano, he gave voice to the glorious "Melodies" that are justly regarded as the most

valuable of his legacies to mankind. I can recall that evening as vividly as if it were not a seven-night old ; the graceful man, small and slim in figure, his upturned eyes and eloquent features giving force to the music that accompanied the songs, or rather, to the songs that accompanied the music.

Dublin was then the home of much of the native talent that afterwards found its way to England ; and there were some — Lady Morgan especially — whose " Evenings " drew together the wit and genius for which that city has been always famous. When I write a Memory of " Sydney, Lady Morgan," I may have something to say of the brilliancy of those evenings, although then (as now) there were two " societies " which rarely mingled the one with the other. In England public differences seldom interrupt private intercourse ; nay, cordial friendships often exist between persons of very opposite opinions in both religion and politics. It is not so in Ireland. But the poet Moore was an "influence" that rendered powerless for a time, the evil spirit of Party ; and it was not difficult, on such occasions as that I describe, to attract around him all that was most eminent and distinguished in the Irish capital. I was then very young — a hero-worshipper, as I have been from that day to this ; and though he was to me " a star apart," I remembered his cordial reception with an amount of gratitude that time has neither lessened nor weakened. It is a great privilege — the belief that I may now repay some portion of the debt, more than fifty years after it was contracted .

Among the guests on the evening to which I make special reference were the poet's father, mother, and sister — the sister to whom he was so fervently attached. The father was a plain, homely man ;* nothing more, and assuming to be nothing more, than a Dublin tradesman. The mother evidently possessed a far higher mind. She, too, was retiring and unpretending ; like her great son in features ; with the same gentle yet sparkling eye, flexible and smiling mouth, and kindly and conciliating manners. It was to be learned, long afterwards, how deep was the afiection that existed in the poet's heart for these relatives — how fervid the love he bore them — how earnest the respect with which he invariably treated them — nay, how elevated was the pride with which he regarded them, from first to last.

The sister, Ellen, was, I believe, slightly deformed ; at least, the memory to me is that of a small, delicate woman, with one shoulder " out," The expression of her countenance betokened suffering, having that peculiar "sharpness" which usually accompanies continuous bodily ailment. f I saw more of her some years afterwards, and knew that her mind and disposition were essentially lovable. She was the poet's friend as well as sister.

To the mother- — Anastasia Moore, nee Codd, a humbly-descended, homely, and almost uneducated woman \ — Moore gave intense respect and devoted affection, from

* Mrs. Moore — writing to me in May, 1864— told me I had a wrong impression as to Mock's father ; that he was " handsome, full of fun, and with good manners." Moore calls him " one of Nature's gentlemen."

+ Mrs. Moore wrote to me that here also I had a wrong impression. " She was only a little grown out in one shoulder, but with good health : her expression was feeling, not suffering." "Dear EUen," she added, " was the delight of every one who knew her— sang sweetly— her voice very like her brother's. She died, suddenly, to the grief of my loving heart." , , „ , , ,, -.r n^

% She was born in Wexford, where her father kept a " general shop." Moore used to say playfully that he was called in order to dignify his occupation, " a provision merchant." When on his way to Bannow, in 1835, to spend a few days with his friend, Thomas Boyse— a genuine gentleman of the good old school— he records his visit to the

THOMAS MOORE.

the time that reason dawned upon him to the hour of her death. To her he wrote his first letter (in 1793), ending thus: — ■

" Your absence all but ill endui-e, And none so ill as— Thomas Mooke."

And in the zenith of his fame, when society drew largely on his time, and the highest and best in the land coveted a portion of his leisure, with her he corresponded so regularly that at her death she possessed (so Mrs. Moore told me) four thousand of his letters. Never, according to the statement of Earl Eussell, did he pass a week without writing to her Unce, except while absent in Bermuda, when franks were not to be obtained, and postages were costly. When a world had tendered to him its homage, still the homely woman was his " darling mother," to whom he transmitted a record of his cares and triumphs, anxieties and hopes, as if he considered — as I

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verily believe he did consider — that to give her pleasure was the chief enjoyment of his life. His sister — "excellent Nell" — occupied only a second place in his heart ; while his father received as much of his respect as if he had been the hereditary representative of a line of kings. All his life long " he continued," according to one of the most valued of his correspondents, " amidst the pleasures of the world, to preserve his home fireside affections true and genuine, as they were when a boy." To his mother he writes of all his facts and fancies ; to her he opens his heart in its natural and innocent fulness ; tells her of each thing, great or small, that, interesting him, must interest her— from his introduction to the Prince, and his visit to Niagara,

house of his maternal grandfather. " Nothing," he says, " could be more humble and mean than the little low house that remains to teU of his whereabouts."

It is still a small "general shop," situate in the old corn-market of Wexford. The rooms are more than usually "quaint." Here Mrs. Moore lived until within a few weeks of the bii-th of her illustrious son. At our suggestion a tablet of white marble was placed over the entrance door, stating in few words the fact that there the mother was bom and lived, and that to this house the poet came, on the 26th August, 1835, when in the zenith of his fame, to render homage to her memory. He thus writes of her and her birthplace in his "Notes" of that year :— " One of the noblest-mmded, as well as the most warm-hearted, of all God's creatures was bom under that lowly roof." (I have used the words "at our suggestion," but, in fact, it was at our sole cost that the tablet was so placed. We had thought it in better taste to erect it by subscription; but the attempt to raise money for the purpose was a failure.)

B 2

MEMORIES.

1

to the acquisition of a pencil-case, and the purchase of a pocket-handkerchief. " You, dear mother," he writes, " can see neither frivolity nor egotism in these details."

Evidences of his deep love and veneration for his mother are sufficiently abundant. I add to them one more. The nephew of Mrs. Moore, Charles Murray, gave to me a small MS. volume of early poems, " written out " for his mother (it has no date) : it is thus prefaced : —

" For her who was the critic of my first infant productions, I have transcribed the few little essays that follow. The smile of Iter approbation and the tear of lier affection were the earliest rewards of my lisping numbers ; and however the efforts of my maturer powers may aspire to the applause of a less partial judge, still will the praises which she bestows be dearer — far dearer — to my mind than any. The critic praises from the head — the mother praises from the heart. With one it is a tribute of the judgment ; with the other it is a gift from the Soul." *

In 1806 Moore's father received, through the interest of Lord Moira, the post of Barrack-master in Dublin, and thus became independent. In 1815 " retrench- ment " deprived him of that office, and he was placed on half-pay. The family had to seek aid from the son, who entreated them not to despond, but rather to thank Providence for having permitted them to enjoy the fruits of office so long, till he (the son) was "in a situation to keep them in comfort without it." " Thank Heaven," he writes afterwards of his father, " I have been able to make his latter days tranquil and comfortable." When sitting beside that father's death-bed (in 1825) he was relieved by a burst of tears and prayers, and by " a sort of confidence that the Great and Pure Spirit above us could not be otherwise than pleased at what He saw passing in my mind." f

When Lord Welles! ey (Lord Lieutenant), after the death of the father, proposed to continue the half-pay to the sister, Moore declined the offer, although he adds, " God knows how useful such aid would be to me, as God alone knows how I am to support all the burthens now heaped upon me," and his wife was planning how " they might be able to do with one servant," that they might be the better able to assist his mother.

The poet was born at the corner of Aungier Street, Dublin, on the 28th of May, 1779, and died at Sloperton, on the 25th February, J 1852, at the age of seventy-two. What a full life it was ! Industry a fellow-worker with Genius for nearly sixty years !

He was a sort of " show-child " almost from his birth, and could barely walk when it was jestingly said of him he passed all his nights with fairies on the hills. " He lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." Almost his earliest memory was

* The book is -writteii in a somewhat iDoyish hand — that of Moore in his youth. On a fly-leaf, in the later hand of the poet, is this passage : " Very juvenile poems indeed."

+ At a gi-and dinner given to him in Dublin (his father and mother being both present), on the henlth of Mr. Moore, sen., being given, Moore said— " If I deserve (which I cannot persuade myself I do) one-half of the honours you have this day heaped upon me, to Tiim, and to the education which he struggled hard to give me, I owe it all. Yes, gentlemen, to him and to an admirable mother — one of the warmest hearts even this land of warm hearts ever produced— whose highest ambition for her son has ever been that independent and unbought approbation of her countrymen, which, thank God. she lives this day to witness."

X I find in Earl Russell's Memoir the date given as the 26th February ; but Mrs. Moore altered it (in a letter to me) to February 25.

THOMAS MOORE.

his having been crowned king of a castle by some of his play-fellows. At his first school he was the show-boy of the schoolmaster; at thirteen years old he had written poetry that attracted and justified admiration. In 1797 he was " a man of mark" at the University. In 1798, at the age of nineteen, he had made "con- siderable progress" in translating the Odes of Anacreon ; and in 1800 he was " patronised" and flattered by the Prince of Wales, who was "happy to know a man of his abilities," and " hoped they might have many opportunities of enjoying each other's society." *

His earliest printed work, " Poems by Thomas Little," has been the subject of much, and, perhaps, merited, condemnation. Of Moore's own feeling in reference to these compositions of his thoughtless boyhood it may be right to quote three of the dearest of his friends.

Thus writes Lisle Bowles of Thomas Moore, in allusion to these early poems —

Like Israel's incense, laid

Upon xmholy earthly shrines "-

" Who, if in the unthinking gaiety of premature genius, he joined the syrens, has rriade ample amends by a life of the strictest virtuous propriety, equally exemplary as the husband, the father, and the man ; and as far as the muse is concerned, more ample amends, by melodies as sweet as scriptural and sacred, and by weaving a tale of the richest Oriental colours which faithful afi'ection and pity's tear have consecrated to all ages." This is the statement of his friend Rogers: — " So heartily has Moore repented of having published ' Little's Poems,' that I have seen him shed tears — tears of deep contrition — when we were talking of them." And thus writes Jefirey : — " He has long ago redeemed his error ; in all his later works he appears as the eloquent champion of purity, fidelity, and delicacy, not less than of justice, liberty, and honour.' I allude to his early triumphs only to show that while they would have " spoiled" nine men out of ten, they failed to taint the character of Moore. His modest estimate of himself Avas from first to last a leading feature in his character. Success never engendered egotism ; honours never seemed to him only the recompense of desert : he largely magnified the favours he received, and seemed to consider as mere " nothings " the services he rendered, and the benefits he conferred. That was his great characteristic — all his life. I have myself evidence to adduce on this head. In illustration, I print a letter I received from Moore, dated " Sloperton, November 29, 1843 : "—

"My dear Me. Hall,

" I am really and truly ashamed of myself for having let so many acts of kindness on j'our part remain unnoticed and unacknowledged on mine. But the world seems determined to make me a man of letters in more senses than one, and almost every day brings me such an influx

* On the 9th of April, 179S, at a meeting of Roman Catholics in Dublin, the youth Thomas Moore made a speech. On that day Moore headed a large body of students of the University, and presented an address to Hemy Grattan. Moore's address was energetic, eloquent, and impressive : it was a fervid demand for " emancipation," of which he was aU his life long the earnest advocate. The following is a passage from that speech :— In declaring their sensations on this day, at this important period, the youth of Ireland, the nation's nsmg sun, bursting from these clouds of bigotry, opacity, and darkness, with which they have been enveloped— give you— give Ireland— a solemn instance of uncorrupted honour and pure integrity ; an instance at which the Minister of Britain, m his plenitude of power, must stand appalled, and conclude that the ' rising, as well as the passing generation, unite in one voice— the voice of reason and justice— for your emancipation,— that basis of liberty, that pledge of reform.

of epistles from mere strangers, that friends hardly ever get a line from me. My friend Washington Irving used to say, ' It is much easier to get a book from Moore than a letter.' But this has not been the case, I am sorry to say, of late ; for the penny-post has become the sole channel of my inspirations. How am I to thank you sufficiently for all your and Mrs. Hall's kindness to me ? She must come down here when the summer arrives, and be thanked a quattr ocelli — a far better way of thanking than at such a cold distance. Your letter to the mad Repealers was far too good and wise and gentle to have much effect upon such Eantipoles." *

The house in Aungier Street I have pictured. I visited it in 1864, and again in 1869. It was then, and still is, as it was in 1779, the dwelling of a grocer — altered only in so far as that a bust of the poet is placed over the door, and the fact that he was born there is recorded on a marble tablet.! May no modern "improvement" ever touch it !

" The great Emathian conqueror bid spare The house of Pindarus, whea temple and tower Went to the ground."

This humble dwelling of the humble tradesman is the house of which the poet speaks in so many of his early letters and memoranda. Here, when a child in years, he arranged a debating society, consisting of himself and his father's two " clerks ; " here he picked up a little Italian from a kindly old priest who had passed some time in Italy, and obtained a "smattering of French;" here his tender mother watched over his boyhood, proud of his opening promise, and hopeful, yet appre- hensive, of his future ; here he and his sister, " excellent Nell," acquired music, first upon an old harpsichord, obtained by his father in discharge of a debt, and afterwards on a piano, to buy which his loving mother had saved up all superfluous pence. Hither he came — not less proudly, yet as fondly as ever — when college magnates gave him honours, and the Yiceroy had received him as a guest.

In 1835 he records "a visit to No. 12, Aungier Street, where I was born;" "visited every part of the house; the small old yard and its appurtenances; the small dark kitchen, where I used to have my bread and milk ; the front and drawing- rooms ; the bed-rooms and garrets — murmuring, ' Only think, a grocer's still ! ' " " The many thoughts that came rushing upon me while thus visiting the house where the first twenty years of my life were passed may be more easily conceived than told." He records, with greater unction than he did his visit to the Prince of Wales, his sitting with the grocer and his wife at their table, and drinking in a glasa of their wine her and her husband's " good health." Thence he went with all his "recollections of the old shop" to a grand dinner at the Viceregal Lodge !

I spring with a single line from the year 1822, when I knew him first, to the

* Alluding to a Letter I had printed concerning the Irish agitation for Eepeal of the Union.

+ I regret to say it was so recorded. I procured a white marble slab, had the fact of his birth in that house engraved upon it (nothing more than the fact ; surely, not naming my own name), and obtained the sanction of the owner of the house to put it over the door. I paid the expense of so fixing it. In 1869, on visiting the house, I found, to my surprise and indignation, that it had been removed. On my inquiring of the thtn occupier the cause of this outrage, he cooUy informed me that when the house was repainted he took it down, and had not thought it worth while to restore it. I asked him if he would do so on my paying the cost ; but he declined to give me any promise to that effect. I endeavoured to induce him to give me back the slab (or sell it to me), but that also he refused to do.

I trust this note will draw the attention of some more powerful " intercessor" to the discreditable fact, and that an Irishman will do what I, as an Englishman, failed to do.

The slab had not been restored, in 1875— and probably is still in the cellar of the grocer.

A

THOMAS MOORE.

year 1845, when circumstances enabled us to enjoy the long-looked-for happiness of visiting Moore and his beloved wife in their home — Sloperton.*

The poet was then in his sixty-fifth year, and had, in a great measure, retired from actual labour : indeed, it soon became evident to us that the faculty for continuous toil no longer existed. Happily it was not absolutely needed, for, with very limited wants, there was a sufficiency — a bare sufficiency, however, for there

wwm

THE BIETH-HOUSE OF THOMAS MOOEB.

were no means to procure either the elegancies or the luxuries which so frequently become necessaries, and a longing for which might have been excused in one who had been the friend of peers and the associate of princes.

The forests and fields that surround Bowood, the mansion of the Marquis of Lansdowne, neighbour the poet's humble dwelling ; the spire of the village church —

* Our intercourse was a result of his ha-v-ing- quoted, in his " History of Ireland," some stanzas from a poem I had wiitten, entitled " Jeipoint Abbey "—privately printed in 1823 ; for which Mrs. Hall had thanked him.

the church of Beomham — beside the portals of which he now " rests" — is seen above adjacent trees. Labourers' cottages are scattered all about. They are a heavy and unimaginative race those peasants of Wiltshire : and, knowing their neighbour had written books, they could by no means get rid of the idea that he was the writer of Moore's Almanack ! and perpetually greeted him with a salutation, in hopes to receive in return some prognostic of the weather that might guide them in arrangements for seed-time and harvest. Once, when he had lost his way — wandering till midnight — he roused up the inmates of a cottage in search of a guide to Sloperton, and found he was close to his own gate. "Ah ! sir," said the peasant, "that comes of yer sky-scraping ! " He was fond of telling of himself such simple anecdotes as this ; indeed, I remember his saying that no public applause had ever given him so much pleasure as a compliment from a half- wild countryman, who stood right in his path on a quay in Dublin, and exclaimed, slightly altering the words of Byron, " Three cheers for Tommy Moore, the 2^ote of all circles, and the darlint of his own."

I recall him at this moment, — his small form and intellectual face, rich in expression, and that expression the sweetest, the most gentle, and the kindhest. He had still in age the same bright and clear eye, the same gracious smUe, the same suave and winning manner, I had noticed as the attributes of his comparative youth : a forehead not remarkably broad or high, but singularly impressive, firm, and full, with the organs of music and gaiety large, and those of benevolence and veneration greatly preponderating. Tenerani, when making his bust, praised the form of his ears. The nose, as observed in all his portraits, was somewhat upturned. Standing or sitting, his head was invariably upraised, owing, perhaps, mainly to his shortness of stature. He had so much bodily activity as to give him the character of restless- ness ; and no doubt that usual accompaniment of genius was eminently his. His hair was, at the time I speak of, thin and very grey, and he wore his hat with the "jaunty " air that has been often remarked as a peculiarity of the Irish. In dress, although far from slovenly, he was by no means particular. Leigh Hunt, writing of him in the prime of life, says, "His forehead is bony and full of character, with ' bumps ' of wit large and radiant enough to transport a phrenologist. His eyes are as dark and fine as you would wish to see under a set of vine leaves ; his mouth generous and good-humoured, with dimples." Jeffrey, in one of his letters, says of him — " He is the sweetest-blooded, warmest-hearted, happiest, hopefulest creature that ever set fortune at defiance." He writes also of "the buoyancy of his spirits and the inward light of bis mind ; " and adds, " There is nothing gloomy or bitter in his ordinary talk, but rather a wild, rough, boyish pleasantry, more like nature than his poetry." This is the tribute of Scott : — " There is a manly frankness, with perfect ease and good-breeding, about him, which is delightful." In 1835 this portrait of the poet was drawn by the American, N. P. Willis : — "His eyes sparkle like a champagne bubble ; there is a kind of wintry red, of the tinge of an October leaf, that seems enamelled on his cheek ; his lips are delicately cut, slight, and changeable as an aspen ; the slightly-turned nose confirms the fun of the expression | and altogether it is a face that sparkles, beams, radiates."

" The light that surrounds hira is all from within." .■ .■.

THOMAS MOORE.

He had but little voice ; yet he sung with a depth of sweetness that charmed all hearers : it was true melody, and told upon the heart as well as the ear. No doubt much of this charm v/as derived from association, for it was only his own melodies he sung. It would be difficult to describe the effect of his singing.* I remember some one saying to me, it conveyed an idea of what a mermaid's song might be. Thrice I heard him sing "As a beam o'er the face of the waters may glow "—once in 1822, once at Lady Blessington's, and once in my own house. Those who can recall the touching words of that song, and unite them with the deep yet tender pathos of the music, will be at no loss to conceive the intense delight of his auditors.

I occasionally met Moore in public, and once or twice at public dinners. One of the most agreeable evenings I ever passed was in 1830, at a dinner given to him by the members of " The Literary Union." That " club " was founded in 1829 by the poet Campbell. I may have to speak of it when I write a Memory of him. Moore was then in strong health, and in the zenith of his fame. There were many men of mark about him., — leading wits, and men of letters. He was full of life, sparkling and brilhant in all he said, rising every now and then to say something that gave the hearers delight, and looking as if " dull care " had been ever powerless to check the overflowing of his soul. But although no bard of any age knew better how to

" Wreathe the bowl with flowers of soul,"

he had acquired the power of self-restraint, and could "stop " when the glass was circulating too freely.

At the memorable dinner of "the Literary Fund," at which the good Prince Albert presided (on the 11th May, 1842), the two poets, Campbell and Moore, had to make speeches. The author of the " Pleasures of Hope," heedless of the duty that devolved upon him, had " confused his brain." Moore came on the evening of that day to our house ; and I well remember the terms of deep sorrow and bitter reproach in which he spoke of the lamentable impression that one of the great authors of the age and country must have left on the mind of the royal chairman, then new among us.

It is gratifying to record that the temptations to which the great lyric poet was so often and so peculiarly exposed were ever powerless for wrong.

Moore sat for his portrait to Shee, Lawrence, Newton, Maclise, Mulvany, and Richmond, and to the sculptors Tenerani, Chantrey, Kirk, and Moore. On one occasion of his sitting he says, " Having nothing in my round potato face but what painters cannot catch — mobility of character — the consequence is, that a portrait of me can be only one or other of two disagreeable things — a caiyut mortuwn or a caricature." Richmond's portrait was taken in 1843. Moore says of it, " The artist has worked wonders with unmanageable faces such as mine."

* In 1806, Lucy Aitken thus wrote of the young poet :— " He sung us some of his own sweet little songs, set to his own music, and rendered doubly touching by a voice the most sweet, an utterance the most articulate, and expression the most deep and varied that I had ever witnessed." .: ■

Of all his portraits this is the one that pleases me best, and most forcibly recalls him to my remembrance. It is the one I have engraved at the head of this Memory.

I soon learned to love the man. It was impossible not to do so, for nature had endowed him with that rare but happy gift — to have pleasure in giving pleasure, and pain in giving pain ; while his life was, or at all events seemed to be, a practical comment on his own lines : —

" They may rail at this life : from the hour I began it, I've found it a life full of kindness and bliss."

I had daily walks with him at Sloperton — along his " terrace- walk " — during our brief visit ; I listening, he talking ; he now and then asking questions, but rarely speaking of himself or his books. Indeed, the only one of his poems to which he made any special reference was the "Lines on the Death of Sheridan," of which he said, " That is one of the few things I have written of which I am really proud."

The anecdotes he told me were all of the class of those I have related — simple, unostentatious. He has been frequently charged with the weakness of undue respect for the aristocracy ; I never heard him, during the whole of our intercourse, speak of great people with Avhom he had been intimate ; never a word of the honours accorded to him ; and certainly he never uttered a sentence of satire, or censure, or hax'shness, concerning any one of his contemporaries. I remember his describing with proud warmth his visit to his friend Boyse, at Bannow, in the county of Wexfoi'd ; the dehght he enjoyed at receiving the homage of bands of the peasantry gathered to greet him ; the arches of green leaves under which he passed ; and the dances with the pretty peasant girls — one in particular, with whom he led off a country dance. Would that those who fancied him a tuft-hunter could have heard him ! they would have seen how really humble was his heart.* Reference to his Journal will show that, of all his contemporaries — whenever he spoke of them — he had something kindly to say. There is no evidence of ill-nature in any case — not a shadow of envy or jealousy. The sturdiest Scottish grazier could not have been better pleased than he was to see the elegant home — evidence of prosperity — Abbotsford.

The house at Sloperton is a small cottage, for which Moore paid originally the sum of £40 a year, " furnished." Subsequently, however, he became its tenant, under a repairing lease at £18 annual rent. He took possession of it in November, 1817. Bessy was "not only satisfied, but delighted with it, which shows the humility of her taste," writes Moore to his mother; "for it is a small thatch^ cottage, and we get it furnished for £40 a year."! "It has a small garden and lawn in front, and a kitchen garden behind ; along two of the sides of this kitchen-

* I have seen the following passage from the Journal quoted as evidence of the mean subserviency of Moore : — " Called at Lansdowne House, a,nd was let in." The generous critic overlooked another passage in the Journal as follows :—" Lord Lansdowne called, and was let in."

+ One of Mrs. Moore's dearest friends informs me that Moore " almost enlii'ely rebuilt the lower pirt of the cottage. The drawing-room remained as of old ; the library had a small ante-room added to it, the wall and door being removed, the whole raised, and the ceiling ai-ched."

THOMAS MOORE.

garden is a raised bank,"— the poet's " terrace-walk ; " so he loved to call it. Here a small deal table stood through all weathers ; for it was his custom to compose as he walked, and, at this table, to pause and write down his thoughts.'^ Hence he had always a view of the setting sun ; and I beheve few things on earth gave him more pleasure than practically to realise the line—

- " How glorious the sun looked in sinking ! "

for, as Mrs. Moore informed us, he very rarely missed that sight.

In 1811, the year of his marriage, he lived at York Terrace, Queen's Elm,

SLOPKKTOiSr, THE DWELLING OF THOMAS MOOBE.

Brompton. Mi's. Moore told us it was then a pretty house : the Terrace was isolated and opposite nursery gardens.! Long afterwards (in 1824), he went to Brompton to "indulge himself with a sight of that house." In 1812 he was settled at Kegworth,]: and in 1813 at Mayfield Cottage, near Ashbourne, in Derbyshire. Of Mayfield, one of his friends, who, twenty years afterwards, accompanied him there

* He was always in motion when he composed. If the weather prevented his walking on the terrace, he would pace up and down his small study : the length of his walk was indicated by the state of the carpet ; the places where his steps turned were, at both ends, worn into holes. The "smaU deal table" is now in my conservatory — honoured as it ought to be.

+ It is now part and parcel of a populous suburb— a house in a row. I regret that I cannot indicate the number, but believe it to be No. 5.

t His da,ughter, Anasta.sia Maiy, was born here on the 4th February, 1813. Of Kegwoith he writes : — " Bessy is quite pleased with our new house, and runs wild about the large garden, which is certainly a delightful eman- cipation for her, after our veiy limited domain at Brompton."

to see it, remarks on the small, solitary, and now wretched-looking cottage, where all the fine "Orientalism" and " sentimentalism " had been engendered. Of this cottage he himself writes — " It was a poor place, little better than a barn ; but we at once took it and set about making it habitable." The rent Moore paid for it was £20 a year. It was then " within twenty-four hours' drive of town," i.e., London-, It is no better than a poor place now. I visited the house in the autumn of 1869, in company with my friend Llewellyn Jewitt, who furnishes me with the following description : —

" Situate only a couple of miles from Ashbourne, within walking distance of Dove Dale, and in the midst of most charming scenery, Mayfield Cottage may have become a delicious, though it was a homely, retreat. The cottage is a plain square building, with a hipped roof. In front is a small flower-garden, slightly terraced, and a path leads up to the front door, which is in the centre of the building, and is covered with a simple, trellised porch. There are only four windows — two on the ground floor, one in the ' houseplace,' and the other in the ' parlour ; ' and two upstairs in the bed-rooms. The rooms are small, and have brick floors, and have nothing ' cosy ' or nice or inviting about them. There are also a kitchen and a dairy on the ground floor ; for the cottage is now a small farm-house. The bed- rooms are, like the lower apartments, small and uninviting. The poet's own room — that in which he slept — is the one on the left, and on a pane of the window the following lines are scratched on the glass, and are said — though without any evidence — to have been so scratched by Moore himself : —

' I ask not always in your breast

In solitude to be ; But whether mournful, whether blest, Sometimes remember me.

— Old Moore' s AlmanacTc.

' I ask not always for thy smile,

Lot of some happier one ; But sometimes be with feelings fraught O'er joys now past and gone.

'I ask not always for those sighs Which make thy bosom swell, But stUl in this fond heart of mine Those strong affections dwell.'

I have placed a portrait of Moore over the chimney-piece in that room. The front of the cottage is partly overgrown with foliage, and is surrounded by trees ; there is a small ' arbour,' where the poet was wont to sit and write, but the room he is said to have usually ' written in ' is now used as a dairy : even when he resided there it must have been sadly unsuited to his mind."

At Mayfield " Lalla Rookh" was written, and here it was " little Barbara and I rolled about in the hay-field before our door, till I was much more hot and tired than my little playfellow," The district has other memories. Not far ofi" resided for a time Jean Jacques Rousseau, and here he wrote his " Confessions ; " Ward, the author of " Tremaine," here lived and worked; the Dove is consecrated to the memories of Walton and Cotton — here they studied the gentle craft ; Congreve, not

THOMAS MOORE.

rj

far off, penned his first drama ; Dr. Johnson visited here his friend Dr. Taylor ; Dr. Greaves, the author of " The Spiritual Quixote," had his home here ; and' here — or rather not far off — is laid the scene of one of the most remarkable novels of modern time, " Adam Bede." Moreover, the Dove is one of the very loveliest rivers of England.

Moore had a public appointment. As Burns was made a ganger because he vpas partial to whisky, Moore was made " Eegistrar to the Admiralty" in Bermuda, where his principal duty was to "overhaul the accounts of skippers and their mates." Being called to England, his affairs were placed in charge of a superin- tendent, who betrayed him, and left him answerable for a heavy debt, which rendered necessary a temporary residence in Paris. The debt, however, was paid — not by the aid of friends, some of whom would have gladly relieved him of it, but — literally by " the sweat of his brow." Exactly so it was when the MS. " Life of Byron " was burned ; it was by Moore, and not by the relatives of Byron (nor by aid of friends), the money he had received was returned to the publisher who had advanced it.* " The glorious privilege of being independent " was indeed essentially his, — in his boyhood, throughout his manhood, and in advanced age — always !

In 1799 he came to London to enter at the Middle Temple. His first lodging was at 44, G-eorge Street, Portman Square. Very soon afterwards we find him declining a loan of money proffered by Lady Donegal. He thanked God for the many sweet things of this kind He had thrown in his way, yet at that moment he was " terribly puzzled how to pay his tailor." In 1811, his friend Douglas, who had just received a large legacy, handed him a blank cheque, that he might fill it up for any sum he needed. " I did not accept the offer," writes Moore to his mother, " but you may guess my feelings." Yet, just then, he had been compelled to draw on his publisher. Power, for a sum of £30, " to be repaid partly in songs," and was sending his mother a second-day paper, which he was enabled " to purchase at rather a cheap rate." Even in 1842 he was " haunted worryingly," not knowing how to meet his son Russell's draft for £100 ; and, a year afterwards, he utterly drained his banker to send £50 to his son Tom. Once, being anxious that Bessy should have some money for the poor at Bromham, he sent a friend £5, requesting him to forward it to Bessy, as from himself; and when urged by some thoughtless person to make a larger allowance to his son Tom, in order that he might " live like a gentleman," he writes, " If I had thought but of living like a gentleman, what would have become of my dear father and mother, of my sweet sister Nell, of my admirable Bessy's mother ? " He declined to represent Limerick in Parliament, on the ground that his "circumstances were not such as to justify coming into Parlia- ment at all, because to the labour of the day I am indebted for my daily support." He must have a miserable soul who could sneer at the poet studying how he might manage to recompense the doctor who would " take no fees ; " or at his " amuse- ment " when Bessy was " calculating whether they could afford the expense of a fly

* The slatements of Mr. Murray are not of sucli a nature as to leave any doubt eonceming this assertion. It is not disputed that the money he had received was paid back by Moore.

to Devizes ; " or when he writes of his wife's " democratic pride," that makes her " prefer the company of her equals to that of her superiors ; " or at his thinking she never looked so handsome as when (in 1830) sitting by his mother's side (in Abbey Street), and with his sister Nell, "just the same gentle spirit as ever" — " had a most happy family dinner ; " and next day receiving the homage of a score of noted and dignified admirers. It Avas with many as it was with the poet Bowles, who " delighted to visit the Moores : " they " had such pleasant faces."

As with his mother, so with his wife : from the year 1811, the year of his marriage,* to that of his death in 1852, she received from him the continual homage of a lover; away from her, no matter what were his allurements, he was ever longing to be at home. Those who love as he did, wife, children, and friends, will appreciate — although the worldling cannot — such commonplace sentences as these : — " Pulled some heath on Konan's Island (Killarney) to send to my dear Bessy ; " when in Italy, " got letters from my sweet Bessy, more precious to me than all the wonders I can see;" while in Paris, "sending for Bessy and my little ones; wherever they are will be home, and a happy home, to me." When absent (which was rarely for more than a week), no matter where or in what company, seldom a day passed that he did not write a letter to Bessy. The home enjoyments, reading to her, making her the depositary of all his thoughts and hopes, — they were his deep delights, compensations for time spent amid scenes and with people who had no space in his heart.! Ever, when in " terrible request," his thoughts and his heart were there — in

" That dear Home, that saving' Ai-k,

Where love's true light at last I've found, Cheering within, when all grows dark And comfortless and stormy round.' '

This is the tribute of Earl Kussell to the wife of the poet Moore :— " The excellence of his wife's moral character, her energy and courage, her persevering economy, made her a better, and even a richer partner to Moore than an heiress of ten thousand a year would have been, with less devotion to her duty, and less steadiness of conduct." The "democratic pride" of which Moore speaks was the pride that is ever above a mean action, always sustaining him in proud independence.

In March, 1846, his Diary contains this sad passage : — " The last of my five children is gone, and we are left desolate and alone ; not a single relation have I in this world."! His sweet mother had died in 1832 ; " excellent Nell" in 1846 ; his

* Moore was maxried to Miss Elizabeth Dyke, at St. Martin's Church, London, on the 25th March, 1811, and Mrs. Ellison writes to me—" She was given away by my father (Mr. Power) , her mother, Mrs. Dyke, and her youngest daughter, being present. That sister afterwards became the wife of Mr. Murray, of Edinburgh, and the mother of the nephew, Charles Murray, a most estimable and accomplished gentleman, Mrs. Moore's heir, who unhappily died in the prime of life, in 1872, leaving a widow and two daughters."

+ In one of Moore's letters to me, dated Sloperton, August 23, 1S44, he writes :— "Ihave been once in town since I saw you, and your name was foremost in the List of those I meant to call upon. But a sudden illness of Mrs. Moore caused me to hurry down here and leave business, calls on friends, and all other such pleasures and duties unattended to." , . ,, , -^ _i.i.

t The five children were,— Anne Jane Barbara, born in 1812 at Brompton ; Anastasia Mary, bom at Kegworth in 1813 ; Olivia Byron, born at Mayfield in 1814 ; Thomas Lansdowne Pan-, born at Sloperton in 1815 ; John Russell, born at Sloperton in 1823.

THOMAS MOORE. 15

father in 1825 ; and his children one after another, three of them in youth, and two grown up to manhood — his two boys, Tom and Russell, the first-named of whom died in Africa (in 1846), an officer in the French service, the other at Sloperton (in 1842), soon after his return from India, having been compelled by ill-health to resign his commission as a lieutenant in the 25th Regiment. In 1835 the influence of Lord Lansdowne and Lord John Russell obtained for Moore a pension of £300 a year from Lord Melbourne's Government, — " as due from any Government, but much more from one, some of the members of which are proud to think themselves your friends." The " wolf, poverty," therefore, in his latter years, did not " prowl " so continually about his door. But there was no fund for luxuries — none for the extra comforts that old age requires. Mrs. Moore received, on the death of her husband, a pension of £100 a year, and she had also the interest of the sum of £3,000, — the sum paid by the ever-liberal friends of the poet, the Longmans, for the Memoirs and Journal edited by Lord John, now Earl, Russell — a " lord" whom the poet dearly loved.

When his " Diary" was published — as from time to time volumes of it appeared — slander was busy with the fame of one of the best and most upright of all the men that God ennobled by the gift of genius. For my own part I seek in vain through the eight thick volumes of that Diary for any evidence that can lessen the poet in this high estimate. I find, perhaps, too many passages fitted only for the eye of love, or the ear of sympathy ; but I read none that show the poet other than the devoted and loving husband, the thoughtful and affectionate parent, the considerate and generous friend.

That these volumes contain many pages that are valueless is certain, but that they contain anythmg to the poet's discredit or dishonour is utterly untrue.

Those who read his Journal with generous sympathy cannot fail to have augmented esteem and aff'ection for " the man." His stern independence might have yielded to temptations such as few receive and very few resist : he preserved it to the last, under circumstances such as any of his many great and wealthy friends would have called " poverty." Of luxuries, from the commencement of his career to its close, he had literally none : his necessities were at times severe, but they were never published to the world — nay, were never obtruded even on those who could, and certainly would, have made them less. In all the relations of life he was faithful, affectionate, and considerate : " at home " he was ever loving and beloved ; there he was happiest by rendering his limited circle happy.

The biographers of poets are almost proverbial for diminishing the giant to the dwarf. With a few grand exceptions, we find the loftiest precepts humihated by the meanest examples; social intercourse degraded by frequent inebriation; poverty callous to the " glorious privilege," condescending to notoriety instead of suffering in solitude ; so mingling the vices with the virtues, that worshippers eagerly di'aw the veil over genius in private life, willing to "make allowances," and content with the record — " they are not as other men are."

How few great men are heroes in their daily communion !

The poet Moore is one of the very few of whom we may think and speak

without a blusli. The cavils and sneers of those who do not or cannot understand him are Hmited to the " crimes" of his dining with lords and delighting in the

courtesies of flatterers in rags. Had he been a sensualist like , a drunkard

like , a pitiful borrower like , a truckler for place like , critics might

have been less severe. Alas ! my own experience might readily fill up these blanks : so may any one who has a large " literary acquaintance."

I honour the memory of Moore for the virtues he had and the vices he had not.

When these Memoirs — his " Diary" — were first published, there were some critics who received them with a howl of derision : it was an Irish howl — unreasoning, bitter, malignant. It came almost exclusively from his own countrymen : a pamphlet was printed by Charles Phillips, sometime known as "the Irish orator," who, having obtained a sort of renown at the Bar in Ireland, left the country, and practised chiefly at the Old Bailey in London. He obtained one of the Commissionerships in Bankruptcy, and was far more prosperous as to worldly circumstances than was Moore at any period of his life.*

The atrocious attack on the memory of Moore in the Quarterly Review was written by John Wilson Croker, who for many years held the lucrative post of Secretary to the Admiralty. There are many living who remember this busybody of the House of Commons. Small of person, active, energetic, and undoubtedly able, his party found in him a zealous and unscrupulous partisan. He is the "Crawley Junior" of the novel, "Florence Macarthy," by Lady Morgan, who detested him, and she was " a good hater." He was one of the originators of the John Bull newspaper, and from him it received its tone of private slander and public turpitude. It is, I believe. Madden who says of him, ^" His memory is buried beneath a pyramid of scalps."

The article in the Quarterly was a shameful article. It was the old illustration of the dead lion and the living dog. Yet Croker could at that time be scarcely described as living ; it was from his death-bed he shot the poisoned arrow. And what brought out the venom ? Merely a few careless words of Moore's, in which he described Croker as " a scribbler of all work," — -words that Earl Russell would have erased if it had occurred to him to do so. No doubt, however, long-pent-up wrath thus found vent : they were political opponents from the first ; and although of Moore it may be safely said, " He lacked gall to make oppression bitter," it was the very opposite with John WUson Croker.

* As I wrote and printed the following passages— in April 1853— shortly after Phillips published his pamphlet, and of course while he was living, I need not hesitate to reprint them here. PMllips threatened to prosecute me for libel : he did not carry out his threat, but withdrew the pamplilet from circulation : —

"It has long been notorious that if it be desired to ruin an Irishman, you can easily find an Irishman to do it :^ nay, there is a sort of proveib- 'Put an Irishman upon a spit, and you'll always find another Irishman to turn it. Mr. Phillips has added force to this oijinion : an old man, in the self-reproach arising out of a career that has refiected, to say the least, no credit on his country, endeavours, as perhaps the latest act of Ms life, to prove the baseness and wretchedness, nay, the infidelity, of a man as superior to his calumniator, in all that men esteem and venerate, as the light-giving sun is to the unwholesome vapours that sicken earth. Supposing for a brief moment all the statements of Counsellor Phillips to be as true as they are untrue, to what possible motive, except the very worst that may dishonour a gentleman, can their publication be attributed 1 But few months have elapsed since the great poet and good man has been consigned to the grave — a humble grave in a remote churchyard of a country village ; his childless widow's days of mourning are but commenced, when this infamous attack is made upon his memory, in the wretched hope and expectation that the world wOl abhor the name that for more than half a centuiy has been respected and loved."

THOMAS MOORE.

17

Another of the calumniators of Moore, xvlien lie icas dead, was Thomas Crofton Croker (a namesake but no relative of John Wilson Croker). By some means or other, but certainly in no way creditable, was published a series of letters that had passed between the poet and his song publishers, the Powers ; with whom, no doubt, he had occasional misunderstandings, but who were his firm friends to the last, the daughter of Mr. Power being one of the executors to the will of the poet's widow, and, as I have stated, he it was who gave Mrs. Moore away at their marriage in 1811. The title-page of this foolish, needless, and useless book states that its publication "was suppressed in London." A publisher was, however, found for it in America ; and Crofton Croker prefaced it by an " Introductory Letter." It is not worth while now to confute the statements made in that preface — an example of " safe malignity ; " but they might be confuted easily.

I knew Crofton Croker during many years of his life : he was a small man — small in mind as well as in body ; doing many little things, but none of them well : his literary fame rests on his " Irish Fairy Legends " — a book of which he was only the editor. Most of the stories — and those the best — were written by Dr. Maginn, Joseph Humphreys (a Quaker), Pigot (the late Irish Chief Baron), Keightly, and Charles Dodd — subsequently the compiler of the " Parliamentary Guide." I was the writer of two of them ; I am the only one of the writers now living.

I might take note of other Irishmen who, when the poet Moore was dead, and therefore an adversary who could be insulted safely, did their best to dishonour his name and cast a slur upon his memory ; but the subject is not a pleasant one. Is it not Macaulay who speaks of " abject natures whose delight is in the agonies of powerful spirits, and in the abasement of immortal names ?"

Of a truth it was well said, " A prophet is never without honour save in his own country." The proverb is especially true as regards Irish prophets. Assuredly Moore was, and is, more popular in every part of the world than he was, or is, in Ireland. The reason is plain : he was, so to speak, of two parties, yet of neither ; the one could not forgive his early aspirations for liberty, uttered in imperishable verse ; the other could not pardon what they called his desertion of their cause, when he saw that England was willing to do, and was doing, "justice to Ireland."

Let it be inscribed on his tomb, that ever, amid privations and temptations, the allurements of grandeur and the suggestions of poverty, he preserved his self-respect ; bequeathing no property, but leaving no debts; having had no "testimonial" of acknowledgment or reward ; seeking none, nay, avoiding any ; making millions his debtors for intense delight, and acknowledging himself paid by " the poet's meed, the tribute of a smile ;" never truckling to power ; labouring ardently and honestly for his political faith, but never lending to party that which was meant for mankind ; proud, and rightly proud, of his self-obtained position ; but neither scorning nor slighting the humble root from which he sprung.

He was born and bred a Koman Catholic ; but his creed was entirely and purely Catholic. Charity was the outpouring of his heart : its pervading essence was that which he expressed in one of his Melodies, —

c

jS memories.

" Shall I ask the brave soldier who fights by my side. In the cause of mankind, if our creeds agree \ Shall I give up the friend I have valued and tried. If he kneel not before the same altar with me \ "

His children were all baptized and educated members of the Church, of England. He attended the parish church, and according to the ritual of that church he was buried. It was not any public or outward change of religion, but homage to a purer and holier faith, that induced him to have his children brought up as members of the English Church. " For myself," he says, " my having married a Protestant wife gave me opportunity of choosing a religion at least for my children ; and if my marriage had no other advantage, I should think this quite sufficient to be grateful for."

Moore was the eloquent advocate of his country when it was oppressed, goaded, and socially enthralled ; but when time and enlightened policy removed all distinc- tions between the Irishman and the Englishman— between the Protestant and the Roman Catholic — his muse was silent, because content ; nay, he protested in em- phatic verse against a continued agitation that retarded her progress, when her claims were admitted, her rights' acknowledged, and her wrongs redressed.*

The poetry of Thomas Moore has been more extensively read than that of any poet of the epoch : those who might not have sought it otherwise, have become familiar with it through the medium of the delicious music to which it has been wedded ; and it would be difficult to find a single educated individual in Great Britain unable to repeat some of his verses. No writer has enjoyed a popularity so universal ; and if an author's position is to depend on the delight he produces, we must class the author of " Lalla Kookh " and of the " Irish Melodies " as " chiefest of the bards " of modern times.

But reference to the genius of Moore is needless. My object in this Memory is to offer homage to his moral and social worth. The world that willingly acknow- ledges its debt to the poet has been less ready to estimate the high and estimable character — the loving and faithful nature — of the man. There are, however, many — may this humble tribute augment the number ! — by whom the memory of Thomas Moore is cherished in the heart of hearts ; to whom the cottage at Sloperton will be a shrine while they live ; the grave beside the village church of Bromham a monument better loved than that of any other of the men of genius by whom the world is delighted, enlightened, and refined.

Two years and two months — mournful years and months — Moore may be said to have lain on his death-bed — dying all that weary time ; his mind almost obliterated ; restorations to reason being only occasional, and very partial. His disease was softening of the brain. Sometimes he knew and recognised his " Bessy ;" generally she was an utter stranger to his soul until it was released from its earth-fetters.

* Moore's fiiend, Thomas Boyse of Bannow, thus wrote to me on the eve of Moore's death: — "I know not whether you are aware that he whose loss we ai'e soon to deplore would never join in the frantic movement of O'Connell for Eepeal, and that therefore (what a therefore !) the then omnipotent Tribune at once whispered down the name and fame of our friend ' from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear.' O'Connell denounced him as an enemy to freedom, and an apostate from the cause of Ireland ! You are aware of what effects must result from such a sentence, pronounced by such a tribunal."

THOMAS MOORE.

19

During the whole of that sad period she was never for an hour out of his room.* She told us that when intelligence was at all active, he would ask her to read the Bible, but his great delight was to hear her sing ; that his frequent desire was for a hymn, " Come to Jesus," in the refrain of which he always joined, and which he often asked her to sing for him a second time. Almost his last words — and they were frequently repeated — were, '* Lean upon God, Bessy ; lean upon God ! "

It was, in truth, a mournful sight, but few saw it ; none, indeed, except the " dear wife," one attendant, and the clergyman of the parish and his daughter, the

\

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'.[iHiuapWii I

Is ,! ml

THE GEAVE OF THOMAS ilOOKE.

loved and trusted friend of both the poet and his wife. A great man, so clinging unwillingly to earth, so awaiting patiently, and yet eagerly, the call of his Master, — it is sad, but not altogether sad, to contemplate : it is better, nevertheless, to draw a veil over the " last scene of all."

A statue, in bronze, of the poet was erected on a space of ground that faces Trinity College, and in October, 1857, it was inaugurated. It was the first statue ever raised to an Irishman in a public thoroughfare of the Irish metropolis ; and

* The following passage I find in one of her letters to Mrs. Hall :— " I write in his room, but can hardly see : my eyes are very weak."

c2

MEMORIES.

I

although as a work of art it is but a poor affair, it is at least a record that Ireland was not altogether oblivious of the great man who will be for all time one of its glories.

On that occasion one of the most eloquent of Irishmen mourned over the melan- choly fact — that fame acquired by an Irishman creates no thrill of joy in the hearts of his countrymen ; that honours accorded to him by every part of the world are accepted in that country without response. These are the impressive words of Baron O'Hagan : — " It is the sorrow and the shame of Ireland — proverbially incuriom suoriim — that she has been heretofore too much in this respect an exception amongst the civilised kingdoms of the earth. And the sorrow and the shame have not been less because she has been the parent of many famous men — of thinkers, and poets, and patriots, and warriors, and statesmen — whose memory should be to her a precious heritage, and of many of whom she might speak in the language of the Florentine of old —

' Tanto nomini nullum par eulogium.' "

The orator hoped for a more auspicious future for Irishmen ; but as yet it has not come, although he is himself one of the most emphatic proofs that England has done "justice " to Ireland. When Baron O'Hagan was born — and he is not an old man — no Roman Catholic could have been even a Queen's Counsel. He, a Roman Catholic, was Lord High Chancellor of Ireland ; eight Roman Catholics have worn the ermine, at one time, in their own country ; and a Roman Catholic was, not long ago, a Judge in England. A hundred pages could not add weight to that single fact with a view to illustrate the changed condition of Ireland, and the altered sentiments of England as regards Ireland.

I repeat my belief that Moore is now, and was during his lifetime, less worthily appreciated and truly honoured in Ireland than in any other country of the world.

While a Scottish man is, so to speak, born to an annuity — for his countrymen ever lend him " a helping hand," and consider they share, though it may be but a tiny part, of the fame he achieves — it is mournful, yet very true, to say of Ireland, that with its people it is the opposite. Moore, at least in the latter part of his life, knew and bitterly felt that dismal truth.

" That God is Love," writes his friend and biographer. Earl Russell, "was the summary of his belief ; that a man should love his neighbour as himself seems to have been the rule of his life." The good Earl of Carlisle, inaugurating the statue of the poet, bore testimony to his moral and social worth " in all the holy relations of life — as son, as brother, as husband, as father, as friend ;" and on the same occa- sion Baron O'Hagan thus expressed himself: — " He was faithful to all the sacred obligations and all the dear charities of domestic life — he was the idol of a household."

Perhaps a better, though a briefer, summary of the character of Thomas Moore than any of these may be given in the words of Dr. Parr, who bequeathed to him a ring : — " To one who stands high in my estimation for original genius, for his exquisite sensibility, for his independent spirit, and incorruptible integrity."

I

MRS. MOORE.

On the 4th of September, 1865, the estimable wife of the poet died. She rests beside her beloved husband and three of her children in the churchyard of Bromham. I have said enough to show how highly we estimated her worth — as wife, mother, friend, and benefactress ; for the small means at her disposal were ever ready for distribution among the neighbouring poor. I have quoted Earl Russell's testimony to her many virtues.

Some Recollections of the excellent lady, by Mrs. Hall, will, I think, be accept- able to the reader ; and I print them.

The first time I saw Mrs. Moore was at our own cottage, "The Rosery," Old Brompton. We had heard it was considered expedient that their second son, Russell, should visit London for medical advice. We were going to Ireland for two or three months, and it seemed a small thing to offer the poet the use of our cottage. It is the characteristic of all sensitive minds to exaggerate debts for services received. Mr. Moore wrote to me a letter expressing warm gratitude, but declined the offer, " because just then it was impossible to move Russell until he got better. He hoped soon to thank us." The son who, Mrs. Moore afterwards assured me, had never given them one hour's uneasiness, did not " get better" — until he died; but soon afterwards, some engagement calling Mr. Moore to town, Mrs. Moore accompanied him, and came to see us.

" There!" he said, as I entered the room, "there is my Bessy; and I know you two ladies are prepared to love each other ! "

And so we were. Though her early beauty had faded under the influence of time and anxiety, enough was left not only to tell of what she had been, but to excite love and admiration then. Her figure and carriage were perfect; every movement was graceful : her head and throat were exquisitely moulded ; and her voice, when she spoke, was soft and clear. Moore once said to me, "My Bessy's eyes were larger before she wept them away for her children." But when I knew her, the sockets were large, but the soft, brown eyes fell, as it were, back. All her other features were really beautiful ; the delicate nose ; the sweet and expressive mouth ; the dimples, now here, now there ; the chin so soft and rounded ; the face a perfect oval. Even at that time no one could have entered a room without mur- muring, " What a lovely woman ! "

She spoke of Russell's illness — hopefully ; but the quivering lips, and eyes suffused with tears, did not sustain her words. While walking with me round our little garden, she laid bare her heart in a few words. " I do not suffer his father to believe how ill he is ; he will know it time enough. Lover painted a charming portrait of him. You will see it when you come to Sloperton, but you will never see him.'"

Poor Russell ! he was, as his mother knew he would be, in Bromham Church- yard before our return from Ireland ; and more than a year elapsed ere we paid our first visit to Sloperton. We were there a week, and during that time Russell's name was never mentioned by either Mr. or Mrs. Moore ; but one morning she called me into her bed-room, pointed to a picture, and left me alone with Russell's

portrait.* The boy must have been very like his mother. Their eldest son Tom was, if I may judge from a miniature of him, remarkably handsome. Poor lad ! he fell early into the ways of folly ; he had great temptations, and yielded to them. At his death there were debts owing by him : they were all paid out of the limited " means " of his parents ; and when his father had expended every farthing he could command for that purpose, his mother gathered together her most valuable trinkets, took them into Bath, and sold them, rather than that the taint of an unpaid debt should rest on their son's name.f Moore passed the mornings in his library, the largest room in the cottage, whose pleasant window commanded a view of the fields and the high road : it contained his books, his piano, | and two Irish harps, various chairs and tables, which, if not hallowed by long residence in the poet's room, would have been called "mean;" a few pictures which Mr. Moore did not care for — as pictures : they were valued from association. He was strangely indifferent to art. "His friends at Bowood," Mrs. Moore said, "would have made a connoisseur of him had it been possible, but it was not. Scenery he enjoys fully, but a painted one strikes no chord in his heart."

Even then, though it was November, and we were seated enjoying his cheerful- ness round the drawing-room table, he seemed to have an instinctive perception that the sun was about to set. He left the room, and a story unfinished, and we saw him pass the window on his way to the terrace-walk. " Sunset," said Mrs. Moore, laughing, — " he will finish his story when he returns." That raised terrace-walk, enclosing two sides of his little domain — the exquisitely-kept garden — gave the poet never-ceasing enjoyment. There were seats in three or four places, but the favourite one was beneath a group of, I think, elm trees, and there stood the little green wooden table which dear Mrs. Moore bequeathed to me, and which is the most highly honoured of all my mementoes of departed friends. The poet would pace up and down that walk for hours, and pause to write whatever thoughts he considered worth recording. Between those trees we caught glimpses of Bromham Church. Mr. Moore was becoming very absent, and at times Mrs. Moore seemed pained by the efforts she made to recall, as it were, his mind to our conversation. Even at table she frequently exclaimed — "Tom, Tom, what are you thinking of?" His absence of mind was, indeed, so great, that it gave me uneasiness ; but Mrs. Moore took it as a matter of course.

I never knew any one with such active and genial affections as Moore, except his wife. Her nature was quite as sympathetic as that of her husband ; and while her

* In one of Lover's letters to me he writes concerning this portrait : — " You ask me to give you some descrip- tion of Russell Moore. You know how hard, or rather how impossible, it is for words to convey any notion of lineaments. All children's faces are, to a certain extent, round ; but Russell's might have been remarked for roundness even among children — nose, though retrmisse, nicely defined about the nostril; a pretty mouth, well- marked eyebrows, and dark brown eyes of remarkable beauty, with a cei-tain expression of arctmess that reminded one of his father (you remember what brilliant and vivacious eyes his were) ; in short, EusseU Moore's face would h ive been a good model for a painter who wanted a suggestion for a little Cupid."

t Tom was undoubtedly possessed of abilities. He obtained a prize at the Chai'ter-House. On his death, a French general wrote to Mr. Moore to say he would have received the Cross of the Legion of Honour had he lived awlule longer ; and among the few remains sent to his parents were note-books and drawings concerning many of the countries of Europe.

t That piano was a special legacy from Mrs. Moore to her grand-niece, with an injunction that it was always to be kept in the family : " never to be parted with." One of the harps is now in our drawing-room, the gift of our valued friend Mrs. Murray.

i

MRS. MOORE. 23

reverence for that husband amounted to devotion, she watched over him as a mother watches over a tender and beloved child. It was the most wonderful blending of admiration, duty, and lovingness I ever witnessed or could fancy. At times, even then — though as her husband tenderly said, she had wept her eyes away crying for her children— she looked radiantly beautiful

When silent, Mrs. Moore's mouth was charmingly expressive. It was not small, but it was beautifully formed ; the lips full yet delicate, and quivering like a child's with any sudden emotion, giving birth to little fleeting dimples, and at times the upper lip would upturn with such pretty disdain, that it seemed a pleasure to make her a little angry : —

" The short passing anger but seemed to awaken New beauties, like flowers that axe sweetest When shaken,"

During many succeeding months I heard frequently from Mrs. Moore.* She sent me several little commissions for biscuits of some particular kind, " he was so fond of them." She seemed to me to watch the advertisements, and to obtain every- thmg nourishing or new to tempt him. As time passed, his time passed with it. She was slow to realise the agonising fact ; she had put it from her, hid it away, invented reasons: "his stomach was out of order;" "he wanted change;" "he had been working too hard ;" " the summer always tried him — he would be better in the winter ;" or " the winter was too cold, he always bloomed out with the flowers." f One reason was the right one ; like Scott and Southey, " he had worked too hard." Imagination, thought, memory, were worn out. At last— at last — she knew it ; the greatest trial of her sorely-tried life had come. Her idol, whom she worshipped with perfect enthusiasm — he of whose genius she was so proud, to become what he was — still tender and gentle, but mindless as an infant. She could not bear any one to see him in that state ; day and night, night and day, for months and months she alone ministered to him, at his desire singing him scraps of hymns. We can easily imagine how the perpetual watching and waiting preyed on a constitution already enfeebled by sorrows, which it had been her chief care to prevent hh feeling in their intensity. She was ever at her post. The sick room was the heart of the house ; the life-blood beat there, more and more feebly, but still it beat ; and then there was no longer need for watching : the end came — the end here !

After a time she collected his books, and gave them and his Irish harp to the Eoyal Irish Academy, on condition that a room should be appropriated to them — now and always. That has been done. About six months after his death she asked me to come and spend a few days with her. " The light of the house is gone," she said, " but you can recall it as it was." I found her changed, yet not more so than I expected, and I perceived that the only pleasure she seemed to have was talking

* Her letters to me always contained flowers, and occasionally a sprig of bay. I have just opened one of them ; the leaves are dry and dead, but there are loving words to keep memory green in the soul.

+ One of her touching notes is now at my side. " My dearest Mrs. Hall,— He is now sitting up with the window open, and the sun shining on him. I can hardly believe that I write the truth. His sleep is excellent, and in aU ways he improves daily. I am not at all well, and begin to feel I require rest, which I will take if I can. But he is yet too feeble to be left, and I do not like to biing a stranger about him. Your affectionate B. M.— He is sitting close by me, and is anxious to walk."

24 MEMORIES.

about HIM. While the morning was yet grey, about half-past five, I heard her voice in the garden, directing her old gardener, and immediately after breakfast she took her seat at the dining-room window, which she opened, and waited there for the poor villagers, who never failed to present themselves for what they wanted — medicine, or soup, or articles of clothing, or books, to be lent or given, or often for a bit of advice, from "Madam Moore." This occupied from one to two hours, and then she would go upstairs, unlock and enter his library, where she would sit alone for another hour, never inviting or permitting any one to enter it. I was never once in it during either of my visits to her. She swept and dusted it herself, and then sat down with at least outward calmness at the window. If I had gone for a walk into the beautiful lanes, or through the fields to visit the tomb in Bromham Churchyard, and looked up at the bowery window as I entered the gate, she would nod and smile at me, and -in the course of a little time come down to the drawing- room, and take up her patchwork, or her knitting, or doll-dressing (for she had always some bazaar- work on hand), or cushions, or slippers to make for a friend; and it often seemed to me strange how the last great sorrow had tided over all others, — all except one. The eldest son, Tom, was known to have died in Africa ; they had received confirmatory letters and all his " things " long ago, but .-j/te retained fragments of broken hope that he would yet return. One particular evening we had been sitting still and silent a long time, when suddenly the garden gate was thrown open, her pale cheek flushed, she started up and looked out, then sank into her chair, "What was it, dear?" I inquired. "You will think it a weakness," she said, " or perhaps insanity, but I have never quite believed in our son's death, and I seldom hear the garden gate opened at an unusual hour without a hope that it is my boy."

She was then beginning to suffer from an internal complaint, that persecuted her to the last, and which her medical advisers said had been brought on by stooping over and turning — lifting, in fact — her helpless husband.

Suffering of her own had not exhausted her sympathy for others. She was warmly sympathetic to the last, retaining her taste for the beautiful, which most manifested itself in her care and love of flowers. Her cheeks would flush if you brought her a new or beautiful flower ; and whenever she obtained a rare plant, her first thought was how it could be divided. Her garden was like the widow's cruse — tiny place though it was ! — yet such clumps of lily of the valley — such roots of marvellous polyanthus — such fragrant violets — such " strikings " of the wonderful " Tara ivy," which was flourishing when I paid my first visit to Sloperton !

I had visited her four times between the death of her husband and her own, and promised her on my return from Germany, that I would spend some few autumn days with her ; but that was not to be ; and dearly as I loved her, I could not regret her release from the intense suffering she endured, and which had so much increased of late as to render her once beautiful person a complete wreck. But when hardly able to stand, she would creep into the garden to see that hh favourite terrace- walk was free from weed or pebble, and that his Tara ivy, and whatever he loved, was duly cared for. In our early friendship, Mr. Hall had sent Mrs. Moore

MRS. MOORE. 25

some standard roses ; two or three of those were the poet's especial favourites. I was there when one of them showed symptoms of decay ; it was painful to witness her anxiety about that tree. Every species of " compo " was applied to its roots ; I might almost say she watered it with her tears. Thoughtlessly I told her Mr. Hall would send her another of the same sort. "No, no," she said impatiently; "he cannot send me a tree on which my darling looked, or from which he gathered a blossom."

On the death of Mrs. Moore, she directed some relics connected with her illustrious husband to be sent to us ; she had, indeed, told us that she would do so. To Mrs. Hall she sent an inkstand, presented to Moore by the sons of George Crabbe, and the small deal table to which I have referred as standing in the terrace- walk, at which it was " his custom to pause and write down his thoughts."

Among the MSS., all in his handwriting (the major part, however, being notes, chiefly for the " History of Ireland"), is one that contains this prefatory passage : — ■ " The first rudiments of the ' Loves of the Angels,' which it is clear I began and meant to continue in prose. T. M."

Although interesting, they are mere fragments. One of them relates the story of St. Jerome, who, complaining of the slander of his enemies, wrote that " if the gratification of sense had been his pursuit, he would naturally have selected some of those fair wantons of Rome whose persons charmed the eye by every embellishment of beauty and of art; but that, on the contrary, the objects of his attachments were women who, by fasting and humiliation, had not alone ruined the attractions of their forms, but sufi'ered neglect to obscure even its decencies."

This apology suggested the following lines : —

"THE SAINT'S LOVE.

" She sleeps among the pure and blest ; But oh ! believe me when I swear That while a spirit thrills my breast, Her woi'th shall be remembered there.

" My tongue shall never hope to charm, Unless it breathes BlesUla's name ; My fancy ne'er shall beam so warm As when it lights Blesilla's fame.

"On her, where'er my pages fly. My pages still shall life confer, And every wise or beauteous eye That studies me, shall weep for her.

" For her the widow's tear shall fall In sympathy of single love, And holy maids shall learn to call On her who blooms a saint above.

" And many a learned and lonely sage. And many a monk, recluse and hoary, Shall love the lines and bless the page That wafts Blesilla's name to glory."

That Moore had many generous friends, with the power as well as the will to serve him is quite certain.

I found among the papers given to me by Mrs. Moore this letter from the historian, Sir William Napier : —

"My dear Moore,

" Knowing your feelings about pecuniarj' affiairs, I feel almost afraid to tell you tliat T have several hundred pounds at my bankers ; that there is not the slightest chance of my wanting them, for a year at least; and until your affairs are arranged with Murray, I do hope that you will not be ottended if I say they are at your service.

" Wm. Napier."

I find also in one of his loose memorandum-books this passage : —

" On looking through these pages, I have lighted on some remarks respecting Lord Lands- downe, in which he is represented as having been wanting in those pecuniary services towards me which his great wealth enabled him to bestow on me. Without entering into particulars on this subject, I will only say that, when my embarrassment wore its worst aspect, Lord L. came forward to take the whole weight of my loss, whatever it might be, on himself."

When Mrs. Moore died she bequeathed all the little she had to leave to her nephew, Charles Murray ; and he has since been called from earth, leaving a widow (a most estimable lady) and two lovely daughters. Mr. Murray was a most excellent and accomplished gentleman, respected, regarded, indeed beloved by all who knew him. He had much of the ready dramatic talent inherited from his father, one of the lights of the early Scottish stage. He was a brilliant companion, sang sweetly, and occasionally gave marvellous effect to comic songs. His widow presented to us many relics of the Poet, among others, the pencil-case he always used, a small harp that occasionally accompanied him to friendly parties, a small Bible, in which were recorded the names and birthdays of the five children, some autograph letters of deep interest, and several manuscripts.

And now there remain, I believe, excepting these two fair girls, none of the race on either side.

Like Byron, and Scott, and Southey, and Campbell, and a score others of the greatest men of the past age, the name is represented by " no son of his descending ; " yet of each the name will live for ever, inseparable from the land's language.*

* It is not long since we had as guests in oui drawing-room Maria Edgeworth and Felicia Hemans, the grand- daughters of oiu' old and honom'ed frieiids of half a century ago.

SAMUEL TAYLOE COLEEIDGE.

OETEY has been to me its own ' exceeding great reward ; ' it has soothed my afflictions, it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments, it has endeared solitude, it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and the beau- tiful in all that meets and surrounds me." These elo- quent and impressive words prefaced a book of poems bearing date "May, 1797," and up to a summer morning in 1834, when, " under the pressure of long and painful disease," he yielded to the universal conqueror, and joined the beatified spirits who praise God without let or hindrance from earth, the comfort and consolation thence derived had brought continual happiness to Yet was the joy of his heart and mind drawn from a far higher source. He lived and died a Christian, seeking salvation " through faith in Jesus, the Mediator," and earnestly and devoutly teaching "thanksgiving and adoring love," ending his last will and testament with these memorable words — " His staff AND His eod alike comfoet me."

It is a rare privilege to have known such a man. The influence of one so truly good as well as great cannot have been transitory. It is a joy to me now — nearly fifty years after his departure. I seem to hear the melodious voice, and look upon

Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

the gentle, gracious, and loving countenance of "the old man eloquent," as I write this Memory, a memory of him who, —

" in bewitching words, with happy heart, Didst chaunt the vision of that Ancient Man, The bright-eyed Mariner, and rueful woes Didst utter of the Lady Christabel."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born at St. Mary Ottery, on the 21st October, 1772, and was thus a native of my own beautiful county — the county of Devon.

" Sweet shire, that bounteous Nature richly dowers ; Sweet shire, whose glens and dells are faiiy bowers ; Sweet shii'e, whose very weeds are fragi-ant flowers."

His father, the Eev. John Coleridge, Vicar of Ottery, and head master of Henry YIII.'s Free Grammar School — "the King's School" — was a man of considerable learning, and also of much eccentricity. Many singular stories are told of him : among others, that he occasionally addressed his peasant congregation in Hebrew.

Coleridge was a solitary child, the youngest of a large family. Of weakly health, " huffed away from the enjoyments of muscular activity ; driven from life in motion to life in thought and sensation," he had " the simplicity and docility of a child, but not the child's habits," and early sought solace and companionship in books. In The Friend he informs us he had read a volume of " The Arabian Nights" before his fifth birthday. Through the interest of Judge Buher, one of his father's pupils, he obtained a presentation to Christ's Hospital, and was placed there on the 18th July, 1782. Christ's Hospital — the Bluecoat School- — was in 1782 very different from what it is in 1876. The hideous dress is now the only relic of the old management that made " such boys as were friendless, depressed, moping, half-starved, objects of reluctant and degrading charity." There is little doubt that the treatment he received induced a weakness of stomach that was the parent of much after-misery. The head master was the Rev. James Bowyer. Coleridge writes of him : — He was " a sensible, though a severe master," to whom "lute, harp, and lyre, muses and inspirations, Pegasus, Parnassus, and Hippocrene, were abominations." De Quincey considers his great idea was to "flog; " "the man knouted his way through life from bloody youth up to truculent old age." And Gillman relates that to such a pitch did he carry this habit, that once when a lady called upon him on " a visit of intercession," and was told to go away, but lingered at the door, the master exclaimed, " Bring that woman here, and I'll flog her'.'' Leigh Hunt thus describes the tyrant of the school : — " His eye was close and cruel ; " "his hands hung out of the sleeves of his coat as if ready for execution." He states that Coleridge, when he heard of the man's death, said " it was lucky the cherubim who took him to heaven were nothing but faces and wings, or he would infallibly have flogged them by the way."

Among his schoolfellows were Charles Lamb and, later, Leigh Hunt. The friend- ship with Lamb, then commenced, endured unchangingly through life. In one of the pleasantest of his essays he recalls to memory "the evenings when we used to sit and speculate at our old Salutation Tavern upon pantisocracy and golden days to

i

COLERIDGE. 29

come on earth." Wordsworth told Judge Coleridge that many of his uncle's sonnets were written from the " Cat and Salutation,'"'' .,

where Coleridge had " imprisoned himself for some time;" and Talfourd tells us it was there Lamb and Coleridge used to meet, talk- ing of poets and poetry, or, as Lamb says, " beguiling the cares of life with poetry, —

' Our lonely path to cheer, as travellers use, With merry tale, quaint song, or roundelay.' "

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Yet full draughts of knowledge Coleridge certainly took in at Christ's Hospital. Before his fifteenth year he " had translated the eight hymns of Synesius from the Greek into English anacreontics ; " he became captain of the school ; and in learning soon out- stripped all competitors. " From eight to eighteen," he writes," I was a playless day- dreamer, clumsy, slovenly, heedless of dress, and careless as to personal appearance, treated with severity by an unthinking master, yet ever luxuriating in books, wooing the muse, and wedded to verse." Ij

At the age of eighteen, on the 7th of February, 1790, after much discomfort and misery, he left Christ's Hospital for Jesus College, Cambridge. His fellow- scholars even then anticipated for him the fame which ^

many of them lived to see. " The friendly (^^ cloisters and happy groves of quiet, ever- honoured Jesus College " he quitted without a degree, although he obtained honours — - poetical honours, that is to say. His reading was too desultory ; in mathematics he made no way ; there was, consequently, little chance of the University providing him with an in- come, and he had to take his chance in the world. During his residence at Cambridge occurred that romantic episode with which all readers are familiar. Having come up to London greatly dispirited, on the 3rd of December, 1793, he enlisted in the 15th

* In the several memoirs of Coleridge and of Lamb, the inn is described as being in Smithfield ; I believe, however, it is in Newgate Street, No. 17. Peter Cunningham so states. Cunningham adds that " here Southey found out Coleridge, and sought to move him from the torpor of inaction." Lamb, in his femous letter to Southey, lemiads him of their meetings at the old tavern.

30 MEMORIES.

Light Dragoons, under the name of Silas Tomkin Cumberhatch. The story is told in various ways. Joseph Cottle, who professes to gather the facts from several " scraps " supplied by Coleridge at various times, infers that he enlisted because he was crossed in love. He made, of course, a bad soldier, and a worse rider. He did not long remain in the army. According to Cottle, he was standing sentry when two officers passed who were discussing one of the plays of Euripides, Coleridge, touching his cap, " corrected their Grreek."* Another, and more probable, statement is that one of the officers of the troop discovered some Latin lines which Coleridge had pinned up to the door of a stable. The discovery of his scholarship was made, however ; his discharge was soon arranged ; and he was restored to the University. Miss Mitford, in her " Recollections," states that the arrangements for his discharge took place at her father's house at Reading, where the 15th was then quartered, and adds that it was much facilitated by one of the servants who " waited at the table " agreeing to enlist in his stead.

What motive swayed the judgment, or what stormy "impulse drove the passionate despair of Coleridge into quitting Jesus College, Cambridge, was never clearly or certainly made known to the very nearest of his friends." De Quincey, who writes this, adds that he enlisted " in a frenzy of unhappy feeling at the rejection he met with from the lady of his choice." In 1836 I published in the 'New MontJihj Magazine an article entitled " A letter from Wales by the late S. T. Coleridge." It was addressed to Mr. Marten, a clergyman in Dorsetshire. Coleridge being at Wrexham, standing at the window of the inn, there passed by, to his utter astonishment, a young lady, " Mary Evans, quam afflict am et ]jerdite amaham — yea, even to anguish." "I sickened," he adds, " and well-nigh fainted, but instantly retired. God bless her ! Her image is in the sanctuary of my bosom, and never can it be torn thence but with the strings that grapple my heart to life." May not this incident, which seems to have been unknown to his biographers, supply a key to the motive of his enlistment, as surmised by both Cottle and De Quincey ?

After his return to Cambridge he formed, with Southey, the scheme of emigrating to America. Southey, in a letter to Montgomery long afterwards, thus briefly explains it : — " We planned an Utopia of our own, to be founded in the wilds of America, upon the basis of common property, each labouring for all — a Pantisockacy — a republic of reason and virtue." And Joseph Cottle writes : — " In 1794 Robert Lovell, a clever young Quaker, who had married a Miss Fricker, informed me that a few friends of his from Oxford and Cambridge, with himself, were about to sail to America, and on the banks of the Susquehana to form a ' social colony,' in which there was to be a community of property, and where all that was selfish was to be

* In 1837, after the death of Coleridge, a volume of " Early EecoUections " of the poet was published by Joseph Cottle, the bookseller of Bristol, by whom the poems of Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge were originally published in 1794. The book is not "to be entirely depended upon." So, at least, Southey says. Yet it is full of curious and most interesting matter, and, beyond doubt, the publisher was the attached, and generous, and sympa- thising friend of the three immortal men whom he may be said to have introduced to the world. James Montgomery's view of this work seems to me a just one : " that the reminiscent had not printed a single remark that was either dishonourable to himself or derogatory to the friendship that had existed between him and the highly-gifted individuals." Cottle's bookshop stood at the N.E. comer of High Street ; the house was burnt down long ago, and has been rebuilt. His residence was firfield House, Knowle, near Bristol, where he died in 1853, in his eighty- foui-th year.

COLERIDGE. 31

proscribed." Two of the " patriots " were introduced to the more prudent book- seller : one of them was Coleridge, the other Southey. It was speedily ascertained that their combined funds, instead of sufficing to "freight a ship," would not have purchased changes of clothing ; and very soon the Pantisocratic trio were necessi- tated to borrow a little money from the bookseller to pay their lodgings, which were then at 48, College Street, Bristol (the house is still standing, and remains in nearly its original condition). The scheme was, of course, abandoned, and Coleridge and Southey married the two sisters of Mr. Lovell's wife, resolved to settle down, for the present at least, at Bristol, with the intention of devoting themselves to literature.*

The shades of Chatterton, Southey, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb, Davy, Cottle, Lloyd, and of many others who are " famous for all time," consecrate the streets of Bristol. A dark cloud has for ever settled over the proud church of the Canynges, although a monument recalls the memory of the " marvellous boy" whose birthplace is but a stone's throw off — whose grave is past finding out among the accumulated rubbish of a graveyard in London. In Bristol great Southey was born, and there (in the city jail) Savage died, his grave, in one of the churchyards, yet unmarked by a memorial stone. f Here immortal Wordsworth first saw himself in print; here Humphry Davy had a vision of a lamp of greater worth than that of the fabled Aladdin ; here dwelt the profound essayist, John Foster ; here Eobert Hall glorified a Nonconformist pulpit ; here Hannah More taught to the young imperishable lessons of virtue, order, piety, and truth; here the sisters, Jane and Anna Maria Porter, dwelt in early youth and in venerated age ; and here the artists Lawrence, Bird, Danby, Pyne, and MuUer earned their first loaves of dry bread. But Bristol was never the nourishing mother of genius ; the birds from her nest, as soon as full- fledged, went forth — thenceforward uncared for ; they obtained no affection, and manifested no attachment. Here and there a few lines of tributary verse, and a gracious memory, bear misty records of friendships formed and services accorded in the great city of commercial prosperities ; but Bristol has assuredly not honoured, neither has she been honoured by, the worthies who in a sense belong to her, and of whom all the rest of the world is rightly and justly proud.

While at college Coleridge imbibed Socinian opinions, and his mind became " terribly unsettled." In his Monody on the Death of Chatterton (" sweet harper of time-shrouded minstrelsy") he thus indicated his sad and perilous forebodings : —

" I dare no longer on the sad theme muse, Lest kindred woes persuade a kindred doom."

He tells us that before his fifteenth year he had bewildered himself in meta- physics and theological controversy, " and found no end, in wandering mazes lost." One of the experiments, as to his future, was to become a preacher. He was looked upon by the Bristolians as the rising star of Unitarianism, and he did actually, on a few occasions, preach. He preached indeed, but in so odd a dress and so out of

* The miserable sneer of Byron will be remembered ; but the "three sisters" were of Bristol, and not of " Bath ; " in " Don Juan " they were transfeixed to Bath because the word suited better than Bristol for the rhyme

t^ I suRpested to a respected merchant of Bristol the removal of this reproach from the city, and I rejoice to say it has been done. I see no reason why I should not mention the name— Mr. Wilham Henry Wills.

MEMORIES.

the usual routine, that it was quite clear, as a minister, " he would not do."* Yet Hazlitt thus describes one of the sermons of the "half-inspired speaker:" — "I could not have been more delighted if I had heard the music of the spheres. Poetry and philosophy had met together ; truth and genius had embraced under the eye, and with the sanction, of Religion."

It was not long, however, before he struggled through the slough of Socinianism, and was freed from the trammels of infidelity. Cottle records how "he professed the deepest conviction of the truths of Revelation, of the fall of man, of the divinity of Christ, and redemption alone through His blood," and had heard him say, in argument with a Socinian minister, " Sir, you give up so much, that the little you retain of Christianity is not worth keeping." He is also represented as saying of Socinians on another occasion, that "if they were to offer to construe the will of their neighbour as they did that of their Maker, they would be scouted out of society ; " and he eagerly protested against the theory that there was " «o sphitual world, and no spiritual life in a spiritual world.'' He had " skirted the howling deserts of infidelity," but he had found a haven — one that sheltered him in pain, in trouble, even in the agonies of self-reproach. He became a thorough Christian, and ever after, in all his speakings and writings, was the advocate of the Redeemer, proclaiming in a memorable letter to his godson, Adam Steinmetz Kinnaird, and on many other opportunities, that " the greatest of all blessings, and the most ennobling of all privileges, was to be indeed a Christian." This passage is from his last will and testament (dated September 17, 1829). A few of the small things of earth he had to leave he bequeathed to Ann Gillman, " the wife of my dear friend, my love for whom, and my sense of unremitting goodness and never-wearied kindness to me, I hope, and humbly trust, will follow me as a part of my abiding being in that state into which I hope to rise, through the merits and mediation, and by the efiicacious power, of the Son of Grod incarnate, in the blessed Jesus, whom I believe in my heart, and confess with my mouth, to have been from everlasting the way and the truth, and to have become man, that for fallen and sinful men He might be the resurrection and the life."

In 1796 he started a publication which he called the Watchman, the motto of which was, " That all might know the truth, and that the truth might make us free." The first number was issued on the 5th of February, 1796, to be published every eighth day, at the price of fourpence. It soon died, involving its editor in a heavy debt, which, happily, a friend discharged. In the " Biographia Literaria " there is a lively account of his travels in search of subscribers, mingled with some painful reminiscences of "those days of shame and regret," the degrading anxieties of his canvass. He was reminded by one to whom he applied, that twelve shillings a year was a large sum to be bestowed on one person, when there were so many objects of charity ; a noble lord, vi^hose name had been given him as a subscriber,

* Joseph Cottle says— "He preached twice at the Socinian chapel in Bath, in blue coat and white -waistcoat, once on the Corn Laws and once on the hair-powder tax ! " The answer of Charles Lamb will be called to mind. Coleridge asked him, " Charles, did you ever hear me preach 1" "I never heard you do anything else," was the reply.

COLERIDGE. ,,

reproved him for impudence in directing his pamphlets to him; a rich tallow- chandler was " as great a one as any man in Brummagem for liberty and them sort of thmgs," but begged to be excused ; while an opulent cotton-dealer in Manchester was " overrun with these articles," and another " had no time for reading, and no money to spare." At the ninth number he " dropped the work," and had the satisfaction^ of seeing his servant light his fires with the surplus stock, recording the event in this expressive line —

" O Watchman, thou hast watched in vain ! "

But, in truth, he soon disgusted all his Jacobin supporters by attacking "modern patriotism," and raising a warning voice against it. Like " Balaam, the son of Beor," he blessed where he was employed to curse. Instead of advocating infidelity and the freedom that France was then brewing in her infernal caldron, French morals, and French philosophy, he " avowed his conviction that national education, and a concurring spread of the Gospel, were the indispensable condition of any true political amelioration." Loyalty is now the easiest of all our duties— thank God ! It was not so when Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth were Kepublicans. While residing at Stowey, and having Wordsworth for his constant companion, Coleridge and his friend were suspected of being Jacobins ; they were actually placed under surveillance, and a spy was ordered to watch their movements. They were guilty of talking to each other "real Hebrew Greek," and of wandering about the hills with papers in their hands ; but nothing more formidable being urged, they remained at large.

The help of Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood — worthy sons of a great father, honoured be the name ! — by settling on Coleridge an'annuity of £150, placed him at comparative ease. "Thenceforward," he writes, " instead of troubling others with my own crude notions, I was better employed in attempting to store my own head with the wisdom of others." By that help "I was enabled to finish my education in Germany." In September, 1798, he sailed with Wordsworth and his sister from Great Yarmouth to Hamburg. He was but fourteen months absent, and returned to London in November, 1799. The fruits of his journey were seen in his translation of " Wallenstein," which he wrote at a lodging in Buckingham Street, Strand. His travels in Germany, entitled "Fragments of a Journey over the Brocken," &c., he gave to me in 1828, for publication in the Amulet (one of the then popular " Annuals," of which I was editor from the year 1825 to the year 1836) ; they were subsequently reprinted by Mr. Gillman, in his Life of Coleridge.* They contained the well-known poem —

" I stood on Brocken's sov'ran height."

He was soon afterwards engaged in the literary department of the Morning Post. Subsequently he visited Malta, Rome, Naples, and other parts of Italy, from which,

* Tn 1835 I printed, in the New Monthly Magazine, of which I was then the editor, three letters from Coleridge to his wife (his " dearest love," from her " faithful hustand "), dated May, 1799, which contain more details of his tour than are found ia the " Fragments." T cannot call to mind from whom I received them : a prefatory note states that they were given to the writer by Mr. Coleridge in ]8'28. It would appear that Wordsworth and Coleridge did not long travel together : Coleridge names his companions— Wordsworth is not among them. One of them. Dr. Clement Carlyon, F.R.S., published in 1836 a volume entitled "Early Years and Late Eecollections," a principal part of which is occupied with details of this tour ; it contains very little of any value. He states, however, that the beautiful poem, " I stood on Brocken's sov'ran height," was certainly wiitten at the inn at AVerningerode.

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34 MEMORIES.

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however, he made a rapid exit, an order for his arrest having been sent, it is said, by Buonaparte, in consequence of his writings in the Morning Post.

The Friend, another literary venture, was published weekly ; it reached its twenty-seventh number, and, like the Watchman, ceased from want of support. It was unfortunately printed at Penrith, and Coleridge was actually induced to set up a printer there, to buy and lay in a stock of type, paper, &c. The result was assured; the- printer failed, and Coleridge had to sustain a severe pecuniary loss.

The circumstances that kept Coleridge apart from his wife during the greater portion of his life form one of those hidden mysteries into which it is not our business to inquire. Coleridge was married to Miss Sara Fricker on the 4th of October, 1795, at the church of St. Mary Redcliff, Bristol. There is abundant testimony to the amiable qualities and pure character of Mrs. Coleridge. De Quincey, perhaps, is the best authority on the subject: — "She was in all circumstances a virtuous wife and a conscientious mother." Moreover, she was by no means common-place: the affection borne for her by her sister's husband, Southey, and her long and close companionship with the high-souled Laureate, woiild suffice as evidence on that head. De Quincey records that, wishing her daughter to learn Italian, and in her retirement at Keswick finding it impossible to procure the aid of a master, she resolutely set herself to the task of acquiring the language, that she might teach it to her child ; and Cottle prints a poem written by her of more than ordinary merit. I received the following note concerning Mrs. Coleridge from one who knew her well and loved her dearly : — " She was a woman of rare qualities, very clever and accomplished,, witty, and possessed of taste. and judgment in no common measure ; extremely industrious, labouring for the mental and bodily needs of her children through a long life. Frugality in her reached to a great virtue. She was of transparent truthfulness, in thought, word, and deed. Her unusually clear statements were very striking both in writing and speaking. She probably withheld her ' candid admiration of her husband's intellectual powers,' which she undoubtedly was quite capable of appreciating, for she was impatient of what she conceived to be his impractical habits in matters of daily life, and that by which it must be clothed and fed. I have heard her speak sadly on that point ; and I have often heard her speak most emphatically of his purity, of his uncommon gifts, and of his unlikeness to ordinary men. They took a pride in each other to the last. The mystery of their long separation can better be solved by the very common -place facts of difficulties in matters of L. S. D. than in any of the guesses that meet one on every side. Had Samuel Taylor Coleiidge been a rich — or even moderately well-off — man, he and his wife would have undoubtedly ended their days under the same roof. An unromantic explanation, but nevertheless the true one. They now rest side by side in Highgate Churchyard." *

* These lines are from a poem addressed by Coleridge to his "pensive Sara," not long after their marriage :—

" Meek daughter in the fanuLy of Christ, WeU hast thou said, and holily dispraised These shapings of the unregenerate mind, Bubbles that glitter as they rise, and break On vain Philosophy's aye-bubbling spring,"

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The three children of that marriage have all been, or are, distinguished in the world of letters. The eldest was Hartley Coleridge, who died young, but not until he had given to the world many poems that place his name among the poets of the century, giving him rank, indeed, beside his great father. He was tenderly beloved in life by the Laureate, Robert Southey, who alludes to him in " The Doctor," as his " wife's nephew ; " and by William Wordsworth, who had depicted him, when a child, as one "whose genius from afar was brought;" and who, when his mortal remains were to be laid in Grasmere Churchyard, selected the place for his burial close to his own allotted resting-place, saying, "Hartley, I know, would like to lie near me." Sara, the only daughter, married her cousin, H. N. Coleridge, and edited some of her great father's works, inheriting, indeed, much of his genius. Ample proof of this is given in her notes to the " Biographia Literaria," and the Introduc- tory Essay to the " Aids to Reflection." Those who knew her describe her as lovely in person and in mind. Derwent Coleridge, the youngest of his children, is happily still with us, in healthy vigour. He has written a memoir, and edited the works, of his friend Mackworth Praed. He has long been recognised as a ripe scholar, and was formerly the Principal of St. Mark's College, Fulham : he is now the rector of Hanwell. His name is associated with that of his brother as his biographer and editor of his writings ; with that of his father as the latest editor of his principal works. He has also published works on his own account, which evince his merit as a divine and critic, and, above all, as an educationist. Thus the name of Coleridge has been continued in honour and in usefulness, and no doubt it will be so to another generation ; for not long ago, a grandson, Herbert Coleridge, achieved eminence, and was called away ; and there are others who are bearing it with distinction. Genius is sometimes, though not often, hereditary.

To the list is to be added the nephew of the poet, the late Judge Coleridge, and the even more highly-honoured name of his son, the present Chief Justice Coleridge, who represented in Parliament the city of Exeter, and who obtained high renown as one of the soundest lawyers and most eloquent of the men of the House of Commons.

The cottage at Clevedon, near Bristol, in which the young couple went to reside, heedless of all the requirements of life, and with literally nothing " to begin life " * upon, is still standing, and is one of the " lions " of the place. The village was then essentially rural ; it is now. a fashionable watering-place. The cottage, whish the poet thus describes —

" Low was our pretty cot— our tallest rose Peeped at the chamber window ; ' ' .... In the open air

Our myrtles blossomed, and across the porch Thick jasmines twined" —

is now common-place enough. "The white-flowered jasmine" and the " broad-

* He seems to have faced and dared matrimony on an offer made him by the Bristol bookseller. " I told him, says Cottle, " I would give him one guinea and a half for every hundred lines he would give to me, whether rhyme or blank verse." That, in the estimation of the sanguine poet, was a certain income ; for when a practical friend, with an eye i-ather to market prices than the Muses, asked him, " How was he to keep the pot boiling ? " he answered, "Mr. Qottte had made him such an offer that he felt no solicitude on that head."

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leaved myrtle" (" meet emblems they of innocence and love") no longer blossom there ; but the place has a memory ; for there, out of " thick-coming fancies," were planned and penned some of the sweetest and grandest poems in our language — poems that have given joy to milHons, and will continue to delight as long as that language is spoken or read. It is now called "Coleridge Cottage," and is depicted in the accompanying woodcut. The Bristolians love the place for its fresh sea-breezes and airs redolent of health that come from heath-covered downs. Will no generous hand restore as well as preserve it, that thither the young and hopeful and trustful may make pilgrimage, that there the aged may think calmly over a troubled past,

" And tranquil muse upon tranquillity ! "

COLERIDGE COTTAGE AT CLEVEDON.

Subsequently he removed to a cottage at AUfoxden. The rent of the cottage was but seven pounds a year. William Howitt describes it as a poor place; but the nightingales sing there yet, and traces of past pleasantness may be noted; the orchard trees, and the " Kme-tree bower," in which the poet thought and wrote, flourish there still.

In 1816 the wandering and unsettled ways of the poet were calmed and harmonised in the home of the Gillmans at Highgate, where the remainder of bis days— nearly twenty years — were passed in entire quiet and comparative happiness. Mr. Gillman was a surgeon, and it is understood that Coleridge went to reside with

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him chiefly to be under his surveillance, to break himself of the fearful habit he had contracted of eating opium ; a habit that grievously impaired his mind, engendered terrible self-reproach, and embittered the best years of his life.* He was the guest and the beloved friend, as well as the patient, of Mr. Gillman, whose devoted attach- ment, with that of his estimable wife, supplied the calm contentment and seraphic peace — such as might have been the dream of the poet and the hope of the man. Honoured be the name, and reverenced the memory, of this "general practitioner," this true friend ! It is recorded of Fulke Greville, the counsellor of kings, that he ordered it to be placed on his monument, as his proudest boast, that he was

" The Mend of Sir Philip Sidney."

. i — ■- - " - J ' '

THE HOUSE 01" THE GILLMANS AT HIGHGATE,

It is a loftier title to the gratitude of posterity, that which James Gillman claims when his tombstone records the fact that he was

" The Mend of S. T. Coleridge,"

carving also on the stone two of his dear friend's lines —

" Mercv for praise, to be forgiven for fame, He asked, and hoped through Chi'ist— do thou the same.

* De Quincey more than insinuates that instead of GiUman persuading Coleridge to relinquish opium, Coleridge seduced GiUman into taking it.

38 MEMORIES.

Gillman died on the 1st of June, 1837, having arranged to publish a Life of Coleridge, of which he produced but the first volume.*

Coleridge's habit of taking opium was no secret. In 1816 it had already reached a fearful pitch. It had produced " during many years an accumulation of bodily suffering that wasted the frame, poisoned the sources of enjoyment, and entailed an intolerable mental load that scarcely knew cessation ; " the poet himself called it " the accursed drug." In 1814 Cottle wrote him a strong protest against this terrible and ruinous habit, entreating him to renounce it. Coleridge said in reply, " You have poured oil into the raw and festering wound of an old friend, Cottle, but it is oil of vitriol." He accounts for the " accursed habit " by stating that he had taken it first to obtain relief from intense bodily suffering, and he seriously contemplated entering a private insane asylum as the surest means of its removal. His remorse was terrible and perpetual ; he was " rolling rudderless," " the wreck of what he once was," " helpless and hopeless." He revealed this " dominion " to De Quincey " with a deep expression of horror at the hideous bondage." It was this " conspiracy of himself against himself" that poisoned his life. He describes it with frantic pathos as "the scourge, the curse, the one almighty blight, that had desolated his life ; " the thief,

"To steal From my own nature all the natural man."

The habit was, it would seem, commenced in 1802 ; and if Mr. Cottle is to be credited, in 1814 he had been long accustomed to take "from two quarts of laudanum in a week to a pint a day." He did, it is said, ultimately conquer it: " there is more joy in heaven over one that repenteth, than over the ninety and nine who need no repentance."

It was during his residence with the Gillmans that I knew Coleridge. He had arranged to write for the AmiiJet, and circumstances warranted my often seeing him — a privilege of which I gladly availed myself. In this home at Highgate, where all even of his whims were studied Avith affectionate and attentive care, he preferred the quiet of home influences to the excitements of society ; and although I more than once met there his friend, Charles Lamb, and other noteworthy men of whom I shall have to say something, I usually found him, to my delight, alone. There he cultivated flowers, fed his pensioners, the birds, and wooed the little children^who gamboled on the heath where he took his walks daily. f I have seen him often — as Thomas Carlyle (honoured and loved among his many friends) saw him often—" on the brow of Highgate Hill, looking down on London and its smoke-tumult like a sage escaped from the inanity of life's battle, attracting towards him the thoughts of

* Gillman published but one volume of a life of Coleridge. The copy he gave me contains his con-ections for another edition. De Guincey says of it that " it is a thing deader than a door-nail, which is waiting vainly, and for thousands of years is doomed to wait, for its sister volume, namely, Volume Second." It must be ever regretted, that of the poet's later life, of which he knew so much, he wrote nothing; but the world was justified in expecting, even in the details of his earlier pilgrimage, sometning which it did not get.

t " His room looked upon a delicious prospect of wood and meadow, with coloured gardens under the window, like an embroidery to the mantle. Here he cultivated his flowers, and had a set of birds for his pensioners, who came to breakfast with him. He might have been seen taking his daily stroU up and down, with his black coat and white locks, and a book in his hand, and was a great acquaintance of the little childi'en."— Leigh Huht.

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COLERIDGE.

39

innumerable brave bearts still engaged there."* It is a beautiful view, such as can be rarely seen out of England, that w^hich the poet had from the -window of his bed-chamber. Underneath, a valley, rich in " patrician trees," divides the hill of Highgate from that of Hampstead. The tower of the old church at Hampstead rises above a thick wood — a dense forest it seems — although here and there a

"■^HiECHAMBKB OF SAMUEL TAYLOB COLEBIDGE.

graceful villa stands out from among the dar^ green drapery that enfolds it. It is easy to imagine the poet often contrasting this home-scene with that of " Brocken's

• " Toleride'e sat on the brow of Hie-hgate HiU, in those years, looking down on London and its smoke-tumult like a sage eSdfrZ the inanity of Ufe's battle, attracting towards him tLe thoughts of innumerable brave souls stiU enefLdKms express contributions to poetry, philosophy, or any specifio provmce of human hterature ?;^exS|hTenment had^'blen'S Ind sadly interm^itte/tfbut he had -P-ially among Y^-ng mquirmg men, a his-her than literarv a kind of prophetic, character. He was thought to hold, he alone m Jingiana, tne J^<^y oi

' God, freedom, immortality,' still his : a king of men! "— Caelyle.

40 MEMORIES.

sov'ran height," where no " finei' influence of friend or child" had greeted him, and exclaiming —

" O thou queen ! Thou delegated Deity of earth, O dear, dear England ! "

And what a wonderful change there is in the scene when the pilgrim to the shrine at Highgate leaves the garden, and walks a few steps beyond the elm avenue that still fronts the house ! Here he looks over London, " the mighty heart " of a great

free country

' Earth hath not anything to show more fair ; Dull would he be of soul, who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty."

Fifty years have brought houses all about the place, and shut in the prospect ; yet from any ascent you may see regal Windsor on one side, and Gravesend on the other — twenty miles of view, look which way you will. But when the poet dwelt there, all London was within ken a few yards from his door. The house has undergone some changes ; still the garden is much as it was when I used to find the poet feeding his birds there. It has the same wall — moss-covered now — that overhangs the dell ; a shady tree-walk shelters it from sun and rain ; it was the poet's walk at mid-day. A venerable climber — the glycenas — was no doubt planted by the poet's hand ; it was new to England when he was old, and what more likely than that his friends, the Gillmans, would -have bidden him plant it where it has since flourished fifty years or more ? Many who visit it will say, in the words of Charles Lamb, his " fifty years old friend, without a dissension,"—" What was his house is consecrated to me a chapel."

I was fortunate in sharing some of the regard of Mr. and Mrs. Grillman. After the poet's death, they gave me his inkstand (a plain inkstand of wood,* which is before me as I write, and a myrtle on which his eyes were fixed as he died : it is now an aged and gnarled tree, and was long honoured in our conservatory. As we have now no sufficiently large conservatory, a friend more fortunate has the charge of this treasure.!

* Since this was written, I have had the privilege, the honour, and the happiness, to present this inkstand to the poet Longfellow.

+ Mrs. Gillman gave me also the following sonnet. I believe it never to have been published ; but, although she requested I " would not have copies of it made to give away," I presume the prohibition cannot now be binding, after a lapse of forty years since I received it. The poet, he who wrote the sonnet, and the admirable woman to whom it was addressed, have long since met.

" Sonnet on the late Samuel Taylor Coleeidgb.

" And thou art gone, most loved, most honour'd friend ! No, never more thy gentle voice shall blend With air of earth, its pure, ideal tones, Binding in one, as with harmonious zones. The heart and intellect. And I no more Shall with thee gaze on that unfathom'd deep, ' The human soul, as when, push'd off the shore, Thy mystic bark would through the darkness sweep, Itself the while so bright ! For oft we seem'd As on some starless sea — all dark above. All dark below ; yet, onward as we drove, To plough up light that ever round us stream'd. But he who mourns is not as one bereft Of all he loved : thy living Truths are left."

"Washington Allston. " Cambridge Port, Massachusetts, America,

"For my still dear Mend, Mrs. Gillman, of the Grove, Highgate."

COLERIDGE. 41

One of the very few letters of Coleridge I have preserved I transcribe, as it illustrates his goodness of heart and willingness to put himself to inconvenience for others : —

"Deak, Sir," it runs, "I received some five days ago a letter depicting the distress and urgent want of a widow and a sister, with whom, during the husband's lifetime, I was for two or three years a house-mate, and yesterday the poor lady came up herself, almost clamorously soliciting me, not indeed to assist her from my own purse — for she was previously assured that there was nothing therein— but to exert myself to collect the sum of £20, which would save her from God knows what. On this hopeless task — for perhaps never man whose name had been so often in print for praise or reprobation had so few intimates as myself — I recollected that before I left Highgate for the sea-side, you had been so kind as to intimate that you considered some trifle due to me. "Whatever it be, it will go some way to eke out the sum, vphich I have with a sick heart been all this day trotting about to make up, guinea by guinea. You will do me a real service (for my health perceptibly sinks under this unaccustomed flurry of my spirits) if you could make it convenient to enclose to me, however small the sum may be, if it amount to a bank note of any denomination, directed ' Grove, Highgate,' where I am, and expect to be any time for the next eight months. In the meantime, believe me,

" Your obliged,

" S. T. Coleridge.

" \th December, 1828."

I find also, at the back of one of his manuscripts, the following poem, which I believe to be unpublished. I cannot discover it in any edition of his works.

"LOVE'S BURIAL-PLACE. "A Madeigal.

" Lady. — If Love be dead —

Pout. — And I aver it.

iatZz/.— TeU me, Bard, where Love lies buried.

Poei.— Love lies buried where 'twas born. O gentle dame, think it no scorn. If in my fancy I presume To call thy bosom poor Love's tomb, And on that tomb to read the Hue — ' Here lies a Love that once seemed mine, But caught a chill, as I divine, And died at length of a decline ! '"

I have engraved a copy of his autograph lines, as he wrote them in Mrs. Hall's Album ; they will be found too, as a note, in the " Biographia Literaria : " —

" On the Portrait of the Butterfly, on the 2nd Leaf of this Album. " The Butterfly the ancient Grecians made The soul's fail- emblem, and its only name ; But of the soul escaped the slavish trade Of earthly life ! For in this mortal frame Ours is the reptile's lot, much toil, much blame. Manifold motions making little speed, And to deform and kill the thiags whereon we feed ! "

" S. T. Coleridge.

"30«A^pni, 1830."

All who had the honour of the poet's friendship or acquaintance speak of the marvellous gift which gave to this illustrious man almost a character of inspiration. Montgomery describes the poetry of Coleridge as like electricity, "flashing at rapid intervals with the utmost intensity of effect," and contrasts it with that of Wordswdrth, like galvanism, " not less powerful, but rather continuous than sudden in its wonderful influences." Wilson, in the " Noctes," writes thus : "Wind him up, and away he goes, discoursing most eloquent music, without a discord, full, ample, inexhaustible, serious, and divine ; " and in another place, " He becomes

42 MEMORIES.

inspired by his own silver voice, and pours out wisdom like a sea." Wordsworth speaks of him " as quite an epicure in sound." The liveliest and truest image he could give of Coleridge's talk was that of " a majestic river, the sound or sight of whose course you caught at intervals, which was sometimes concealed by forests, sometimes lost in sand, then came flashing out, broad and distinct, then again took a turn which your eye could not follow, yet you knew and felt that it was the same river." The painter Hay don makes note of his " lazy luxury of poetical outpouring; " and Rogers {" Table Talk ") is reported to have said, " One morning, breakfasting with me, he talked for three hours without intermission, so admirably, that I wished every word he uttered had been written down ; " but he does not quote a single sentence of all the poet said.* And a writer in the Quarterly Revieiv expresses his belief that " nothing is too high for the grasp of his conversation, nothing too low ; it glanced from earth to heaven, from heaven to earth, with a speed and a splendour, an ease and a power, that almost seemed inspired." De Quincey said that he had " the lai'gest and most spacious intellect, the subtlest and the most comprehensive, that has yet existed amongst men." Of Coleridge, Shelley writes : —

" All things he seemed to understand, Of old or new, at sea or land, Save his own soul, which was a mist."

The wonderful eloquence of his conversation can be comprehended only by those Avho have heard him speak — " linked sweetness long drawn out ; " it was sparkling at times, and at times profound ; but the melody of his voice, the impres- sive solemnity of his manner, the radiant glories of his intellectual countenance, bore off, as it were, the thoughts of the listener from his discourse, who rarely carried away any of the gems that fell from the poet's lips.

I have listened to him more than once for above an hour, of course without putting in a single word ; I would as soon have attempted a song while a nightingale was singing. There was rarely much change of countenance ; his face, when I knew him, was overladen with flesh, and its expression impaired ; yet to me it was so tender, and gentle, and gracious, and loving, that I could have knelt at the old man's feet almost in adoration. My own hair is white now ; yet I have much the same feeling as I had then, whenever the form of the venerable man rises in memory before me. Yet I cannot recall — and I believe could not recall at the time, so as to preserve as a cherished thing in my remembrance — a single sentence of the many sentences I heard him utter. In his " Table Talk " there is a world of wisdom, but that is only a collection of scraps, chance-gathered. If any left his presence unsatisfied, it resulted rather from the superabundance than the paucity of the feast, f And probably there has never been an author who was less of an egotist:

* Madame de Stael said that Coleridge was " rich in a monologue, but poor in a dialogue ; " and HazUtt said sneeringly, "Excellent talker, very— if you would let him start from no premises, and come to no conclusion."

t It may not be forgotten that the Rev. Edward Irving, in dedicating to Coleridge one of his books, acknow- ledges his obligations to the venerable sage for many valuable teachings, " as a spiritual man and as a Christian pastor," lessons derived from his "conversations " concerning the revelations of the Christian faith— "helps in the way of truth "—from listening to his discources. Charles Lamb thus writes : " He would talk from morn to dewy eve, nor cease till fer midnight, yet who would interrupt him, who would obstruct that continuous flow of con- verse fetched from Hebron or Zion?" Coleridge has said, "he never found the smallest hitch or impediment in the fullest utterance of his most subtle fancies by word of mouth."

COLERIDGE. 43

it was never of himself he talked ; he was always under the influence of that divine precept, " It is more blessed to give than to receive."

I can recall many evening rambles with him over the high lands that look down on London ; but the memory I cherish most is linked with a crowded street, where the clumsy and the coarse jostled the old man eloquent, as if he had been earthy, of the earth. It was in the Strand : he pointed out to me the window of a room in the office of the Morning Post where he had consumed much midnight oil ; and then for half an hour he talked of the sorrowful joy he had often felt when, leaving the office as day was dawning, he heard the song of a caged lark that sung his orisons from the lattice of an artisan who was rising to begin his labour as the poet was pacing homewards to rest after his work all night. Thirty years had passed, but that unforgotten melody — that dear bird's song — gave him then as much true pleasure as when, to his wearied head and heart, it was the matin hymn of nature.

I remember once meeting him in Paternoster Row ; he was inquiring his way to Bread Street, Cheapside, and, of course, I endeavoured to explain to him that if he walked on for about two hundred yards, and took the fourth turning to the right, it would be the street he wanted. I noted his expression, so vague and unenlightened, that I could not help expressing my surprise as I looked earnestly at his forehead, and saw the organ of " locality" unusually prominent above the eyebroAvs. He took my meaning, laughed, and said, " I see what you are looking at : why, at school my head was beaten into a mass of bumps, because I could not point out Paris in a map of France." It has been said that Spurzheim pronounced him to be a mathematician, and affirmed that he could not be a poet. Such opinion the great phrenologist could not have expressed, for undoubtedly he had a large organ of ideality, although at first it was not perceptible, in consequence of the great breadth and height of his profound forehead.

Whenever.it was my privilege to be admitted to the evening meetings at High- gate, I met some of the men who were then famous, and have since become parts of the literature of England, among whom sat Coleridge talking, and looking " all sweet and simple and divine things, the very personification of meekness and humihty," though fully aware that he was the centre of an intellectual circle. Indeed, to his utter unselfishness witness is tendered by all who have ever written concerning him : he seemed striving to think how much he could give to, and never what he might get from, those with whom he came in contact. Even his engrossing conversation is evidence of this ; and there is abundant proof that he ever sought to make the best of the works of others, though very rarely referring to his own.

I attended one of his lectures at the Royal Institution, and I strive to recall him as he stood before his audience there. There was but little animation ; his theme did not seem to stir him into life ; the ordinary repose of his countenance was rarely broken up ; he used little or no action ; and his voice, though mellifluous, was monotonous. He lacked, indeed, that earnestness without which no man is truly eloquent.

At the time I speak of he was growing corpulent and heavy ; being seldom free from pain, he moved apparently with difficulty, yet liked to walk, with shuffling gait,

up and down and about the room as he talked, pausing now and then as if oppressed by suffering.

I need not say that I was a silent listener during the evenings to which I refer, when there were present some of those who " teach us from their urns ; " but I was free to gaze on the venerable man — one of the humblest, and one of the most fervid, perhaps, of the worshippers by whom he was surrounded, and to treasure in memory the poet's gracious and loving looks^the "thick waving silver hair" — the still, clear blue eye ; and on such occasions I used to leave him as if I were in a waking dream,^ ti'ying to recall, here and there, a sentence of the many weighty and mellifluous sentences I had heard — seldom with success — and feeling at the moment as if I had been surfeited with honey.

May I not now lament that I did not foresee a time when I might be called upon to write concerning this good and great and most lovable man ? How much I might have enriched these pages — now but weak records of the impressions I received !

Many famous men have described the personal appearance of the poet. The best portrait of him is, I think, from the pen of Wordsworth : —

"A noticeable man, with large, grey eyes, And a pale face, that seemed, -undoubtedly, As if a blooming face it ought to be ; Heavy his low-hung lip did oft appear, Depress'd by weight of moving phantasy ; Profound his forehead was, though not severe."

Wordsworth also speaks of him as " the brooding poet with the heavenly eyes," and as " often too much in love with his own dejection." That the one loved the other dearly is certain : they were more than mere words those that Wordsworth addressed to Coleridge : —

" O friend ! O poet ! brother of my soul ! "

But the earliest word-portrait we have of him was drawn by Wordsworth's sister in 1797 : — " At first I thought him very plain ; that is, for about three minutes. He is pale, thin, has a wide mouth, thick lips, longish, loose-growing, half-curling, rough black hair. His eye is large and full, and not dark, but grey, such an eye as would receive from a heavy soul the dullest expression ; but it speaks every emotion of his animated mind. He has fine dark eyebrows, and an overhanging forehead." This is De Quincey's sketch of him in 1807 : — " In height he seemed about five feet eight inches ; in reality he was an inch and a half taller.* His person was broad and full, and tended even to corpulence ; his complexion was fair, though not what painters technically call fair, because it was associated with black hair ; his eyes were soft and large in their expression, and it was by a peculiar appearance of haze or dimness which mixed with their light." "A lady of Bristol," writes De Quincey, " assured me she had not seen a young man so engaging in his exterior as Coleridge when young, in 1796. He had then a blooming and healthy complexion, beautiful and

* De Q,uincey elsewhere states his height to be five feet ten inches— exactly the height of Wordsworth— both having been measured in the studio of the painter Haydon.

COLERIDGE. 45

luxuriant hair falling in natural curls over his shoulders." Lockhart says, "Cole- ridge has a grand head ; nothing can surpass the depth of meaning in his eyes, and the unutterable dreamy luxury of his lips." Hazlitt describes him in early manhood as " with a complexion clear, and even light, a forehead broad and high, as if built of ivory, with large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them like a sea with darkened lustre. His mouth was rather open, his chin good-humoured and round, and his nose small. His hair, black and glossy as the raven's wing, fell in smooth masses over his forehead — long, liberal hair, peculiar to enthusiasts."

" A certain tender bloom his face o'erspread."

Sir Humphry Davy, writing of him in 1808, says, " His mind is a wilderness, in which the cedar and the oak, which might aspire to the skies, are stunted in their growth by underwood, thorns, briers, and parasitical plants : with the most exalted genius, enlarged views, sensitive heart, and enlightened mind, he will be the victim of want of order, precision, and regularity." And Leigh Hunt speaks of his open, indolent, good-natured mouth, and of his forehead as " prodigious — a great piece of placid marble," Wordsworth again —

" Noisy lie was, and gamesome as a boy, Tossing his limbs about him in delight."

In the autumn of 1833, Emerson, on his second visit to England, called on Colerilge. He found him, " to appearance, a short, thick old man, with bright blue eyes and fine clear complexion." The poet, however, did not impress the American favourably, and the hour's talk was of " no use, beyond the gratification of curiosity." They did" not assimilate : it was not given to the hard and cold thinker to compre- hend the nature of "the brooding poet with the heavenly eyes ; " and assuredly Coleridge could have had but small sympathy with his unsought-for, and perhaps unwelcome guest. A more minute, and certainly a more true picture is that which Carlyle formed of him, in words some years later, and probably not long before his removal from earth : — " Brow and head were round, and of massive weight, but the face was flabby and irresolute. The deep eyes, of a light hazel, were as full of sorrow as of inspiration ; confused pain looked mildly from them, as in a kind of mild astonishment. The whole figure and air, good and amiable otherwise, might be called flabby and irresolute, expressive of weakness under possibility of strength. He hung loosely on his limbs, with knees bent, and stooping attitude : in walking he rather shuflfled than decisively stepped ; and a lady once remarked, he never could fix which side of the garden-walk would suit him best, but continually shifted in corkscrew fashion, and kept trying both. A heavy-laden, high-aspiring, and surely much-sufi'ering man. His voice, naturally soft and good, had contracted itself into a plaintive snuffle and sing-song ; he spoke as if preaching— you would have said preaching earnestly, and also hopelessly, the weightiest things." About the same period a writer in the Qaavterhj Review ^\x^ pictures him :— " His clerical-looking dress, ihe thick waving silver hair, the youthful-coloured cheek, the indefinable mouth and lips, the quick, yet steady and penetrating greenish-grey eye, the slow and continuous enunciation, and the everlasting music of his tones." Procter,

46 MEMORIES.

writing of him, says :— " In his mature age he had a full round face, a fine broad forehead, rather thick lips, and strange, dreamy eyes." In Lamb's words, "his white hair shrouded a capacious brain."

There are several portraits of him. The best is that which was painted by his friend Alston, the American artist, at Rome, in 1806. Wordsworth speaks of it as " the only likeness of the great original that ever gave me the least pleasure."* The woodcut at the head of this notice is engraved from the portrait by Northcote : it strongly recalls him to my remembrance.

Although in youth and earlier manhood Coleridge had perpetually been—

" Chasing chance-starting friendships,"

not long before his death he is described as " thankful for the deep, calm peace of mind he then enjoyed— a peace such as he had never before experienced, nor scarcely hoped for." All things were then looked at by him through an atmosphere by which all were reconciled and harmonised.

It is true that he failed to perform all he purposed to do : of what high soul can it be said otherwise ? But his friend. Justice Talfourd, who, while testifying to the benignity of his nature, describes his life as "one splendid and sad prospectus," does the poet and philosopher scant justice. What he might have done was, perhaps, hardly known to himself, and could but be guessed at by others. Whatever the "promise" may have been, the "performance" was prodigious. To quote the words of his nephew, H, N. Coleridge, " he did, in his vocation, the day's work of a giant." The American edition of his works, which is not quite complete, extends to seven closely-printed volumes, each of more than seven hundred pages ! If he had done nothing but " talk," his life would not have been spent idly or in vain, as the " Table-Talk " may testify ; but as a writer, who of the generation has done more ? If, as Hazlitt writes, in the later years of his life, " he may be said to have lived on the sound of his own voice ; " and if, according to Wordsworth, " his mental power was frozen at its marvellous source;"! yet what a world of wealth he has bequeathed to us, although the whole produce of his pen, in poetry, is compressed within one single small volume ! All must lament that this illustrious man whom De Quincey describes as " the largest and most spacious intellect, the subtlest and the most comprehensive, that has yet existed among men," should have given way to the evil habit which made life miserable to him. But while lamenting what we have thereby lost, we may be consoled by the excellence of what has been preserved.

A few months ago I again drove to Highgate, and visited the house in which the poet passed so many happy years of calm contentment and seraphic peace ; again repeated these lines, which, next to his higher faith, expressed the faith by which his life was ruled and guided : —

' ' He prayeth best who loveth best All things both great and small, For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all! " t

* This portrait is now in the National Portrait Gallery. ^^

+ Very early in his life Lord Egmont said of him, " He talks very much like an angel, and does nothing at all.' De Quincey speaks of his indolence as "inconceivable ; " and Joseph Cottle relates some amusing instances of his forgetfulness even of the hour at which he had arranged to deliver a lecture to an assembled audience.

+ It was once said to me, by a common "navvy," "I wouldn't give much for a man's Christianity .if his dog was none the better for it."

COLERIDGE.

47

His mortal remains lie in a vault in the graveyard of the old church at Highgate. He was a " stranger " in the parish where he died, notwithstanding his long residence there, and was, therefore, interred alone. Not long afterwards, however, the vault was built to receive the body of his wife. There the two rest together. It is enclosed by a thick iron -grating, the interior lined with white marble, con- taining the letters marked in the woodcut. When I visited the tomb in 1864, one

THE GRAVE or CuLEEIDGE.

of the marble slabs had accidentally given way, and the coffin was partially exposed, I laid my hand upon it in solemn reverence, and gratefully recalled to memory him who, in bis own emphatic words, had

" Here found life in death."

The tablet that contains the epitaph is on one of the side-walls of the new church. It was consecrated two years before the poet's departure ; and although it

48

MEMORIES.

shut out his view of mighty London, it was pleasant to know that in his later days he had often looked on that temple of God. The tablet that records the death of Mr. Gillman (and also that of his wife, who survived him many years) is of the same size and form as that of the friend they loved so dearly.*

I would omit only the word " perchance " when I quote these lines from the poet, and to the poet apply them — to him who works untrammelled in another sphere, beloved by the Master he served in this : —

" Meek at the throne of mercy and of God, Perchance thou raisest high th' enraptured hymn, Amid the blaze of Seraphim ! "

More than once I met, with Coleridge, at the house of the Gillmans, and afterwards at other places, that most remarkable man — " martyr and saint," as Mrs. Oliphant styles him — Edward Irving. He and Coleridge were singular con- trasts— in appearance, that is to say, for their minds and souls were in harmony.

* These are the inscriptions on the monument to both Coleridge and his fi-iend GiUman : —

Sacred to the Memory

of

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE,

Poet, Philosopher, Theologian.

This truly great and good man resided for

The last nineteen years of his life

In this hamlet.

He quitted the "body of this death "

July 25th, 1834,

In the sixty- second year of his age.

Of his profound learning and discursive genius

His literary works are an imperishable record.

To his private worth,

His social and Christian virtues,

James and Ann Gillman,

The friends with whom, he lived

During the above period, dedicate this tablet.

Under the pressure of a long

And most painful disease,

His disposition was unalterably sweet and angelic.

He was an ever-enduring, ever-loving friend.

The gentlest and kindest teacher.

The most engaging home companion.

" O framed for calmer times and nobler hearts ! O studious poet, eloquent for truth ! Philosopher, conlemning wealth and death, Yet docile, childlike, full of life and love, Here, on thy monumental stone, thy friends inscribe thy worth."

Reader ! for the world mourn,

A Light has passed away fi-om the earth ;

But for this pious and exalted Christian

Rejoice, and again I say unto you, Rejoice!

Ubi

Thesaurus,

Ibi

Cor.

S. T. C.

Sacred to the Memory

JAMES GILLMAN, SURGEON, (The friend of 8. T. Coleridge,) For many years an eminent practitioner in this place. He died at Hamsgate, where his remains are interred, on the 1 st of June, 1839, in the fifty-seventh year of his age.

Whilst on earth his integrity of heart and generosity of character gained the confidence and esl^eem of men. His Christian faith has, we humbly trust, through the merit of the Saviour, obtained the promise of a better inheritance.

" Mercy for praise — to be forgiven for Fame — He asked, and hoped through Christ ! Do thou the same," HiGHGATB, 13(7i Kov., 1842.

EDWARD IRVING. 49

The Scottish minister was very tall, powerful in frame, and of great physical vigour ; " a gaunt and gigantic figure," his long, black, *' wavy " hair hanging partially over his shoulders. His features were large and strongly marked ; but the expression was grievously marred, like that of Whitefield, by a squint that abstracted much from his " apostolic " character, and must have operated prejudicially as regarded his mission. His mouth was exquisitely " cut : " it might have been a model for a sculptor who desired to portray strong will combined with generous sympathy. Yet he looked what he was — a brave man ; a man whom no abuse could humble, no injuries subdue, no oppression crush. To me he realised the idea of John the Baptist — '• one crying in the wilderness, who had his loins girt about him, and whose food was locusts and wild honey."

Gilfillan represents Irving in his " Gallery of Literary Portraits," — a work of rare worth, the value of which will increase more and more as time removes the " originals" farther off: — "His aspect wild, yet grave, as of one labouring under some mighty burden ; his voice deep, yet clear, and with crashes of power alter- natory with cadences of softest melody ; his action, now graceful as the wave of the rose-bush in the breeze, and now fierce and urgent as the midnight motion of the oak in the hurricane."

Three great men have borne testimony to the high qualities of his heart and mind. Procter says of him : — " He was one of the best and truest men it has been my good fortune to meet in life." Lamb describes him as "firm, outspeaking, intrepid, and docile as a pupil of Pythagoras." And this is the testimony of Thomas Carlyle : — "But for Irving I had never known what the communion of man with man means : he was the freest, brotherliest, bravest human soul man ever came in contact with ; the best man I have ever (after trial enough) found in this world, or now hope to find." Those who would know more of him may consult the volumes of his biographer, Mrs. Oliphant.

In the pulpit— where I lament to say I heard him but once, and then not under the peculiar influences that so often swayed and guided him — he was undoubtedly an orator, thoroughly earnest in his work, and beyond all question deeply and solemnly impressed with the duty to which he was devoted. I fancy I see him there now— as Hazlitt writes, " launching into his subject like an eagle dallying with the wind." At times, no doubt, his manner, action, and appearance bordered on the grotesque ; but it was impossible to listen without being carried away by the intense fervour and fiery zeal with which he dwelt on the promises, or annunciated the threats, of the prophets, his predecessors. His vehemence was often startling, sometimes appalling. Leigh Hunt called him " the Boanerges of the Temple." He was a soldier, as well as a servant, of the Cross. Few men of his age aroused more bitter or more unjust and unchristian hostility. He was in advance of his time ; perhaps, if he were living now, he would still be ' so, for the spirituality of his nature cannot yet be understood. There were not wanting those who decried him as a pretender, a hypocrite, and a cheat : those who knew him best depose to the honesty of his heart, the depth of his convictions, the fervour of his faith ; and many yet live who will indorse this eloquent tribute of his biographer :— " To him

so MEMORIES.

mean thoughts and unbeHeving hearts were the only things miraculous and out of nature ; " he " desired to know nothing in heaven or earth, neither comfort, nor peace, nor rest, nor any consolation, but the will and work of the Master he loved." To some he was but the " comet of a season ; " to others he was a burning and a shining light, that, issuing from the obscure Scottish town of Annan, heralded the way to life eternal. He died in 1834, comparatively young : there were but forty- two years between his birth and death. More than forty years have passed since he was called from earth, and to this generation the name of Edward Irving is httle more than a sound, " signifying nothing ; " yet it was a power in his day, and the seed he scattered cannot all have fallen among thorns. His love for Coleridge was devoted — a mingling of admiration, affection, and respect. "At the feet of that Gamaliel he sat weekly." Their friendship lasted for years, and was full of kindness on the part of the philosopher, and of reverential respect on that of Irving, who, following the natural instinct of his own ingenuous nature, changed in an instant, in such a presence, from the orator who, speaking in God's name, assumed a certain austere pomp of position, more like an authoritative priest than a mere presbyter, into the simple and candid listener, more ready to learn than he was to teach.

They were made acquainted by a mutual friend, Basil Montagu, who himself occupied no humble station in intellectual society. His " evenings " were often rare mental treats : he presented the most refined picture of a gentleman — tall, slight, courteous, seemingly ever smiling, yet without an approach to insincerity : he had the esteem of his contemporaries, and the homage of the finer spirits of his time. They were earned and merited. "Gentle enthusiast in the cause of humanity" — that is what Talfourd calls Basil Montagu. Those who knew him knew also his wife — one of the most admirable women I have ever known. She was likened to Mrs. Siddons, and forcibly recalled the portraits of that eminently-gifted woman: tall and stately, and with evidence, which time had by no means obliterated, of great beauty in youth ; her expression somewhat severe, yet gracious in manner and generous in words. She had been the honoured associate of many of the finer spirits of her time, and not a few of them were her familiar friends.* She might have suggested these lines to Joanna Baillie : —

" So queenly, so commanding, and so noble, I shrunk at first in awe ; but when she smiled, Methought I could have compassed sea and land, To do her bidding."

* Procter, " Barry Cornwall" (now removed from earth), was the husband of the daughter of Mrs. Montagu by a former marriage, and their daughter, Adelaide Procter, dming her brief life, made a name that will he classed with those of the best poets of the century. Basil Montagu was the son of Lord Sandwich and Miss Bea, an actress, the s'ory of whose murder is one of the English causta cacebres.

CHABLES LAMB.

HARLES LAMB was born on the 18th February, 1775, in

Crown Office Row, Inner Temple, his father being in the

employ of one of the Benchers as his " clerk, servant, friend,

flapper, guide, stopwatch, auditor, and treasurer." On the

9th of October, 1782, the boy was placed in the school of

Christ's Hospital, as the " son of John Lamb, scrivener, and

Elizabeth, his wife." He is described as then of small

stature, delicate frame, and constitutionally nervous and

timid ; of mild countenance, complexion clear brown, eyes

of different colours, with "a walk slow and pecuHar," and a "difficulty

of utterance " that was something more than an impediment in his speech.

At Christ's Hospital was formed his friendship with his schoolfellow,

Coleridge — a friendship that continued without interruption until the

(i poet-philosopher was laid in his grave at Highgate. They were, as Lamb

writes, " fifty-year friends without interruption." A memory of this

estimable man may, therefore, fitly follow that of Coleridge, although I knew less of

him than I did of many others who have left their impress on the age.

In 1789 he quitted Christ's Hospital, and obtained a situation at the India House, where he remained during thirty-six years, rarely taking a holiday. In 1825 he

E 2

n

MEMORIES.

" retired from the drudgery of the desk," with a pension sufficient for all the moderate needs and luxuries of life.

No doubt such drudgery may have been, to some extent, irksome to a man of letters, who loved to use the pen for a higher purpose than that of dull entries in heavy ledgers ; but it had a " set off" in the safeguard from pecuniary perils that too frequently cage the spirit and cramp the energies of men of lofty intellect and aspiring souls. On many occasions Lamb expressed his thankfulness that he was not, as so many are — as so many of his friends were — compehed to learn, from terrible experience, —

In 1822 he wrote to Bernard Barton, a banker's clerk, — " I am, like j'ou, a prisoner to the desk ; I have been chained to that galley thirty years ; I have almost grown to the wood." And again, — " What a weight of wearisome prison hours have I to look back and forward to, as quite cut out of life ! " Yet he tenders this counsel to the Quaker poet, who had contemplated resigning his post, " trusting to the book- sellers " for bread : — " Throw yourself from the steep Tarpeian rock, slap-dash, headlong upon iron spikes, rather than become the slave of the booksellers ;" and he blesses his star " that Providence, not seeing good to make him independent, had seen it next good to settle him down upon the stable foundation of Leadenhall Street;" while he sympathised with, and mourned over, the " corroding, torturing, tormenting thoughts that disturb the brain of the unlucky wight who must draw upon it for daily sustenance." " There is corn in Egypt," he wrote, "while there is cash in Leaden- hall." He was therefore content with his lot, although " every half-hour's absence from office duties was set down in a book ; " yet when ultimately released from the Qar, he " could scarcely comprehend the magnitude of his deliverance ; " and was grateful for it.

But, in truth, it was no punishment to Charles Lamb to be " in populous city pent." In the streets and alleys of the metropolis he found themes as fertile as his contemporaries had sought and obtained among the hills and valleys of Westmore- land ; where great men had trodden was to him " hallowed ground ;" and many a dingy building of unseemly brick was to him holy, as the birth-place, the death-place, or the intellectual laboratory, of some mighty luminary of the past. He once paid a visit to Coleridge at Keswick, and though he conceded the grandeur and the glory of old Skiddaw, and admitted that he might live a year or so among such scenes, he should " mope and pine away if he had no prospect of again seeing Fleet Street." Writing to the high-priest of Nature, Wordsworth, he says, " I do not now care if I never see a mountain in my life ; I have passed all my days in London, until I have formed as many and intense local attachments as any of you mountaineers can have done with dead nature." And Talfourd had heard him declare that his " love for natural scenery would be abundantly satisfied by the patches of long waving grass and the stunted trees that blacken in the old churchyard nooks which you may yet find bordering on Thames Street." The Strand and Fleet Street were to him " better places to live in, for good and all, than underneath old Skiddaw;" and Covent

CHARLES LAMB.

Garden was " dearer to him than any garden of Alcinous." So late as 1829, when he had been some years free to wander at his own sweet will, he writes to Words- worth,— " 0 let no Londoner imagine that health, and rest, and innocent occupation, interchange of converse sweet, and recreative study, can make the country anything better than altogether odious and detestable." But thus on the same subject wrote Robert Southey : — " To dwell in that foul city — to endure the common, hollow, cold, lip-intercourse of life — to walk abroad and never see green field, or running brook, or setting sun — will it not wither up my faculties like some poor myrtle that in the

' Town air Pines in the parlour window V"

Lamb is not the only Londoner to whom the huge city has been, or is, a refreshing luxury. James Smith used to say that " London was the best place in

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summer, and the only place in winter." It was Jekyll who proposed to make country lanes tolerable by having them paved. Dr. Johnson grew angry when people abused London, saying, " Sir, the man who is tired of London is tired of existence." While I had a residence among the healthful commons and thick woods of West Surrey, a distinguished author of this class was my guest,* and was located in a pretty Httle lodge sheltered among tall trees, where nightingales were smgmg. In the morning he complained they had kept him awake all night. " Well," I said, " surely it is not a misery to be kept awake by ' the bird most musical.' " " Nay," he replied, " if I am kept from sleep, I do not see much difference between nightm-

* Frederick William Fairholt an artist an^ man oHett^^^^^^ ^^tSJ? t^wiaicft'waf a fe^Tar^SSX?!; and of great value : the best of them were first Panted "^^^^f^^ * "^""^^'C Mend-and acoomlanied me dui-ing during nearly a quarter of a century.^ T,^,^!!L'lZu" 'Uh"; " Boofe trTham^^^^^^^ of British BaUads,?'

most of my excursions to write the "Baronial HaUs, ^^^.^°^^ did veiy much indeed. The notes to

^^^^.'!^TlTi^Z:^X'^^-'^^ ^^^^^ZTl^^ii^^^^^r Iwelargelyto his pencil and his pen.

54

MEMORIES.

^

gales and cats ! " The love of Lamb for London was, in fact, an absolute passion. Hazlitt says of him, " The streets of London are his faery land, teeming with wonder, with life and interest, to his retrospective glance, as it did to the eager eye of child- hood. He has contrived to weave its tritest traditions into a bright and endless romance."

Although Lamb had thus ample scope for continual enjoyment, and was saved from the necessities that so often beset the paths of men of genius, there was a skeleton in his house, and pleasure was ever associated with a terror more appalling than Death. His beloved sister — his dear companion and cherished friend — was subject to periodical fits of insanity, during one of which, with her own hand, she killed her beloved mother. There is nothing in human history more entirely sad than the records of the walks these two made together, when, thereafter, as the cloud came over her mind, and she saw the evil hour approaching, they paced along the road and across fields, weeping bitterly both — she to be left at the lunatic asylum until time and regimen restored reason and he to return to his mournful and lonely home. What a sad picture it is — harrowing, appalling ! Lamb carried v/ith him on such journeys the " strait waistcoat " that was ever near at hand, and brought it back with him when, sufficiently recovered, she returned with him to gladden his roof-tree ; for she brought with her the sunshine as well as the shadow.

The fatal death of the mother took place on the 22nd September, 1796. There was, of course, a coroner's inquest, and a verdict — "Lunacy." * The daughter was confined in Bedlam. After a time she was given up to " her friends," and her brother thenceforward became her " guardian." The word is far too weak to convey an idea of the never-ceasing, never-ending care and thought for her consolation and comparative comfort. It is indeed a sad task to picture him, with a perpetual dread of insanity hauntiLg him •,\ loving one, whom he addresses as " the fair-haired maid" (of whom nothing further is known), but sacrificing that, and all else, to solemn and mournful Duty. It was, however, duty lightened by love ; for intense affection linked these two together from the earliest to the latest hours of their lives. " The two lived as one in double singleness together:" on her side afiectionate and earnest watching; on his a charming deference, "pleasant evasions," little touches of gratitude, perpetual care — anxious and troubled care.

In one of her letters to her brother during her temporary confinement she writes : " The spirit of my mother seems to descend and smile upon me, and bid me live to enjoy the life and reason the Almighty has given me." And she did live to enjoy both, in calm and sorrowful content, to a very old age, surviving her brother many years — dying on the 20th of May, 1847. She was placed in the grave by his side: —

"In death they were not divided."

* The awful stoiy is told by himself in a letler to Coleridge : — " My poor dearest sister, in a fit of insanity, has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand time enough only to snatch the knife out of her grasp. My poor father was slightly wounded." That terrible circumstance must be regarded as the " influence " that ruled his life : it is the key that unlocks the closet, and exposes the skeleton within : his life would, indeed, be unintelligible unless this frightful incident is borne in mind. It explains and modifies all his errors, and they were yery tew — none that tarnished his character or hardened his heart.

+ There was a tendency to insanity in the family ; and Charles himself was for a time " under restraint." In , one of his lettei's to Coleridge he refers to the "six months he was in a mad-house at Hoxton."

CHARLES LAMB.

55

His life is truly described as a " life of uncongenial toil, diversified with frequent sorrow." Talfourd gently refers to his only blot— his " one single frailty "— " the eagerness with which he would quaff exciting Hquors ; " that he attributes to " a physical peculiarity of constitution." * It was " a kind of corporeal need," augmented, if not induced, by the heavy, irksome labours of his dull office, and still more by "the sorrows that environed him, and which tempted him to snatch a fearful joy." Lamb himself refers to his excessive love of tobacco, and his vain attempts to subdue or to control it, and describes " how from illuminating it came to darken, from a quick solace it turned to a negative relief, thence to a restlessness and dissatisfaction, thence to a positive misery."

Yet, although with many drawbacks, the life of Charles Lamb was by no means without enjoyment. He had many attached friends, the earhest and the latest being his school-mate Coleridge. This tribute is from his pen :—

' My pentle-hearted Charles ! for thou hast pined And hungered alter nature many a year, In the great city pent ; winning thy way With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain And strange calamity! "

And this is the tribute of Kobert Southey

" Charles Lamb, to those who know thee justly dear For rarest genius and for sterling worth. Unchanging friendship, warmth of heart sincere, And wit that never gave an ill thought buih, Nor even in its sport infixed a sting."

It was said of him that " he had the faculty of turning even casual acquaintances into friends," and he thus touchingly records their departure: —

" All. all are gone, the old famiHax faces ; Sjme they have died, and some they have left me, '

And some are taken from me, all are departed, All, aU are gone, the old familiar faces."

He was a most delightful companion, and a firm and true and never-changing friend. Of the latter there is evidence in his memorable letter to Southey, whom he considered to h;ive wrongfully assailed Leigh Hunt;t of the former we have the testimony of so many that it is needless to quote them. Among his more frequent companions and intimate friends were Hazlitt, Grodwin, Thelwall, Basil Montagu and his estimable lady, Procter, Barnes, Haydon, Carey, Knowles, Moxon, Hood, and Hone ; while, later in life, he was often cheered by the light that emanated from good and tender Talfourd. His loving and eloquent biographer describes, with singular felicity. Lamb's " suppers " in the Middle Temple. In 1800 he was living at No. 16, Mitre Court Buildings; in 1817 he had removed to lodgings in Kusseli Street, Covent Garden, the corner house, " delightfully situated between the two

* Procter is by no means wilUng to admit that the charge of inebriety can be sustained : indeed, he denies that it can be substantiated by proof, intimating that a very small portion of alcohol " upset his head."

+ Lamb's bitter letter to Southey— whose only offence was that in an altiole in the Qunrterly Beview he had spoken of Hunt as the author of a book " that wants only a sounder religious feeb'ng to be as delightful as it is original" — he repented of, and atoned for His guardian angel, he said (meaning his sitter), was absent when he wrote it. . They met, and were again friends ; and in a letter to Southey, written long afterwards, he thus wrote : — '■■ Look on me as a dog who went once temporarily insane and bit you."

MEMORIES.

I

great theatres." Afterwards he was again a resident in the Temple. Later in life his residence was at Enfield, in an "odd-looking, gambogish-coloured house," from Avhich, in 1833, he removed to Church Street, Edmonton. In 1834, in the sixtieth year of his age, he died.

" Bay Cottage," as it is now called — and I believe was called when Lamb inhabited it — is a poor building ; mournful-looking enough ; it could never have been calculated to dissipate the gloom that must have perpetually saddened the heart and mind of the poet.

Lamb and his sister were but lodgers : the house was kept by a woman named Red- ford, who — I learned from a person still residing there (in 1870), and who well remem-

lamb's residence at bnpield.

bered both the afflicted inmates — lived by taking charge of insane patients, and was by no means worthy of such a trust, for she had habits that probably did not receive any check from the interesting patients of, whom she had the care. The person I. refer to recollected Miss Lamb cutting up her feather-bed, and scattering the feathers to the winds out of her window ; and told me, what I am loath to believe, that whenever Lamb or his sister " misbehaved " themselves, Bedford was in the habit of thrusting them into a miserable closet of the room, where they were confined some- times for hours together until it pleased the harpy to give them freedom.*

Lamb did not die in that hurailiating house : his friends — according to the

* My valued and venerable friend, Mr. Procter, not only questioned this statement, but protested against it. Notwithstanding, 1 believe it to be correct ; that it is the melancholy record of a sad fact.

CHARLES LAMB.

authority I have quoted — having discovered the manner in which he M^as treated, removed him from the woman's custody, a few weeks before his death, to Edmonton, and it was at Edmonton he died.

Lamb has recently received ample justice at the hands of an estimable gentleman and delightful author — a kindred spirit, who was the friend of nearly all the great men and women of his age, and who could in no way better have closed a long career of honourable intellectual labour than by a biography of one he knew so well and loved so much. Procter was the last of that glorious galaxy of genius that, early in the present century, glorified the intellectual world : —

" All, all are gone, the old familiar faces ! "

He outlived all of them. He was still on earth when these pages were first printed. He has left earth now. I may have more to say of him before I close this volume.

Lamb had many peculiarities ; all of them were, to say the least, harmless. He playfully alludes to some of them : "I never could seal a letter without dropping the wax on one side, besides scalding my fingers." " My letters are generally charged double at the post-office, from their clumsiness of foldure."

The first time I saw and spoke with Charles Lamb was where he was most at home — in Fleet Street. He was of diminutive and even ungraceful appearance, thin and wiry, clumsily clad, and with a shuffling gait, more than awkward ; though covered, it was easy to perceive that the head was of no common order, for the hat fell back as if it fitted better there than over a large intellectual forehead, which overhung a countenance somewhat expressive of anxiety and even pain. His wit was in his eye — luminous, quick, and restless ; and the smile that played about his mouth was cordial and good-humoured. His person and his mind were happily characterised by his contemporary, Leigh Hunt: "As his frame, so his genius; as fit for thought as can be, and equally as unfit for action." In one of his playful moods he thus described himself: " Below the middle stature, cast of face slightly Jewish, stammers abominably." Leigh Hunt recollected him, when young, coming to see the boys at Christ's Hospital, " with a pensive, brown, handsome, and kindly face, and a gait advancing with a motion from side to side, between involuntary consciousness and attempted ease ;" and he says of him in after life, "He had a head worthy of Aristotle, with as pure a heart as ever beat in human bosom, and limbs very fragile to sustain it. His features are strongly yet delicately cut ; he has a fine eye as well as forehead, and no face carries in it greater marks of thought and feeling." But the most finished picture of the man is that which his friend Talfourd draws : " A light frame, so fragile that it seemed as if a breath would overthrow it, clad in clerk-like black, was surmounted by a head of form and expression the most noble and sweet. His black hair curled crisply about an expanded forehead ; his eyes, softly brown, twinkled with varying expression, though the prevalent feeling was sad ; and the nose slightly curved, and delicately carved at the nostril, with the lower outline of the face regularly oval, completed a head which was finely placed on the shoulders, and gave importance and even dignity to a diminutive and shadowy stem." Thus writes Hazlitt of Lamb : " There is a primitive simplicity and self-

denial about his manners, and a Quakerism in his personal appearance, which is however, relieved by a fine Titian head, full of dumb eloquence." And this is the picture drawn of him by the American, N. P. Willis : — " Enter, a gentleman in black small-clothes and gaiters, short and very slight in his person, his head set on his shoulders with a thoughtful forward bend, his hair just sprinkled with grey, a beautiful deep-set eye, aquiline nose, and a very indescribable mouth." ' John Foster, writing of him in the Xew Monthly Magazirie (1835), says : — "His face was deeply marked, and full of noble lines — traces of sensibility, imagination, suffering, and much thought." Recently, Procter has thus described Lamb : — " A small spare man- — somewhat stiff in his manner, and almost clerical in his dress, which indicated much wear ; he had a long, melancholy face, with keen, penetrating eyes ; he had a dark complexion, dark curling hair, almost black ; and a grave look, lighting up occasionally, and capable of sudden merriment ; his lip tremulous with expression ; his brown eyes were quick, restless, and glittering."

Some time in 1827 or 1828 I met Lamb twice or thrice at the house of Coleridge, and one evening in particular I recall with peculiar pleasure. There were not many present, none I can remember, except Mr. and Mrs. Gillman. The poet-philosopher engaged in a contest of words with his friend upon that topic concerning which Coleridge was ever eloquent — the power to reconcile Fate with Free-will. Alas ! I am unable to recall to memory a single sentence that was said. I only know the impression left upon me was that of envy of the one and pity for the other ; envy of the philosopher who reasoned so cheerfully and hopefully, and pity for the essayist whose despondency seemed rather of the heart than of the mind. Unhappily I did not turn to account the opportunities I had of seeing and knowing more of Lamb. I might surely have done so ; but little thought had I then, or for a long time afterwards, that it would ever be my task to write a memory of the man. It is by no means the only case in which I had opportunities of acquiring and communicating valuable knowledge.

" His poems were admirable, and often contained as deep things as the wisdom of some who have greater names : " that is the statement of one who knew him intimately. "No one," writes Hazlitt, " ever stammered out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent things in half-a-dozen half-sentences."

His more enthusiastic admirers give him high rank as a poet : I confess I cannot see much in his poetry that justifies the world in so placing him, although there are two or three of his poems that warrant the high praise he received. As a gentle and genial critic he claims a foremost station.* But it is as an essayist that he has been, and ever will be, most valued. The "Essays of Elia " have a prominent position among the " classics" of England. They are full of wisdom, pregnant of genuine

* Of Mr ready wit many anecdotes are told. That is well known which describes him as at a rubber of whist (a game of which he was excessively fond), saying to his partner, " Oh, if dirt wei'e trumps, what a hand you would have ! " Mrs. Mathews (the widow of the famous Charles), who describes him as tall, and lean, and little beholden to his tailor — " his face the gravest I have ever seen " — tells the somewhat weU-known story of Lamb taking sea- baths, giving directions to the man who was to dip him, stuttering them out—" I-I-l'm to be dip-p ped." "Yes, sir ; " and down he went. Rising and regaining liis breath, he repeated, " I-I'm to be dip-dip-ped." " Yes, sir ; and down he went again. A thii'd lime the dose was repeated, and then, when nearly suffocated, Lamb managed to stutter out, " 0-only once."

CHARLES LAMB.

59

wit, abound in true pathos, and have a rich vein of humour running throu^^h them all. The kindliness of his heart and the playfulness of his fancy are spread over every page. If his maturer taste and extensive reading compelled him to try all modern writers by a severe standard, he reproved with the mildly persuasive bearing of a sympathising judge : —

" Of right and -wrong he taught Truths as refined as ever Athens heard."

No writer more fully entered into the spirit of the older dramatists ; and few have

THE GRAVE OF CHARLES LAMB.

so largely aided to render them popular in our age.* If his style reminds us forcibly of the " old inventive poets," he never appears an imitator of them. His mind was akin to theirs ; he lived his days and nights in their company.

I copy these lines from Mrs. Hall's Album ; I believe they have not been hereto- fore in print : —

* There is a story told that Godwin, having read a passage which he believed to be out of one of the old dramatic poe's, sought eagerly for it, in vain, through the pages of the early dramatists, and, in his perplexity, applied to Lamb to guide him. It was a passage from John Woodvill !

6o MEMORIES.

"I had sense in dreams of a Beauty rare, Whom fate had spell-bound and rooted there, Stooping, like some enchanted theme. Over the marge of that crystal stream Where the blooming Greek, to echo blind, With self-love fond, had to waters pined. Ages had waked, and ages slept, And that bending posture stiU she kept ; For her eyes she may not turn away Till a fairer object shall pass that way ; Till an image more beauteous this world can show Than her own which she sees in the mirror below. Pore on, fair creature, for ever pore. Nor dream to be disenchanted more ; For vain is expectance, and wish is vain. Till a new Narcissus can come again." — C. Lamb.

It is said of Lamb that, being applied to for a memoir of himself, he made answer that " it would go into an epigram." His life was indeed of " mingled yarn," good and ill together, but the latter was in the larger proportion. " He had strange phases of calamity," living in continual terror. He described himself as once "writing a playful essay with tears trickling down his cheeks." Yet in none of his writings is there any taint of the gloom that brings discontent ; if he had unhappily too little trust in Providence, he did not murmur at a dispensation terribly calami- tous. If seldom cheerful, he was often merry : and in none of his writings is there evidence of ill-nature, jealousy, or envy. He wrote for periodicals of opposite opinions ; he was the friend of Southey, and he was the friend of Hazlitt ; he aroused no animosities, and enemies he had none.

There must have been much in the genial and lovable nature of the man to attract to him — in a comparatively humble position, and with restricted, rather than liberal, means — so many attached friends who are renowned in the literary history of the epoch.

He was not young, but not old, when called from earth. " He sank into death as placidly as into sleep," writes his loved and loving friend Talfourd ; he was laid in Edmonton Churchyard, " in a spot which, a short time before, he had pointed out to the sexton as the place of his choice for a final home." A venerable yew-tree stUl lives beside a tomb of remote date ; and several almshouses for aged men and women skirt one of the sides of the cemetery — pleasant objects for the poet to have thought over when selecting his last resting-place. A line from Wordsworth's Monody to his memory will fitly close a brief record of his life : —

" Oh, he was good, if ever good man lived."

On the tombstone is the following inscription : —

TO THE MEMORY

OF

CHAELESLAMB,

DIED 27th DECEMBER, 1834, AGED 59.

" Farewell, dear friend ; that smile, that harmless mii'th, No more shall gladden our domestic hearth ; That rising tear, with pain forbid to flow. Better than words no more assuage our woe ; That hand outstretched from small but well-earned store, Yields succour to the destitute no more.

MOXON. 6[

Yet art thou not all lost ; through many an age, With stei'ling sense and humour, shall thy page Win many an English bosom, pleased to see That old and happier vein revived in thee. This for oiu- earth ; and if with friends we share Our joys in heaven, we hope to meet thee there."

ALSO MARY ANNE LAMB,

SISTEK OF THE ABOVE,

BORN 3rd DECEMBER, 1767. DIED 20™ MAY, 1847.

The lines were written at the suggestion of the publisher, Moxon, by the Rev. F. H. Gary,* the translator of Dante. He was one of the essayist's dearest friends. Many will remember that estimable man and most accomplished scholar, when dis- charging his daily duty at the British Museum. I recall him to memory as very kindly, with a most gracious and sympathising expression ; slow in his movements, as if he were always in thought, living among the books of which he was the cus- todian, and sought only the companionship of the lofty spirits who had gone from earth — those who, though dead, yet speak. I remember Ugo Foscolo (and there could have been no better authority) telling me he considered Gary's translation of Dante not only the best translation in the English language, but the best translation in any language. There have since been several translations of the mighty Floren- tine, but they can be tolerated only by those who have not read that of the Rev. F. H. Gary.

There were few men for whom Lamb entertained a warmer affection than he did for the publisher Moxon ; but Moxon was a poet also, and produced Sonnets of much beauty. He was essentially aided by Mr. Rogers in his business, and that business is now carried on by Mr. Moxon's son. Moxon died early in life ; his constitution was delicate always, and the somewhat sad and painful expression of his gentle coun- tenance was indicative of the disease to which he succumbed. He was the executor of Gharles Lamb, and maintained a close correspondence and an intimate relationship

* His son, who gives me this information, transcribes for me " some other lines by the same pen, written on receiving back, through Mr. Moxon, Phillips's ' Theatorem Poetee AngUcanorum,' which Lamb had borrowed of my father. They give a beautiful picture of Lamb's character, alluding in happy vein even to his well-known weakness. The book had a leaf tui'ned down at the account of Sir PhQip Sidney. Its receipt was acknowledged to Moxon as follows . —

' So should it be, my gentle friend,

Thy leaf last closed at Sidney's end.

Thou too, like Sidney, wouldst have given

The water, thirsting, and neai' heaven ;

Nay, were it wine, flll'd to the brim.

Thou hadst look'd hard, but given, like him.

And art thou mingled then among

Those famous sons of ancient song ?

And do they gather round and praise

Thy relish of their nobler lays,

Waxing'in mirth to hear thee tell

With what strange mortals thou didst dwell.

At thy quaint sallies more delighted

Than any long among them lighted ?

'Tis done ; and thou hast Joined a ciew,

To whom thy soul was justly due ;

And yet I think, where'er those be,

They'll scarcely love thee more than we.' "

62 MEMORIES.

I

with many other poets of his time, keeping their friendship to the last, and sustaining the high character that made them his friends.*

Another remarkable person is somewhat mixed up with the history of Charles Lamb. William Hone was a bhort, stout, active man, with a keen eye, a well- developed forehead, having a tendency to baldness, a slightly upturned nose, and a general look of cleverness. He had been an unsuccessful man of projects, and an unlucky bookseller, when he published in a cheap form some political parodies that had considerable sale. This led to his famous prosecutions, as the Government had determined to stop the issue of all such works. At that time he had a small shop at No. 67, Old Bailey : here he was suddenly arrested on the charge of publishing "impious and profane libels," committed to the King's Bench, where he remained for two months, and was ultimately tried in Guildhall on three successive days of December, 1817. He was too poor to engage counsel, and defended himself. His defence was a marvel, from the great and peculiar knowledge he displayed of the history of parody from the days of Luther, and he proved to the satisfaction of a jury that no such work as he was tried for had ever been considered criminal in the sense the Attorney-General put upon it. Justice Abbott tried him the first day, but on the second Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough came expressly to — convict. He began by endeavouring to arrest his style of defence, but Hone out-mastered him, and was again acquitted. With unparalleled vindictiveness the third trial was proceeded with the next day, when Hone was almost too weak to speak. But the harshness of Ellenborough strung up his energies, and he again induced the jury to deliver a verdict in his favour. His boldness and learning, and the stout stand he had made against legal tyranny, led to a public subscription on his behalf, and he opened a shop (46, Ludgate Hill), whence emanated that famous series of political pamphlets, illustrated by George Cruikshauk — the severest stings the Government had to endure. They sold enormously : twenty-five or thirty editions of more than a thousand each, spread them far and wide. Queen Caroline's arrival, her popularity, and the unpopu- larity of the king and court, gave full scope for satire, of which he availed himself. In 1825, when pohtics had lulled, he projected and pubHshed the " Every- day Book," in which his peculiar and out-of-the-way knowledge found useful vent. That was succeeded by other works, continued for a series of years, when the public interest began to fail, and ultimately Hone established a dining-establishment in Gracechurch Street. After some time that failed also, and he died in obscure and needy circumstances.

Although so many of Hone's parodies were printed, it is difficult now to procure a copy of any one of them. That some of them were " atrocities " there can be no doubt ; and it is certain that their issue ought to have been stopped, and their author punished. But the Government assumed the attitude of a bully and the character of an oppressor, and public sympathy was with the wrong-doer. I frequently talked

* Moxon married Miss Emma Isola, a "very dear friend" of the Lambs, who was regarded, indeed, as their adopted daughter.

WILLIAM GODWIN.

63

with Hone in his shop on Ludgate Hill, and found him gentle in manners, obliging, and. full of information, which he was ever ready to communicate.

William Godwin, the close associate, if not the friend, of Lamb, I met in the company of Elia more than once. But I remember him when he kept a bookseller's shop on Snow Hill. I was a schoolboy then, and purchased a book there — handed to me by himself. It was a poor shop, poorly furnished; its contents consisting chiefly of children's books, with the old coloured prints that would strangely contrast with the art-illustrations of to-day.*

He was the husband of Mary Wolstoncroft. They had lived together in loose bonds, believing, or at least arguing, that wedlock was an unbecoming tie. They changed their minds, however, in course of time, yielding probably to the per- suasions of friends, and married. Their daughter was the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley. She wrote several works of fiction, the only one of which that is not quite forgotten is " Frankenstein." f Although he continued to adore Reason all his life, his conduct was not so offensive as to forbid occasional association with good men like Coleridge, and genial men like Lamb. In person he was remarkably sedate and solemn, resembling in dress and manner a Dissenting minister rather than the advocate of "free-thought" in all things — religious, moral, social, and intellectual; he was short and stout ; his clothes loosely and carelessly put on, and usually old and worn ; his hands were generally in his pockets ; he had a remarkably large, bald head, and a weak voice ; seeming generally half asleep when he walked, and even when he talked. Few who saw this man of calm exterior, quiet manners, and inexpressive features, could have believed him to have originated three romances — "Falkland," "Caleb Williams," and "St. Leon" — not yet forgotten because of their terrible excitements — and the work, "Political Justice," which for a time created a sensation that was a fear in every state of Europe. :]:

Eventually he obtained a sinecure in the Exchequer ; and on a comforting stipend of £200 a year he passed the later years of his life. He died in 1836, in the eighty-first year of his age, and was buried in Cripplegate Churchyard.

Lamb called him "a good-natured heathen." Southey said of him, in 1797, " He has large noble eyes, and a nose — oh ! most abominable nose ; " and he is thus pictured by Talfourd : — " The disproportion of a frame, which, low of stature, was surmounted by a massive head which might befit a presentable giant, was rendered almost imperceptible, not by any vivacity of expression (for his coun- tenance was rarely lighted up by the deep-seated genius within), but by a gracious suavity of manner which many ' a fine old English gentleman ' might have envied." Hay don tells us that, in 1822, Godwin was " in distress," " turned out of his house and business, and threatened with the seizure of all he possessed in the way of stock

* He kept his shop under the name of Edward Baldwin ; assuredly, if it had been kept in his own, he would have had few customeis, for his published opinions had excited general hostility, to say the least.

+ " Godwin had Mary Wolstoncroft for his wife, Mi's. Shelley for his daughter, and the immortal SheUey as his son-in-law." — Talfoukd.

t His " Polilical Justice " is now forgotten ; but " it carried one single shock into the bosom of English society, like that from the electric blow of the gymnotus."— De Q,uincey.

and furniture." Lamb and others made a subscription for him ; and among the subscribers was Walter Scott, who subscribed anonymously, as "he dissented from Mr. Godwin's theories of poUtics and morality, although an admirer of his genius."

How very different in all respects was that other companion — " the friend indeed " — of Charles Lamb — Thomas Noon Talfoued ! * Tender, suave, and eloquent ; a liberal and enlightened lawyer ; a graceful yet lofty poet ; with charity for all, sympathy for all, and help for all — wherever help was needed.

He made his way by force of genius, aided by high integrity, to the Bench ; and