There are also every year ' Deductions,' both as Scholar and Fellow, varying between £1 10s. and £4 4s. These are the same as Decrements. He pays no room rent. His personal expenses as an undergraduate came to about £5 a month while in residence. But the periods of residence seem short and broken. In some loose jottings Mr. Collins calculates the sum he received from his father, during the eight years of his residence at Pembroke, at £190, of which £130 was pocket money1. 1 A finely executed miniature of Mr. Collins has been shown me by his daughterin-law, Mrs. John Collins, of Lockinge, whose son, Sir Robert H. Collins, K.C.B., put the above book into my hands. CHAPTER XXXIII. ROMANTIC AND TRACTARIAN MOVEMENTS. Two of the poet Coleridge's brothers-EDWARD and GEORGE COLERIDGE-Were at Pembroke. The former matriculated Dec. 17, 1776, aged fifteen (B.A. 1780), the latter April 27, 1780, aged sixteen. Edward became vicar of Buckerell, Devon. George, after holding a mastership at Hackney, succeeded his father1 at Ottery St. Mary, and as chaplain, priest, and master of King Henry VIII's Free Grammar School. Samuel Taylor Coleridge speaks of him as 'my earliest friend.' After their father's death, 'He is father, brother, and everything to me.' Very tender were the relations between them. In 1794, as Private Silas Comberbacke, the younger wrote letter after letter to the elder, pouring forth a passion of repentance. One ends, 'My brother, my brother, pray for me, comfort me, my brother!' In another he writes, 'Your letters are a comfort to me in the comfortless hour-they are manna in the wilderness. . . . Shall I confess to you my weakness, my more than brother? I am afraid to meet you. When I call to mind the toil and wearisomeness of your avocations, and think how you sacrifice your amusements and your health, when I recollect your habitual and self-forgetting economy, how generously severe, my soul sickens at its own guilt. . . . Yet you, my brother, would comfort me, not reproach me.' On the reconciliation of the prodigal with his family in 1796, George received him with joy and tenderness at Ottery, but when at a later date Samuel proposed to be separated from his wife, the long-suffering elder brother sorrowfully shut his doors to him, and this proved a lasting rupture between the poet and the old home. The Poems of 1797 were dedicated to George Coleridge. He died Jan. 12, 1828. CHARLES KINGSLEY, father of a more famous Charles, spent his 1 The Rev. John Coleridge was likened by his son Samuel to Parson Adams. By way of simplifying grammar for boys he proposed to call the ablative the quale-quare-quiddative case. This divine loved to quote the Old Testament in Hebrew, which he commended to the attention of his flock as 'the immediate language of the Holy Ghost.' This exposed his successor, himself a learned man, to popular depreciation. KINGSLEY; T. L. BEDDOES. 417 Oxford days at Pembroke and Brasenose (matriculated Dec. 12, 1800). In the Life of his son he is described as 'a man of cultivation and refinement, a good linguist, an artist, a keen sportsman, a natural historian.' He was educated at Harrow and Oxford, and brought up with good expectations as a country gentleman, but having been early in life left an orphan, and his fortune squandered for him during his minority, he soon spent what was left, and at the age of thirty found himself almost penniless and obliged for the first time to think of a profession. He decided on holy orders, 'sold his hunters and land, and with a young wife went a second time to college, entering his name at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.' From him Charles Kingsley 'inherited his love of art, his sporting tastes, his fighting-blood-the men of his family having been soldiers for generations.' He became Rector of Barnack, but in 1830 moved to Clovelly. The people sprang to touch the more readily under the influence of a man who, physically their equal, feared no danger and could steer a boat, hoist and lower a sail," shoot a herring net, and haul a seine, as one of themselves... When the herring fleet put out to sea, the Rector, accompanied by his wife and boys, would start off down street for the Quay to give a short parting service, at which "men who worked " and "women who wept" would join in singing out of the old Prayer Book version the 121st Psalm.' In 1836 he became Rector of St. Luke's, Chelsea. One who knew him at Barnack speaks of him as 'a type of the old English clergyman, where the country gentleman forms the basis of the character which the minister of the Gospel completes'.' The revolutionary school of poets has next to Shelley no better exponent than THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES (1803-1849), the most 1 The following is the Epitaph placed by his son on his gravestone: 'Here lies All that was mortal of Charles Kingsley, Formerly of Battramley House, in the New Forest, Hants, Endowed by God with many noble gifts of mind and body A loving heart and stainless honour; And ruled the Parish of Chelsea well and wisely He died peacefully in the fear of God and in the faith of Christ Aged 78 years, With many friends and not an enemy on earth, Ее 418 REVOLUTIONARY SCHOOL. notable writer of the time of 'exhaustion and mediocrity' between Shelley's death and the matchless music of Tennyson. Tennyson rated Death's Jest Book very highly, and Browning declared 'If I were ever Professor of Poetry, my first lecture at the University should be on Beddoes, a forgotten Oxford poet,' On the other hand Beddoes writes from Oxford: Mr. Milman (our poetry professor) has made me quite unfashionable here, by denouncing me as one of a " villainous school." At that time, however, he had only published, as a freshman, his Improvisatore, a crude pamphlet of which he speedily became so ashamed that he suppressed every copy he could procure. Thomas Lovell Beddoes had for father the chaotic genius Dr. Beddoes, already described, and for mother Maria Edgeworth's sister Anna, a talented lady to whose 'healthy, noble, kind influence' Davy bears grateful testimony. From his uncle Lovell Edgeworth he obtained his second name. He was born at Clifton, July 20, 1803. His father, dying when he was five years old, left him to the guardianship of Davies Gilbert, P.R.S. From Bath Grammar School he went, aged fourteen, to the Charterhouse, where he 'distinguished himself by his mischievous deeds of daring, by the originality of his behaviour, and by his love of the old Elizabeth dramatists, whom he early began to imitate.' He was not seventeen when he was entered at his father's and his guardian's college, May 1, 1820. 'At Oxford he was eccentric and rebellious, priding himself on his democratic sentiments.' All that Beddoes has left that is worth keeping was produced, written, or begun in the next few years. In 1822 he published a schoolboy drama, the Bride's Tragedy, the unusual promise of which attracted attention in the reviews. Barry Cornwall in particular welcomed the new poet with enthusiasm, and became his friend. He describes him at the age of twenty-one as 'innocently gay, with a gibe always on his tongue, a mischievous eye, and locks curling like the hyacinth 1.' His college days indeed were the happiest part of his life. While an undergraduate he busied himself with several dramas, such as the Last Man and Love's Arrow Poisoned. In 1824 he was summoned to Florence to his mother's death-bed, and stayed in Italy some time, becoming acquainted there with Landor and Mrs. Shelley. Mr. Gosse says that Beddoes was 'the first perhaps to appreciate the magnitude of Shelley's merit, as he was certainly the earliest to imitate his lyrical work.' It is to his enthusiasm for this master that the production, in 1824, under the guarantee of himself and several others, of Shelley's Posthumous Poems is due. Meanwhile, his reading for his degree was interrupted. He writes to Kelsall, afterwards his biographer, from a retreat which he had hidden from his family, that he has before him 'the very hardest reading' for an examination for which he is absolutely unfit. He describes 1 His sister-in-law, Mrs. Cecilia Beddoes, tells me that she does not know of any portrait of him. THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES. 419 himself as living in a deserted state and sinking into deep despondency. In May, 1825, he was at Pembroke, and wrote inviting Procter : 'Come, shake London from thy skirts away. While the old sun-team, like a plough, doth stand He took B.A. May 25, 1825. Writing on June 8 from the College to Kelsall, he announces the projection of the most famous of his writings: 'Oxford is the most indolent place on earth. I have fairly done nothing in the world but read a play or two of Schiller, Aeschylus, and Euripides... I am thinking of a very Gothic-styled tragedy for which I have a jewel of a name-Death's Jest Book. Of course, no one will ever read it.' About this time, too, he wrote Torrismond and the Second Brother. But his unpopularity at Oxford, as a red radical, made him give up the idea of publishing a volume of lyrics called Outidana. He now resolved to forsake literature and give his whole attention to medicine. In July, 1825, Beddoes went to Göttingen, where he studied for four years. He liked the free and easy life and methods of study. There is an appetite for learning, a spirit of diligence, and withal a good-natured fellow-feeling wholly unparalleled in our old apoplectic and paralytic Almae Matres.' He adds, 'I find literary wishes fading pretty fast... I will frankly confess to you that I have lost much if not all of my ambition to become poetically distinguished.' Certainly German metaphysics and politics dried up the creative faculty in Beddoes as in Coleridge. He returned to Oxford to take M.A. April 16, 1828. In 1829 he went to study medicine at Würtzburg and was made M.D. by that University, but before actually receiving the diploma had to fly from Bavaria, where he was in ill odour with the government. He had afterwards to leave Strassburg for a like cause. Zürich was the home of his activities, as physiologist and politician, till the counter revolution by the peasants in September, 1839, and defeat of the Liberal cause. He saw his friend the minister Hegetschweiber murdered before his eyes. In March, 1840, he had himself to fly secretly. His wanderings were for some years obscure, but he wrote much German verse at this time. In 1846 he came back to England, rough and eccentric in habit. It is said that he arrived at the residence of a relative riding a donkey. The Procters tried to befriend Beddoes, but found him almost insane. A bravado about setting Drury Lane on fire with a bank note was due to a less respectable cause than craziness. His existence, he wrote, was monotonous, dull, and obscure. Settling next year in Frankfürt, his disgust |