tact, a clearer intuition, and a natural abhorrence of every appearance of evil. It is a sense which only belongs to the innocent, and is quite distinct from the tact of experience. If, therefore, ladies without experience attempt to judge, to draw conclusions from premises, and give a reason for their sentiments, there is nothing in their sex to preserve them from error. J. A. HERAUD-W. B. SCOTT. The Opposing Armies on Marston Moor. Fifty thousand subjects of one king stood face to face on Marston Moor. The numbers on each side were not far unequal, but never were two hosts speaking one language of more dissimilar aspects. The Cavaliers, flushed with recent victory, identifying their quarrel with their honour and their love, their loose locks escaping beneath their plumed helmets, glittering in all the martial pride which makes the battle-day like a JOHN ABRAHAM HERAUD-an author of curipageant or a festival, and prancing forth with all the ous and varied erudition, and long connected with grace of gentle love, as they would make a jest of death, periodical literature-has made two attempts at while the spirit-rousing strains of the trumpets made their blood dance, and their steeds prick up their ears. epic grandeur in his poems, The Descent into Hell, The Roundheads, arranged in thick, dark masses, their 1830, and Judgment of the Flood, 1834. He has steel caps and high-crowned hats drawn close over their also been a contributor to the unacted drama, brows, looking determination, expressing with furrowed having written several tragedies-Salavera, The foreheads and hard-closed lips the inly-working rage Two Brothers, Videna, &c. Mr Heraud is, or which was blown up to furnace-heat by the extempore rather was, in poetry what Martin was in art, a effusions of their preachers, and found vent in the worshipper of the vast, the remote, and the terterrible denunciations of the Hebrew psalms and prophe-rible. His Descent and Judgment are remarkable cies. The arms of each party were adapted to the poems-psychological curiosities,' evincing a nature of their courage; the swords, pikes, and pistols great amount of misplaced intellectual and poetic of the royalists, light and bright, were suited for swift power. In 1871 Mr Heraud published The Inonset and ready use; while the ponderous basket-hilted blades, long halberts, and heavy fire-arms of the parlia-gathering, a volume of poetry; and The War of mentarians were equally suited to resist a sharp attack, Ideas, a poem on the Franco-Prussian war. and to do execution upon a broken enemy. The royalists regarded their adversaries with that scorn which the gay and high-born always feel or affect for the precise or sour-mannered: the soldiers of the Covenant looked on their enemies as the enemies of Israel, and considered themselves as the elect and chosen people-a creed which extinguished fear and remorse together. It would be hard to say whether there was more praying on one side or more swearing on the other, or which to a truly Christian ear had been the most offensive. Yet both esteemed themselves the champions of the church; there was bravery and virtue in both; but with this high advantage on the parliamentary side-that while the aristocratic honour of the royalists could only inspire a certain number of gentlemen, and separated the patrician from the plebeian soldier, the religious zeal of the Puritans bound officer and man, general and pioneer together, in a fierce and resolute sympathy, and made equality itself an argument for subordination. The captain prayed at the head of his company, and the general's oration was a sermon. Discernment of Character. I know it well, Yet must I still distrust the elder brother; MASON'S Caractacus. In 1838 WILLIAM BELL SCOTT, an artist and man of genius, published Hades, or the Transit, and in 1846 The Year of the World, both transcendental poems, mystical as Mr Heraud's strains, but evidently prompted by admiration of Shelley. In 1854 Mr Scott issued Poems by a Painter; and in 1875 a volume of Poems, Ballads, &c., with etchings by the author and by Alma Tadema. MRS SOUTHEY. A CAROLINE ANNE BOWLES (1787-1854) was the daughter of a retired officer, Captain Charles Bowles, of Buckland, near Lymington, Hants. She was, when young, deprived of her parents, and was left almost wholly to the care of the nurse, to whom she makes grateful reference in her writings. In her country retirement, she early cultivated literature, and produced successively Ellen Fitz-Arthur, a poem, 1820; The Widow's Tale, and other Poems, 1822; Solitary Hours, Prose and Verse, 1826; Chapters on Churchyards-a series of tales and sketches in prose, originally published in Blackwood's Magazine, and reprinted in two volumes, 1829. long and affectionate intimacy subsisted between Southey and Miss Bowles, and in 1839 they were married. The Athenæum (Aug. 1854) states that no sacrifice could be greater than the one Miss Bowles made on this occasion. She resigned a larger income than she knew she would receive at Southey's death, and she 'consented to unite herself to him, with a sure prevision of the awful condition of mind to which he would shortly be reduced-with a certain knowledge of the injurious treatment to which she might be exposed-from the purest motive that could actuate a woman in forming such a connection; namely, the faint hope that her devotedness might enable her, if not to avert the catas This is beautifully true to nature. Men are deceived in their judgments of others by a thousand causes-by their hopes, their ambition, their vanity, their antipathies, their likes and dislikes, their party feelings, their nationality, but, above all, by their presumptuous reliance on the ratiocinative understanding, their disregard to presentiments and unaccountable impressions, and their vain attempts to reduce everything to rule and measure. Women, on the other hand, if they be very women, are seldom deceived, except by love, compassion, or religious sympathy-by the latter too often deplorably; but then it is not because their better angel neglects to give warning, but because they are persuaded to make a merit of disregarding his admonitions. The craftiest Iago can-trophe, to acquire at least a legal title to minister not win the good opinion of a true woman, unless he approach her as a lover, an unfortunate, or a religious confidant. Be it, however, remembered that this superior discernment in character is merely a female instinct, arising from a more delicate sensibility, a finer to the sufferer's comforts, and watch over the few sad years of existence that might remain to him.' The laureate himself, in writing to his friend Walter Savage Landor on the subject of this second marriage, said he had, according to human foresight, 'judged well, and acted wisely;' but to his family it was peculiarly distasteful, except to one of its members, Edith May Southey, married to Mr Warter, the editor of the posthumous edition of Southey's Doctor and Commonplace Books. To this lady, Mrs Southey, in 1847-four years after the death of the laureate-dedicated a volume bearing the title of Robin Hood: a Fragment, by the late Robert Southey and Caroline Southey; with other Fragments and Poems by R. S. and C. S. So early as 1823, Southey had projected a poem on Robin Hood, and asked Caroline Bowles to form an intellectual union with him that it might be executed. Various efforts were made and abandoned. The metre selected by Southey was that of his poem of Thalaba-a measure not only difficult, but foreign to all the ballad associations called up by the name of Robin Hood. Caroline Bowles, however, persevered, and we subjoin two stanzas of the portion contributed by her. Majestically slow The sun goes down in glory The full-orbed autumn sun; From battlement to basement, From flanking tower to flanking tower, The long-ranged windows of a noble hall Wave above, wave below, Like an embroidered zone, ancestral woods, Those again begirt In wavy undulations of all hues To the horizon's verge by the deep forest. The holy stillness of the hour, The hush of human life, Lets the low voice be heard- Of the deep woods, Its mystical murmuring Now swelling into choral harmony, In tremulous whispers next, A spiritual undertone, Till the cooing of the wood-pigeon Is heard alone. The poem was never completed: 'clouds were gathering the while,' says Mrs Southey, and before the time came that our matured purpose should bear fruit, the fiat had gone forth, and "all was in the dust." The remaining years of the poetess were spent in close retirement. She left behind her, it is said, upwards of twelve hundred letters from the pen of Southey. The writings of Mrs Southey, both prose and verse, illustrate her love of retirement, her amiable character, and poetical susceptibilities. A vein of pathos runs through most of the little tales or novelettes, and colours her poetry. Mariner's Hymn. Launch thy bark, mariner ! Steer thy course steadily; Christian, steer home! Look to the weather-bow, 'What of the night, watchman ? No land yet-all's right.' At an hour when all seemeth How! gains the leak so fast? Slacken not sail yet At inlet or island; Straight for the beacon steer, Straight for the high land ; Crowd all thy canvas on, Cut through the foamChristian cast anchor now-Heaven is thy home! Once upon a Time. I mind me of a pleasant time, The pleasantest I've ever known, Bees, birds, and little tinkling rills, The year was in its sweet spring-tide, I've never heard such music since, As all that pleasant time I found by every hawthorn-root- Yon moory down, so black and bare, The blackbird sings but seldom now Where hours and hours he used to sing- Such cutting winds came never then To pierce one through and through; More softly fell the silent shower, More balmily the dew. The morning mist and evening hazeUnlike this cold gray rimeSeemed woven warm of golden airWhen I was in my prime. And blackberries-so mawkish now- Nor strawberries blushing bright-as rich How all is altered for the worse The Pauper's Death-bed. Tread softly-bow the head- Stranger! however great, With lowly reverence bow; There's one in that poor shedOne by that paltry bedGreater than thou. Beneath that beggar's roof, Lo! Death doth keep his state: That pavement damp and cold No mingling voices sound— O change-O wondrous change!- O change-stupendous change! JOHN EDMUND READE. The first production of MR READE appears to have been a volume entitled The Broken Heart and other Poems, 1825. From that period up to 1868 he has published a long series of poems and dramas. Cain the Wanderer and the Revolt of the Angels in 1830; Italy, 1838; Catiline and The Deluge, 1839; Sacred Poems, 1843; Memnon, 1844; Revelations of Life, 1849; &c. Mr Reade has lived to superintend and publish four collective editions of his poetical works (1851-1865). He has also written some novels, and two volumes of Continental Impressions (1847). The poem of Italy, in the Spenserian stanza, recalls Byron's Childe Harold, while the Revelations resemble Wordsworth's Excursion. We subjoin a few lines of description: We looked toward The sun, rayless and red; emerging slow From a black canopy that lowered above. O'er a blue sky it hung where fleecy clouds 79 Swelled like low hills along the horizon's verge, O'er infinite plains in luminous repose. Eastward the sulphurous thunder-clouds were rolled: Like battlemented towers, their brazen fronts Catiline, a drama, is well conceived and executed; but here also Mr Reade follows another poetical master, Ben Jonson. WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED. This gentleman (1802-1839) was early distinguished for scholarship and poetic talent. In conjunction with a school-fellow-the Rev. John Moultrie, who also wrote some pleasing poetryMr Praed set up a paper called The Etonian; and he was associated with Macaulay as a writer in Knight's Quarterly Magazine. The son of a wealthy London banker, Mr Praed was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge; he studied for the bar, and, having entered public life as a Conservative politician, sat in the House of Commons for English boroughs, and for a short period in 1835 held the office of Secretary of the Board of Control. His poetical pieces were contributed to periodicals, and were first collected by an American publisher in 1844. They are light, fashionable sketches, yet executed with great truth and sprightliness. The following is an excellent portrait of a wealthy English bachelor and humorist: Quince. Near a small village in the West, Eat, drink, play whist, and do their best Of which, for forty years and four, My good friend Quince was lord and master. Welcome was he in hut and hall, To maids and matrons, peers and peasants; He won the sympathies of all By making puns and making presents. Though all the parish was at strife, He kept his counsel and his carriage, And laughed, and loved a quiet life, And shrunk from Chancery-suits and marriage. Sound was his claret and his head, Asylums, hospitals, and schools He used to swear were made to cozen; All who subscribed to them were foolsAnd he subscribed to half a dozen. 417 But all was vain. And while decay Came like a tranquil moonlight o'er him, And found him gouty still and gay, With no fair nurse to bless or bore him; His rugged smile and easy chair, His dread of matrimonial lectures, His wig, his stick, his powdered hair, Were themes for very strange conjectures. Some sages thought the stars above Had crazed him with excess of knowledge; Some heard he had been crossed in love Before he came away from college; Some darkly hinted that His Grace Did nothing, great or small, without him; Some whispered, with a solemn face, That there was something odd about him. I found him at threescore and ten A single man, but bent quite double; Sickness was coming on him then To take him from a world of trouble. He prosed of sliding down the hill, Discovered he grew older daily; One frosty day he made his will, The next he sent for Dr Baillie. And so he lived, and so he died; When last I sat beside his pillow, He shook my hand: 'Ah me!' he cried, 'Penelope must wear the willow! Tell her I hugged her rosy chain While life was flickering in the socket, And say that when I call again I'll bring a license in my pocket. 'I've left my house and grounds to FagI hope his master's shoes will suit him! And I've bequeathed to you my nag, To feed him for my sake, or shoot him. The vicar's wife will take old Fox; She 'll find him an uncommon mouser; And let her husband have my box, My Bible, and my Assmanshäuser. 'Whether I ought to die or not, My doctors cannot quite determine; It's only clear that I shall rot, And be, like Priam, food for vermin. My debts are paid. But Nature's debt Almost escaped my recollection! Tom, we shall meet again; and yet I cannot leave you my direction!' THOMAS HOOD. THOMAS HOOD (1798–1845) appeared before the public chiefly as a comic poet and humorist; but several of his compositions, of a different nature, shew that he was also capable of excelling in the grave, pathetic, and sentimental. He had thoughts too deep for tears,' and rich imaginative dreams and fancies, which were at times embodied in continuous strains of pure and exquisite poetry, but more frequently thrown in, like momentary shadows, among his light and fantastic effusions. His wit and sarcasm were always well applied. This ingenious and gifted man was a native of London, son of one of the partners in the bookselling firm of Vernor, Hood, and Sharpe. He was educated for the counting-house, and at an early age was placed under the charge of a City merchant. His health, however, was found unequal to the close confinement and application required at the merchant's desk, and he was sent to reside with some relatives in Dundee, of which town his father was a native. While resident there, Mr Hood evinced his taste for literature. He contributed to the local newspapers, and also to the Dundee Magazine, a periodical of considerable merit. On the re-establishment of his health, he returned to London, and was put apprentice to a relation, an engraver. At this employment he remained just long enough to acquire a taste for drawing, which was afterwards of essential service to him in illustrating his poetical productions. About the year 1821 he had adopted literature as a profession, and was installed as regular assistant to the London Magazine, which at that time was left without its founder and ornament, Mr John Scott, who was unhappily killed in a duel. On the cessation of this work, Mr Hood wrote for various periodicals. He was some time editor of the New Monthly Magazine, and also of a magazine which bore his own name. His life was one of incessant exertion, embittered by ill health and all the disquiets and uncertainties incidental to authorship. When almost prostrated by disease, the government stepped in to relieve him with a small pension; and after his premature death in May 1845, his literary friends contributed liberally towards the support of his widow and family. The following lines, written a few weeks before his death, possess a peculiar and melancholy interest: Farewell, Life! my senses swim, And the world is growing dim: Thronging shadows cloud the light, Like the advent of the nightColder, colder, colder still, Upwards steals a vapour chill; Strong the earthy odour grows— I smell the mould above the rose ! Welcome, Life! the spirit strives: O'er the earth there comes a bloom; I smell the rose above the mould! April 1845. Mr Hood's productions are in various styles and forms. His first work, Whims and Oddities, attained to great popularity. Their most original feature was the use which the author made of puns-a figure generally too contemptible for literature, but which, in Hood's hands, became the basis of genuine humour, and often of the purest pathos. He afterwards (1827) tried a series of National Tales; but his prose was less attractive than his verse. A regular novel, Tylney Hall, was a more decided failure. In poetry he made a great advance. The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies is a rich imaginative work, superior to his other productions. As editor of the Comic Annual, and also of some of the literary annuals, Mr Hood increased his reputation for sportive humour and poetical fancy; and he continued the same vein in his Up the Rhine-a satire on the absurdities of English travellers. In 1843, he issued two volumes of Whimsicalities, a Periodical Gathering, collected chiefly from the New Monthly Magazine. His last production of any importance was the Song of the Shirt, which first appeared in Punch (1844), and is as admirable in spirit as in composition. This striking picture of the miseries of the poor London sempstresses struck home to the heart, and aroused the benevolent feelings of the public. In most of Hood's works, even in his puns and levities, there is a 'spirit of good' directed to some kindly or philanthropic object. He had serious and mournful jests, which were the more effective from their strange and unexpected combinations. Those who came to laugh at folly, remained to sympathise with want and suffering. The 'various pen' of Hood, said Douglas Jerrold, 'touched alike the springs of laughter and the sources of tears.' Charles Lamb said Hood carried two faces under his namesake, a tragic one and a comic. Of Hood's graceful and poetical puns, it would be easy to give abundant specimens. The following stanzas form part of an inimitable burlesque : Lament for the Decline of Chivalry. Well hast thou said, departed Burke, All chivalrous romantic work Is ended now and past! That iron age, which some have thought Of mettle rather overwrought, Is now all over-cast. Ay! where are those heroic knights The bold King Arthur sleepeth sound; Oh, Time has plucked the plumy brow! But those that go to law!... Where are those old and feudal clans, Their pikes, and bills, and partisans ; Their hauberks, jerkins, buffs? In cavils when will cavaliers And scatter plumes about? No iron crackling now is scored Farewell, then, ancient men of might! As in a safety coffin ! What art thou like? Sometimes I see thee ride A far-bound galley on its perilous way; Clustered by all thy family of stars, Like a lone widow through the welkin wide, Till in some Latinian cave I see thee creep, Oh, thou art beautiful, howe'er it be ! |