The Piozzis were also invited to stay at Dromore, but there does not seem to be any record of their visit.

For such dangerous enterprises good Queen Charlotte showed the right spirit. She had a most hazardous voyage to England when, as a stranger, she came to marry our King. But while her ladies were crying out from fear and discomfort, she consoled them, and remained herself undaunted. When the tempest raged she prayed and sang Luther's hymns, and when it subsided a little she prepared to meet her future and as yet unseen lord and master in a loyal spirit by learning to play the air of God save the King' on her guitar. With a heart for any fate,' she confidently declared that God had not singled her out for nothing, and that if He allowed her to perish it was to save her from greater trials.'

We are able to get some insight into the early years of Bishop Percy's life in Ireland, and of the state of literature in that country, by means of a correspondence he carried on with William Jessop, a clergyman at Lismore, in County Cork. The character and genius of the writer, whom Percy never saw, induced him to keep all his letters. Though the Bishop's answers do not appear to have been preserved, they are aptly compared by the recipient to fine days in winter, that are to be welcomed, and enjoyed, but not expected.'

William Jessop wrote from Lismore, in 1784, to express his admiration of Percy's 'Hermit of Warkworth.' Fearing that his praise might appear to savour of self-interested flattery to a newly appointed Bishop, he hastened to add that he had no wishes or hopes of preferment in the diocese of Dromore or elsewhere. He had, he declared, no designs upon Bishop Percy, for whose talents he felt much greater respect

than for his station,' though the praises of a parson on the verses of a bishop might wear a questionable shape.1 He had stricken his roots so deep in Ulster that transplantation would undo him, and the house he had built and the garden he had planted at Lismore he regarded with doting partiality as his only children. Instead of renewing his youth, he prolonged his old age, for, though he lived to be upwards of ninety, he described himself in his fifty-seventh year as a wretchedly infirm old bachelor. With an income of £300, the wealth of Peru or Mexico would to him be the vainest of superfluities. He could drink a little wine, occasionally buy a book, keep a carriage, and, what is more dear to the Irish heart, a servant in livery. But, above all, he maintained in his house a minstrel, whom his illnatured neighbours described as a blind harper. When basking by his fireside, inhaling his antiquated lays, the old man declared he felt as great as an abbot or a feudal baron-nay, as a Percy himself.'

The school-fellow of Oliver Goldsmith and Edmund Burke, and afterwards a schoolmaster himself, William Jessop delighted in making Latin verses, but his

1 Jessop's obsequious spirit had received a rebuke from Dr. Johnson in the following letter, which is now in the possession of Bishop Percy's great-granddaughter, Miss Constance Meade:

'SIR,-If your letter had been less ceremonious it would not have pleased me less. I read poor Grierson's paper with a very tender remembrance both of his learning and his humour. What you propose to offer to the world is well wanting in our language, and as I have no reason to doubt your ability to supply the deficiency, I shall be willing to do anything that can be reasonably required. You will therefore, if you do not change your mind, contrive to transmit your book to

attempts had been severely discountenanced by his compatriots. He wrote:

The Irish are unmerciful critics on the literary attempts of their own resident countrymen. And if any set of them is severer than the rest, it is the clergy upon the efforts of their brethren. As publishing is rather a phenomenon in the kingdom, he who risks it may seem to claim uncommon distinction. This, his colleagues are too proud to concede, and too indolent to contest, by trying their own fortunes at the press. Therefore they decry the adventurer. At present I am on the best terms with my reverend neighbours, not one of whom even suspects me to be guilty of rhyming. But were anything of mine to see the light, I know they would call me, when absent, a coxcomb and a dunce, and when present, a poet; but with a look and accent which should make the title equivalent to a poetaster; a character which no one thinks eligible. I shall therefore adhere faithfully to my Horatian motto, "He who has remained hidden has lived well." The art of writing is, in Ireland, but a helpless infant, every one ought to assist in rearing it. The raw materials we have; but want skill to manufacture them into merchantable pieces. It was only in England that all the Irish writers learned the trade of authorism. This was the case with Roscommon, the three Orreries, Denham, Southerne, Congreve, Steele, Swift, Parnell, Goldsmith, Sterne, Burke, the three Sheridans, Preston, Jephson; besides a multitude of minor names; such as Brooke, Bickerstaffe, Macklin, Canning, Kelly, Murphy, O'Hara, &c. Irish genius seems to be like Madeira; which, until it has made a voyage, never gets its flavour.'

As William Jessop's poetic muse required not only a minstrel but a lady to whom he might address his