art, and the drama, upon economic questions, upon politics as wide in his range as Leigh Hunt; and though he was far more trenchant, more shrewd, more disputatious, more thoughtful, he did lack Hunt's easy pliancy and grace of touch. Though a wide reader and acute observer, Hazlitt does not contend or criticise by conventional rules; his law of measurement is not by old syntactic, grammatic, or dialectic practices; there's no imposing display of critical implements (by which some operators dazzle us), but he cutsquick and sharp-to the point at issue. We never forget his strenuous, high-colored personality, and the seething of his prejudices- whether his talk is of Napoleon (in which he is not reverent of average British opinion), or of Sir Joshua Reynolds, or of Burke's brilliant oratorical apostrophes. But with fullest recognition of his acuteness, and independence, there remains a disposition (bred by his obstinacies and shortcomings) to take his conclusions cum grano salis. He never quite disabuses our mind of the belief that he is a paid advocate; he never conquers by calm; and, upon the whole, impresses one as a man who

found little worth the living for in this world, and counted upon very little in any other.

The historian, Henry Hallam,* on the other hand, who was another notable literary character of this epoch, was full of all serenities of character even under the weight of such private griefs as were appalling. He was studious, honest, staid - with a great respect for decorum; he would have gravitated socially-as he did rather to Holland House than to the chambers where Lamb presided over the punch-bowl. In describing the man one describes his histories; slow, calm, steady even to prosiness, yet full; not entertaining in a gossipy sense; not brilliant; scarce ever eloquent. If he is in doubt upon a point he tells you so; if there has been limitation to his research, there is no concealment of it; I think, upon the whole, the honestest of all English historians. In his search for truth, neither party, nor tradition, nor religious scruples make him waver. None can make their historic journey through the Middle Ages

* Henry Hallam, b. 1777; d. 1859. Middle Ages, 1818. Literature of Europe, 1837-39. Sketch of Life, by Dean Milman in Transactions of Royal Society, vol. x.

without taking into account the authorities he has brought to notice, and the path that he has scored.

And yet there is no atmosphere along that path as he traces it. People and towns and towers and monarchs pile along it, clearly defined, but in dead shapes. He had not the art—perhaps he would have disdained the art-to touch all these with picturesque color, and to make that page of the world's history glow and palpitate with life.

Among those great griefs which weighed upon the historian, and to which allusion has been made, I name that one only with which you are perhaps familiar-I mean the sudden death of his son Arthur, a youth of rare accomplishments— counted by many of more brilliant promise than any young Englishman of his time—yet snatched from life, upon a day of summer's travel, as by a thunderbolt. He lies buried in Clevedon Church, which overhangs the waters of Bristol Channel; and his monument is Tennyson's wonderful memorial poem.

I will not quote from it; but cite only the lines "out of which" (says Dr. John Brown), "as out of

LADY BLESSINGTON.

173

the well of the living waters of Love, flows forth

all In Memoriam."

"Break-break-break

At the foot of thy crags, O sea:

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But O, for the touch of a vanished hand

And the sound of a voice that is still."

I have purposely set before you two strongly contrasted types of English literary life in that day-in William Hazlitt and Henry Hallamthe first representing very nearly what we would call the Bohemian element-ready to-day for an article in the Edinburgh Review, and to-morrow for a gibe in the Examiner, or a piece of diablerie in the London Magazine; Hallam, on the other hand, representing the sober and orderly traditions, colored by the life and work of such men as Hume, Roscoe, and Gibbon.

Queen of a Salon.

Another group of literary people, of a very varied sort, we should have found in the salons

of my Lady Blessington,* who used to hold court on the Thames- now by Piccadilly, and again at Gore House in the early part of this century. She was herself a writer; nor is her personal history without its significance, as an outgrowth of times when George IV. was setting the pace for those ambitious of social distinction.

She was the quick-witted daughter of an Irish country gentleman of the Lucius O'Trigger sortnicknamed Beau Power. He loved a whip and fast horses also dogs, powder, and blare. He wore white-topped boots, with showy frills and ruffles; he drank hard, swore harder-wasted his fortune, abused his wife, but was "very fine" to the end. He was as cruel as he was fine; shot a peasant once, in cold blood, and dragged him home after his saddle beast. He worried his daughter, Marguerite (Lady Blessington), into marrying, at fifteen, a man whom she detested. It

*Marguerite Power (Countess of Blessington), b. 1789; d. 1849; m. Captain Farmer, 1804; m. Earl of Blessington, 1817. 1822-1829, travelling on Continent. Idler in Italy, 1839-40 (first novel, about 1833). Conversations with Lord Byron, 1834. Her special reign in London, 1831 to 1848.