sonnets, he selected for that purpose Miss Mary Bagges, a most engaging infant, to whom, from her fourth to her fourteenth year, he dedicated his songs. Possibly she represented to him

The touch of a vanished hand

And the sound of a voice that is still.

A poem that he had composed thirty-two years before concludes:

But cease, my Muse; it is not safe

With these fond thoughts my heart to chafe;

Oh rase, kind Mem'ry, from thy hoarded store

A transport past, and gone, which can return no more.

'As we Lismorians,' wrote Jessop, are tremblingly alive to anything that touches the honour of our town, I was hurt to see your Lordship express surprise at your collection of ancient ballads having reached thus far. I assure you that, from its first publication, it was, in this neighbourhood, a favourite work. I know not how gentle poesy may be realised among the children of the rigid north, where, I presume, linen and rebellion are the principal objects of attention, but here both our climate and our people have a milder and more genial temper. Lismore had once a famous university; and, as the single gooseberry bush, and the few flowers, scattered around Warkworth Hermitage, shew that it was once adorned with a garden, so there are still here some relics of taste, to indicate that in days of yore Lismore was an academic soil. Though it is an obscure corner, yet it is sometimes entertained with curious objects. We had lately a live camel here; and, not many many days ago, a live poet, Joseph

Sterling. He came merely to converse with our glens, mountains, river, castle, and cathedral. If he travelled on his brazen horse, he must have concealed him in some of our caves and thickets; for certain it is, that he made his entry into the town on foot. A gentleman brought him, by accident, to my house. I pressed him to accept its entertainment, and he stayed with me a week. From dinner time I had the pleasure of his company, but all his mornings he passed in walking, and, I suppose, in poetising: exercises too severe for so weak a frame as mine to partake in. I love versifying, which is only riding a hobbyhorse about one's room; but poetising, which is galloping over hill and dale upon a fiery courser, would immediately make my head giddy. Sterling permitted me to read a life that he has written of Tamerlane. I blush to see myself a prebendary, and three vicars, while this man has not sixpence a year by his profession. It may comfort him to reflect that hereafter, when the world may, instead of bread, give him a stone, he will make an admirable bust; and to miss his likeness will be impossible. He looks as if he fed entirely upon laurels; which, though finely flavoured, are known to have unhealthful juices. I consider him as a Don Quixote in poetry, though, it seems, without a Rozinante. If I were in good plight (but I have a face and figure more rueful than his own) I should myself supply him with another requisite, and attend him as his poetical Sancho. He is a true cosmopolite, having his home everywhere and nowhere. Most of last summer he passed in a tent, upon the top of a mountain, about a dozen miles from this town, with an eccentric mortal, a Colonel Blakeney. Was ever bard more favourably stationed for building, as Milton phrases it, the lofty rhime? Their only com

panions were their dogs, guns, books, and one old soldier, who was cook, valet de chambre, major-domo, lifeguardsman, laundress, and everything in their family. I wish your Lordship had Sterling at Dromore, as he would please you by his genius, learning, and complete simplicity. He is quite pellucid, and has no artifice, like that shining, slippery, poisonous substance, quicksilver, which is spread behind the glass to deaden its transparency, and reduce it to the sole power of reflecting other people's likenesses. He spent a fortnight with me here at Christmas, which for him was a long time to be stationary, and left me his MS. of Tamerlane. He has published, in London, a large volume of his poems. Most of these are sonnets. Of sonnets I never

was a lover, as they have generally seemed to me the very quintessence of nihility, abounding in fine words, and destitute of meaning; but Sterling's are, I believe, as good as most of their family. He is undoubtedly the greatest practical peripatetic of modern times. His travelling equipage is only an Herculean crabstick and a pair of stockings, with a shirt, in his pocket. Thus accoutred he rambles sometimes to Dublin, London and Paris, but with more delight through the bogs of Connaught and Munster, the Caledonian highlands, and the Cambrian mountains. He is a real epicure when he has an opportunity, yet so pliant is his appetite that he is just as well contented with potatoes and buttermilk, or oaten cake and whiskey, in a hovel. And in the same manner he is perfectly indifferent whether he keeps company with peers or with sans culottes. No mention of his wife and children ever passes his lips, though he has both. His motive for marrying a pennyless and friendless young woman was a generous one. After he had been married a

Q

few weeks he said to her very calmly: "I expected to find a nuptial life pleasanter than my rambling one; but as it is not I shall resume my wanderings. My fortune is £400 a year. Half of it is yours." Once a year he visits her for two or three days. Such a character in a novel would appear unnatural, yet in Sterling it is joined to much humanity, and a strong sense of moral rectitude.'

Bishop Percy became possessed of an authentic portrait of Swift in the following manner. An old family mansion house' in the County of Louth was about to be rebuilt, and all the pictures in it were sent to Dublin to be sold, as the proprietor did not choose to be at the expense of new frames for them, and he thought their old black ones would look unsuitable in his new house.' Dean Swift was the college friend of a bygone member of the family, and spent his vacations as a guest in their house. When the family portraits were painted, Swift's was done among the rest, and remained in the house until it was pulled down.

William Jessop added an autograph letter of Swift's to Percy's collection, and wrote:

'I believe it is an autograph of a man [Swift], who in his day had some celebrity, to a woman of the same description. With her I had several conversations; but not indeed until she was reduced to a state of burned brandy and fired down into weakness; in clearer language not until drunkenness had consumed her faculties. Yet she still retained some vestiges of that wit, which had ranked her amongst the foremost of Swift's female worshippers.'

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CHAPTER XI

1779-1796

SPACE forbids a lengthy digression on the distressful state of Percy's adopted country; the troubled period through which he lived can therefore only be alluded to in this work in so far as it affected himself. The injustice of the English Government in suppressing the trade of Ireland was as fully realised in the days of Percy as it had been in those of Swift. Everyone will remember the ready wit with which, at a Sheriff's feast, when someone called out, among other toasts, Mr. Dean, the trade of Ireland,' Swift quickly responded, "Sir, I drink to no memories.'

The following quotation from a letter written by Elizabeth Carter in 1778 shows that the weakness of the English Government almost incited the Bas Bleu ladies to something like a suffragette movement:

You have doubtless read of the promises made to the Irish by our Ministry with respect to their trade, to which they seem particularly entitled by their generous behaviour in our present difficulties. The selfish temper of some of our trading towns is alarmed at this scheme; our Ministers are frightened at their threats, and it is thought the Irish will be sacrificed to their fears, and thus they will be more exasperated than ever. Pray do not you think these are fine times for us dowagers and spinsters, if we have a mind to get seats in the House of Commons? By signifying