There was a something which bespoke command,
As one who was a Lady in the land.

Her hair, I said, was auburn; but her eyes
Were black as Death, their lashes the same hue,
Of downcast length, in whose silk shadow lies
Deepest attraction; for when to the view
Forth from its raven fringe the full glance flies,

Ne'er with such force the swiftest arrow flew ; 'Tis as the snake late coiled, who pours his length, And hurls at once his venom and his strength.

Her brow was white and low, her cheek's pure dye
Like twilight, rosy still with the set sun;
Short upper lip-sweet lips! that make us sigh
Ever to have seen such; for she was one
Fit for the model of a statuary,

(A race of mere impostors, when all's doneI've seen much finer women, ripe and real, Than all the nonsense of their stone ideal). (From Don Juan, Canto ii.)

From 'Don Juan.'

And forth they wander'd, her sire being gone,
As I have said, upon an expedition;
And mother, brother, guardian, she had none,
Save Zoe, who, although with due precision
She waited on her lady with the sun,

Thought daily service was her only mission, Bringing warm water, wreathing her long tresses, And asking now and then for cast-off dresses.

It was the cooling hour, just when the rounded
Red sun sinks down behind the azure hill,
Which then seems as if the whole earth it bounded,
Circling all nature, hush'd, and dim, and still,
With the far mountain-crescent half surrounded

On one side, and the deep sea calm and chill
Upon the other, and the rosy sky,

With one star sparkling through it like an eye.

And thus they wander'd forth, and hand in hand,
Over the shining pebbles and the shells,
Glided along the smooth and harden'd sand,
And in the worn and wild receptacles
Work'd by the storms, yet work'd as it were plann'd,
In hollow halls, with sparry roofs and cells,
They turn'd to rest; and, each clasp'd by an arm,
Yielded to the deep twilight's purple charm.

They look'd up to the sky, whose floating glow
Spread like a rosy ocean, vast and bright;
They gazed upon the glittering sea below,

Whence the broad moon rose circling into sight;
They heard the waves splash, and the wind so low,
And saw each other's dark eyes darting light
Into each other-and, beholding this,
Their lips drew near, and clung into a kiss.

A long, long kiss, a kiss of youth, and love,
And beauty, all concentrating like rays
Into one focus, kindled from above:

Such kisses as belong to early days

Where heart, and soul, and sense in concert move,
And the blood's lava, and the pulse a blaze,
Each kiss a heart-quake,-for a kiss's strength,
I think, it must be reckon'd by its length.

By length I mean duration : theirs endured
Heaven knows how long-no doubt they never
reckon'd;

And if they had, they could not have secured
The sum of their sensations to a second:
They had not spoken; but they felt allured,

As if their souls and lips each other beckon'd,
Which, being joined, like swarming bees they clung-
Their hearts the flowers from whence the honey sprung.

They were alone, but not alone as they
Who shut in chambers think it loneliness;
The silent ocean, and the starlit bay,

The twilight glow, which momently grew less,
The voiceless sands, and dropping caves, that lay
Around them, made them to each other press,
As if there were no life beneath the sky
Save theirs, and that their life could never die.

They fear'd no eyes nor ears on that lone beach,
They felt no terrors from the night; they were
All in all to each other: though their speech

Was broken words, they thought a language there;
And all the burning tongues the passions teach
Found in one sigh the best interpreter

Of nature's oracle-first love,-that all
Which Eve has left her daughters since her fall.

Haidée spoke not of scruples, ask'd no vows,

Nor offer'd any; she had never heard
Of plight and promises to be a spouse,
Or perils by a loving maid incurr'd;
She was all which pure ignorance allows,

And flew to her young mate like a young bird;
And, never having dreamt of falsehood, she
Had not one word to say of constancy.

She loved, and was beloved-she adored,

And she was worshipp'd after nature's fashionTheir intense souls, into each other poured, If souls could die, had perish'd in that passion,But by degrees their senses were restored,

Again to be o'ercome, again to dash on ; And, beating 'gainst his bosom, Haidée's heart Felt as if never more to beat apart.

Alas! they were so young, so beautiful,

So lonely, loving, helpless, and the hour Was that in which the Heart is always full, And, having o'er itself no further power, Prompts deeds Eternity cannot annul,

But pays off moments in an endless shower Of hell-fire-all prepared for people giving Pleasure or pain to one another living.

Alas for Juan and Haidée! they were

So loving and so lovely-till then never,
Excepting our first parents, such a pair

Had run the risk of being damned for ever:
And Haidée, being devout as well as fair,
Had, doubtless, heard about the Stygian river,
And Hell, and Purgatory-but forgot,
Just in the very crisis she should not.

They look upon each other, and their eyes

Gleam in the moonlight; and her white arm clasps Round Juan's head, and his around hers lies Half buried in the tresses which it grasps :

She sits upon his knee, and drinks his sighs,
He hers, until they end in broken gasps ;
And thus they form a group that 's quite antique,
Half-naked, loving, natural, and Greek.

And when those deep and burning moments passed,
And Juan sunk to sleep within her arms,
She slept not, but all tenderly, though fast,
Sustain'd his head upon her bosom's charms;
And now and then her eye to Heaven is cast,

And then on the pale cheek her breast now warms, Pillowed on her o'erflowing heart, which pants With all it granted, and with all it grants.

An infant when it gazes on the light,

A child the moment when it drains the breast,

A devotee when soars the Host in sight,
An Arab with a stranger for a guest,

A sailor when the prize has struck in fight,
A miser filling his most hoarded chest,
Feel rapture; but not such true joy are reaping,
As they who watch o'er what they love while sleeping.

I see before me the Gladiator lie:
He leans upon his hand-his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his droop'd head sinks gradually low—
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him-he is gone,
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail'd the wretch
who won.
(From Canto iv.)

Sonnet on Chillon.
Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art :
For there thy habitation is the heart-

The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd-

To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom— Their country conquers with their martyrdom, And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. Chillon thy prison is a holy place,

And thy sad floor an altar-for 'twas trod, Until his very steps have left a trace

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod,

By Bonnivard !-May none those marks efface!
For they appeal from tyranny to God.

(From The Prisoner of Chillon.)

From 'Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte.' 'Tis done-but yesterday a King!

And armed with Kings to strive-
And now thou art a nameless thing:
So abject-yet alive!

Is this the man of thousand thrones,
Who strewed our earth with hostile bones,

And can he thus survive?

Since he, miscalled the Morning Star,
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far.

Saul.

Thou whose spell can raise the dead, Bid the Prophet's form appear, 'Samuel, raise thy buried head

King, behold the phantom seer!'

Earth yawned; he stood the centre of a cloud :
Light changed its hue, retiring from his shroud.
Death stood all glassy in his fixéd eye;
His hand was withered, and his veins were dry;
His foot, in bony whiteness, glitter'd there,
Shrunken and sinewless, and ghastly bare;
From lips that moved not and unbreathing frame,
Like caverned winds, the hollow accents came.
Saul saw, and fell to earth, as falls the oak,
At once, and blasted by the thunder-stroke.

'Why is my sleep disquieted?
Who is he that calls the dead?
Is it thou, O King? Behold,
Bloodless are these limbs, and cold:
Such are mine; and such shall be
Thine to-morrow, when with me:
Ere the coming day is done,
Such shalt thou be, such thy Son.
Fare thee well, but for a day,
Then we mix our mouldering clay.
Thou-thy race, lie pale and low,
Pierced by shafts of many a bow;
And the falchion by thy side
To thy heart thy hand shall guide:
Crownless-breathless-headless fall,
Son and sire-the house of Saul!'

THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON.

[The standard edition of Lord Byron's Poetical and Prose Works is that issued in 1898-1903 in twelve volumes by Mr Murray; the poems edited by Mr Ernest Hartley Coleridge, the letters and journals by Mr Rowland E. Prothero. This edition contains many hitherto unpublished additions; thus whereas Moore gave in the Life (1830) 561 of Byron's letters, this gives 1198.]

Thomas Hood.

Thomas Hood was born on the 23rd of May 1799, at No. 31 the Poultry, in the City of London, where his father was a publisher. Thomas Hood the elder, a Scotsman born near Errol, midway between Perth and Dundee, was originally bound apprentice to a bookseller in Dundee, but soon found his way to London. He had some turn for authorship, and even wrote a couple of novels now forgotten, so that his more distinguished son was born with ink in his blood.' To Thomas Hood the publisher and his wife, daughter of an engraver, were born a family of six children, two sons and four daughters, of whom Thomas was the second son. A tendency to consumption on the mother's side, fatal to three of her children and ultimately to herself,

was at the root of those complicated disorders which made the life of Thomas Hood 'one long disease.' The father died after a few days' illness in 1811, when Thomas was only twelve years old, leaving the widow and remaining children in reduced circum

stances.

warded off-the boy led the healthiest of outdoor lives in fishing and boating; he had ample leisure besides for reading and sketching, and he began to practise his pen both in verse and prose in the pages of local newspapers and magazines. In 1818 he returned to London with his health apparently re-established, and entered the studio of his uncle, the engraver. After a short apprenticeship of only two years he began to work on his own account, until he discovered where lay the true field for his genius. About the same time,

In his Literary Reminiscences, published in the first series of Hood's Own, Hood tells us that he owed his earliest instruction to two maiden ladies, of the name of Hogsflesh; that he was then sent to a suburban boarding-school (the 'Clapham Academy' of his famous Ode), and ultimately to a day-school at Clerkenwell. After the age of thirteen or fourteen his own keen and catholic love of reading was the foundation of that singular versatility and resource which marked both his poetic and his humorous vein. Through the influence of a friend of the family he was placed in a merchant's counting-house in the City, but his health proving unable to stand the confinement to the desk, he was shipped off to Dundee, where he lived among his father's relations from 1815 to 1818. The threatened consumption was for a time

a young man of two- and twenty, he was appointed sub-editor of the London Magazine.

Nothing more propitious for Hood's genius could have happened. It emancipated him for ever from the engraver's desk, and

it threw him at once into a society of writers best fitted to call forth all that was best in him. He now found himself in daily companionship with such men as Procter, Cary, Allan Cunningham, De Quincey, Hazlitt, and, above all, with Charles Lamb, with whom a close friendship sprang up, destined to be one of the best in

fluences of Hood's literary life. It was, however, the intimacy with John Hamilton Reynolds, whose sister he married three years later, that more than all the rest served to encourage and train Hood's poetic faculty. John Keats had died early in 1821, the year that Hood joined the magazine, and it does not appear that they ever met; but Reynolds had been the close friend and disciple of Keats, and Hood passed at once under the same fascinating influence. Between July 1821 and July 1823, besides other and lighter contributions to the London, Hood wrote and published in the magazine some of the finest of what may be called the poems of his Keatsian period-Lycus the Centaur, the Two Peacocks of Bedfont, the Ode to Autumn, and others-poems which have never materially increased Hood's

fame with the ordinary reader, chiefly because Hood the humourist appeals to a larger audience than Hood the poet, and the world is always indisposed to allow credit to a writer for gifts of very opposite kinds. And although in the class of subjects, and in the very titles of these poems, as well as in turns of phrase and versification, the influence of Keats is unmistakable, the poems show quite as markedly the result of an ear and taste formed upon a loving study of the narrative poems of Shakespeare. And 'over all there hung' a tender melancholy observable in all Hood's serious verse, engendered in a personality on which from the beginning there rested the shadow of impending fate. In spite of real and original poetic quality, these poems, issued anonymously, failed to attract notice, and when in 1827 he produced them with others of still finer quality in book-form, the volume fell all but dead from the press.

A different fate attended an earlier venture in 1825, when Hood and his brother-in-law Reynolds published (also anonymously) the little volume entitled Odes and Addresses to Great People. While writing serious poetry in the London it had fallen to Hood's lot to act as 'comic man' or humorous chorus to the magazine, and as such to invent facetious answers to correspondents, real or imaginary. Among these he had inserted a burlesque Ode to Dr Kitchener, exhibiting a verbal wit of quite different flavour from the ordinary. The success of this trifle seems to have suggested a collection of similar odes, to which Reynolds contributed a few; but Hood's was far the more conspicuous share, revealing a wealth of humorous ingenuity that at once attracted notice. Coleridge wrote attributing the book to Lamb as the only writer he knew capable of the achievement. The book passed rapidly through three editions, and practically determined the chief occupation of Hood for the remainder of his short life. His musical melancholy verse had brought him no recognition; his first facetious efforts had gained him an audience at once; from that day forth for twenty years of anxiety and struggle the vein thus opened was to be worked, in health and in sickness, with the grain and against the grain. For Hood had married in 1824, contrary to all counsels of prudence. The marriage with the sister of his friend Reynolds was one of truest affection; but Hood had no means of support but his pen, and his health was already matter of serious anxiety; soon there were strained relations with the Reynoldses, and in the end came a complete estrangement from Hood's early friend and brother-in-law. The Odes and Addresses were followed in 1826 by the first series of Whims and Oddities, where Hood first exhibited such graphic talent as he possessed in these picture-puns of which he seems to have been the inventor; he said of himself that, like Pope's 'tape-tied curtains,' he was 'never meant to draw.' A second series of Whims and Oddities appeared in 1827, dedicated to Sir Walter Scott,

followed without delay by two volumes of National Tales, the least characteristic and noticeable of Hood's writings. In 1829 he edited The Gem, one of the many fashionable annuals then in voguea remarkable little volume, for besides Charles Lamb's 'Lines on a Child dying as soon as born,' written on the death of Hood's first child, it gave to the world Hood's Eugene Aram, the first of his poems showing a tragic force of real individuality.

Hood and his wife left London in 1829 for a cottage at Winchmore Hill, a few miles to the north; and there he schemed the first of those comic annuals which he produced yearly and single-handed from 1830 to 1839. In 1832 he left Winchmore Hill for an old-fashioned house at Wanstead in Essex, forming part of the historic mansion of Wanstead House; and the romantic scenery of the park and neighbourhood furnished him with a background for his one novel, Tylney Hall, written during the next two years, and published in three volumes in 1834--a story of a conventional melodramatic type, with an underplot of cockney life and manners, not without many touches of Hood's peculiar charm, but on the whole a failure. He never repeated the experiment of prose romance.

In 1834 the failure of a publisher plunged Hood into serious money difficulties by which he was hampered for the rest of his life. After the birth of his second child, a son, in January 1835, and Mrs Hood's dangerous illness, the family settled for two years at Coblenz, and for the next three at Ostend. During these five years Hood, struggling against the slow progress of a fatal disease, continued to produce his Comic Annuals and other lighter matter, and schemed his Up the Rhine, a humorous account of the proceedings of an English family in Germany, told in letters, and too obviously imitated from Humphrey Clinker. Published in 1839, this at once hit the public taste, but seems to have brought little profit to its author, who, apparently destitute of all business faculty, suffered throughout his career from the misfortunes or the superior sagacity of his publishers. The sufferings of Hood during these five years were very terrible, and are only hinted by his son and daughter in their Memoir of their father. In an unpublished letter to his wife in April 1840, written during a temporary visit to England from the house of his generous friend, the first Charles Wentworth Dilke, he writes: 'I find my position a very cruel one-after all my struggles to be, as I am, almost moneyless, and with a very dim prospect of getting any, but by the sheer exercise of my pen. What is to be done in the meantime is a question I ask myself without any answer but -Bruges jail. At the very moment of being free of Bailey, am I tied elsewhere, hand and foot, and by sheer necessity ready to surrender myself that slave, a bookseller's hack!'

By the kindness of friends Hood was enabled to