with its vivid narrative of Dick Turpin's ride to York. In the interest and rapidity of his scenes and adventures, Ainsworth showed some dramatic power, but little originality or felicity in humour or character. His romance, Crichton (1837), is founded on the marvellous history of the 'Admirable' Scot; and later works were Jack Sheppard (1839), a sort of Newgate romance; The Tower of London, Guy Fawkes, Old St Paul's, Windsor Castle, The Lancashire Witches, The Star Chamber, The Flitch of Bacon, The Spendthrift, &c. There are rich, copious, and brilliant descriptions in some of these stories, but both their æsthetic value and their moral tendency were-and are now-open to much criticism; there are certainly too many

WILLIAM HARRISON AINSWORTH. From a Print in the British Museum after the Portrait by Maclise. scenes of low but successful villainy, too many ghastly and unrelieved details of human suffering. As romances, they abound in incident, and are elaborately and ingeniously constructed, but in their strongest situations are often frankly incredible; and the style, especially in the conversations, is artificial and stilted to a degree. Even in the most appalling crises his characters 'reply to one another in the affirmative' and call a church the sacred pile or the reverend structure. When a beautiful girl is being roasted alive in a burning house one friend says to another, I will ascertain how the case stands ; and 'having learned to his great satisfaction what had occurred' (viz., that she has been saved), 'he flew back and briefly explained the situation of the parties.' The most intimate dialogue also is innocently constructed so as 'to explain the situation of the parties' to the reader, and to expound incidents not elsewhere recorded. The author is fond of such participial constructions as 'knocking at the door, an elderly servant appeared,' when it

is the visitor who knocks. The story of Jack Sheppard, illustrated, like six others, by Cruikshank, had immense success, and was dramatised. In 1881 a banquet was held in Ainsworth's honour in Manchester, at which he was acclaimed the Lancashire novelist.'

The Dance of Death.

On the night of their liberation, Chowles and Judith proceeded to the vaults of Saint Faith's, to deposit within them the plunder they had obtained in the prison. They found them entirely deserted. Neither verger, sexton, nor any other person was to be seen, and they took up their quarters in the crypt. Having brought a basket of provisions and a few bottles of wine with them, they determined to pass the night in revelry; and, accordingly, having lighted a fire with the fragments of old coffins brought from the charnel, they sat down to their meal. Having done full justice to it, and disposed of the first flask, they were about to abandon themselves to unrestrained enjoyment, when their glee was all at once interrupted by a strange and unaccountable noise in the adjoining church. Chowles, who had just commenced chanting one of his wild melodies, suddenly stopped, and Judith set down the glass she had raised to her lips unWhat could it mean? Neither of them could tell. It seemed like strains of unearthly music, mixed with shrieks and groans as of tortured spirits, accompanied by peals of such laughter as might be supposed to proceed from demons.

tasted.

'The dead are burst forth from their tombs,' cried Chowles, in a quavering voice, 'and are attended by a legion of evil spirits.'

It would seem so,' replied Judith, rising. I should like to behold the sight. Come with me.'

'Not for the world!' rejoined Chowles, shuddering; 'and I would recommend you to stay where you are. You may behold your dead husband among them.' 'Do you think so?' rejoined Judith, halting.

'I am sure of it,' cried Chowles, eagerly. Stay where you are stay where you are.'

As he spoke, there was another peal of infernal laughter, and the strains of music grew louder each

moment.

'Come what may, I will see what it is,' said Judith, emptying her glass, as if seeking courage from the draught. Surely,' she added, in a taunting tone, 'you will come with me.'

'I am afraid of nothing earthly,' rejoined Chowles'but I do not like to face beings of another world.' 'Then I will go alone,' rejoined Judith.

'Nay, that will never be,' replied Chowles, tottering after her.

arm,

As they opened the door and crossed the charnel, such an extraordinary combination of sounds burst upon their ears that they again paused, and looked anxiously at each other. Chowles laid his hand on his companion's and strove to detain her, but she would not be stayed, and he was forced to proceed. Setting down the lamp on the stone floor, Judith passed into the subterranean church, where she beheld a sight that almost petrified her. In the midst of the nave, which was illumined by a blue glimmering light, whence proceeding it was impossible to determine, stood a number of grotesque figures, apparelled in fantastic garbs, and each attended by a skeleton. Some of the latter grisly shapes were playing on tambours, others on psalteries, others on

rebecs-every instrument producing the strangest sound imaginable. Viewed through the massive pillars, beneath that dark and ponderous roof, and by the mystic light before described, this strange company had a supernatural appearance, and neither Chowles nor Judith doubted for a moment that they beheld before them a congregation of phantoms. An irresistible feeling of curiosity prompted them to advance. On drawing nearer, they found the assemblage comprehended all ranks of society. There was a pope in his tiara and pontifical dress; a cardinal in his cap and robes; a monarch with a sceptre in his hand, and arrayed in the habiliments of royalty; a crowned queen; a bishop wearing his mitre, and carrying his crosier; an abbot likewise in his mitre, and bearing a crosier; a duke in his robes of state; a grave canon of the church; a knight sheathed in armour; a judge, an advocate, and a magistrate, all in their robes; a mendicant friar and a nun; and the list was completed by a physician, an astrologer, a miser, a merchant, a duchess, a pedlar, a soldier, a gamester, an idiot, a robber, a blind man, and a beggar-each distinguishable by his apparel.

By-and-by, with a wild and gibbering laugh that chilled the beholders' blood, one of the tallest and grisliest of the skeletons sprang forward, and beating his drum, the whole ghostly company formed, two and two, into a line-a skeleton placing itself on the right of every mortal. In this order, the fantastic procession marched between the pillars, the unearthly music playing all the while, and disappeared at the further extremity of the church. With the last of the group the mysterious light vanished, and Chowles and his companion were left in profound darkness.

'What can it mean?' cried Judith, as soon as she recovered her speech. Are they human or spirits?'

6

'Human beings don't generally amuse themselves in this way,' returned Chowles. 'But hark!-I still hear the music. They are above-in Saint Paul's.'

'Then I will join them,' said Judith. 'I am resolved to see the end of it.'

'Don't leave me behind,' returned Chowles, following her. I would rather keep company with Beelzebub and all his imps than be alone.'

Both were too well acquainted with the way to need any light. Ascending the broad stone steps, they presently emerged into the cathedral, which they found illumined by the same glimmering light as the lower church, and they perceived the ghostly assemblage gathered into an immense ring, and dancing round the tall skeleton, who continued beating his drum, and uttering a strange gibbering sound, which was echoed by the others. Each moment the dancers increased the swiftness of their pace, until at last it grew to a giddy whirl, and then, all at once, with a shriek of laughter, the whole company fell to the ground.

Chowles and Judith then, for the first time, understood, from the confusion that ensued and the exclamations uttered, that they were no spirits they had to deal with, but beings of the same mould as themselves. Accordingly, they approached the party of masquers, for such they proved, and found on inquiry that they were a party of young gallants, who, headed by the Earl of Rochester -the representative of the tall skeleton-had determined to realise the Dance of Death, as once depicted on the walls of an ancient cloister at the north of the cathedral, called Pardon-churchyard, on the walls of which, says

Stowe, were 'artificially and richly painted the Dance of Macabre, or Dance of Death, commonly called the Dance of Paul's, the like whereof was painted about Saint Innocent's at Paris. The metres, or poesy of this dance,' proceeds the same authority, 'were translated out of French into English by John Lydgate, monk of Bury; and with the picture of Death leading all estates, painted about the cloister, at the special request and expense of Jenkin Carpenter, in the reign of Henry the Sixth.'

At

some brilliant experiments in academic journalism. Apis Matina, his first venture, was followed in 1820 by The Etonian, which was printed by Charles Knight, and ran for ten months. Trinity College, Cambridge, which he entered in 1821, Praed won the Chancellor's medal twice with poems on 'Australasia' and 'Athens,' and contributed prose and verse to Knight's Quarterly Magazine. The Brazen Head, which reached its third number, was another of his ventures in the periodical line in 1826. At that time he was tutor to a son of Lord Ailesbury. In 1829, having obtained a college fellowship, he was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple, and next year entered the House of Commons as member for the rotten borough of St Germans in Cornwall. At Cambridge, in the Union debates, he had been a Whig champion against the Tory Macaulay, but in Parliament the positions of the two were reversed. Praed lost his seat on the passing of the Reform Act, but afterwards re-entered Parliament as member succes

The

sively for Great Yarmouth and Ailesbury. Duke of Wellington employed him in some pamphleteering work, and he was Secretary to the Board of Control in 1834-35; but although his maiden speech in Parliament had been greeted with applause, he failed to win distinction in politics. He died of consumption at the fatal age of thirty-seven.

Praed's poems were collected and published first in America in 1844; the earliest authorised edition in England, with a Memoir by Derwent Coleridge, appeared only in 1864, and was followed in 1887 and 1888 by his prose essays and his political squibs. These last were accounted too goodnatured to be effective, and it is on his dainty vers de société and his essays in what has been called 'metrical genre-painting' that his poetic reputation rests. The best of his verses-The Vicar, for example, and Quince-show a mingling of humour, wit, and pathos perhaps more refined, though less intense and vital, than is found in Hood-a poet to whom in some regards Praed bears a notable resemblance. Most of his society verses are mere trifles, but everywhere, even in his charades, one finds delicate good taste and finished execution. His skill as a metrist within certain limits is unfailing, but here again he shows a narrower range and a less vigorous energy than Hood. In the world of English literature he stands in a small group apart-almost a coterie-with Locker Lampson and Calverley and their like, and as yet he is perhaps the greatest of the band.

The Vicar.

Some years ago, ere time and taste
Had turned our parish topsy-turvy,
When Darnel Park was Darnel Waste,

And roads as little known as scurvy,
The man who lost his way between

St Mary's Hill and Sandy Thicket Was always shown across the green, And guided to the Parson's wicket. Back flew the bolt of lissom lath;

Fair Margaret, in her tidy kirtle, Led the lorn traveller up the path,

Through clean-clipt rows of box and myrtle; And Don and Sancho, Tramp and Tray, Upon the parlour steps collected, Wagged all their tails, and seemed to say, 'Our master knows you-you're expected.'

Uprose the Reverend Dr Brown,

Uprose the Doctor's winsome marrow; The lady laid her knitting down,

Her husband clasped his ponderous Barrow; Whate'er the stranger's caste or creed, Pundit or Papist, saint or sinner,

He found a stable for his steed,

And welcome for himself, and dinner.

If, when he reached his journey's end,

And warmed himself in Court or College,

He had not gained an honest friend,

And twenty curious scraps of knowledge,

If he departed as he came,

With no new light on love or liquor,— Good sooth, the traveller was to blame, And not the Vicarage, nor the Vicar.

His talk was like a stream, which runs With rapid change from rocks to roses : It slipped from politics to puns,

It passed from Mahomet to Moses; Beginning with the laws which keep

The planets in their radiant courses, And ending with some precept deep For dressing eels or shoeing horses.

He was a shrewd and sound Divine,
Of loud Dissent the mortal terror;
And when, by dint of page and line,

He 'stablished Truth, or startled Error, The Baptist found him far too deep;

The Deist sighed with saving sorrow; And the lean Levite went to sleep, And dreamed of tasting pork to-morrow.

His sermon never said or showed

That Earth is foul, that Heaven is gracious, Without refreshment on the road

From Jerome, or from Athanasius: And sure a righteous zeal inspired

The hand and head that penned and planned them, For all who understood admired,

And some who did not understand them.

He wrote, too, in a quiet way,

Small treatises and smaller verses, And sage remarks on chalk and clay,

And hints to noble Lords-and nurses; True histories of last year's ghost,

Lines to a ringlet, or a turban, And trifles for the Morning Post, And nothings for Sylvanus Urban.

He did not think all mischief fair,

Although he had a knack of joking; He did not make himself a bear, Although he had a taste for smoking; And when religious sects ran mad,

He held, in spite of all his learning, That if a man's belief is bad,

It will not be improved by burning.

And he was kind, and loved to sit⚫
In the low hut or garnished cottage,
And praise the farmer's homely wit,

And share the widow's homelier pottage:
At his approach complaint grew mild;
And when his hand unbarred the shutter,
The clammy lips of fever smiled
The welcome which they could not utter.

He always had a tale for me

Of Julius Cæsar, or of Venus; From him I learnt the rule of three,

Cat's cradle, leap-frog, and Quæ genus:

I used to singe his powdered wig,
To steal the staff he put such trust in,
And make the puppy dance a jig,
When he began to quote Augustine.

Alack the change! in vain I look
For haunts in which my boyhood trifled,—
The level lawn, the trickling brook,

The trees I climbed, the beds I rifled:
The church is larger than before;

You reach it by a carriage entry; It holds three hundred people more, And pews are fitted up for gentry. Sit in the Vicar's seat: you'll hear

The doctrine of a gentle Johnian, Whose hand is white, whose tone is clear, Whose phrase is very Ciceronian. Where is the old man laid ?-look down, And construe on the slab before you, 'Hic jacet Gulielmus Brown,

Vir nullâ non donandus lauru.

The Rainbow.

My First in torrents bleak and black
Was rushing from the sky,
When with my Second at his back
Young Cupid wandered by;

'Now take me in; the moon hath past;
I pray ye, take me in!

The lightnings flash, the hail falls fast,
All Hades rides the thunder-blast;

I'm dripping to the skin!'

'I know thee well, thy songs and sighs;
A wicked god thou art,

And yet most welcome to the eyes,
Most witching to the heart!'
The Wanderer prayed another prayer,
And shook his drooping wing;
The Lover bade him enter there,
And wrung my First from out his hair,
And dried my Second's string.

And therefore (so the urchin swore,
By Styx, the fearful river,
And by the shafts his quiver bore,
And by his shining quiver)
That Lover aye shall see my Whole
In Life's tempestuous Heaven;
And, when the lightnings cease to roll,
Shall fix thereon his dreaming soul
In the deep calm of even.

Robert Stephen Hawker (1804-75), Cornish poet and unconventional parson, was born at Plymouth, the son of a physician who afterwards took orders, and grandson of a vicar of Plymouth who compiled the Morning and Evening Portions and wrote many other theological works. Young Hawker went up from Cheltenham Grammar School to Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1823; his father found himself unable to keep him there; but that same autumn the poetic but practical and resolute undergraduate married a lady of fortune and forty-one, and with her returned to Oxford. He carried off the Newdigate in 1827, was ordained in 1831, and in 1834 became vicar of Morwenstow, on the Cornish coast. Its parishioners were demoralised by generations of wrecking, smuggling, and spiritual ignorance; but in his forty years' labour he rebuilt the vicarage, restored the church,

built a school, and introduced a weekly offertory and a striking ceremonial largely of his own devising. He was a devoted parson, but was fond of open-air life, and was the intimate and ally of his seafaring parishioners; a mystic in religion, he even shared many of the superstitions of his people as to apparitions and the evil eye. His usual garb was an odd compound of seaman's rig and imposing hyper-ecclesiastical costume-strange brightcoloured vestments imperfectly concealing seaboots to the knee. In his poetry, the spontaneous outpouring of a complex but vigorous personality too much absorbed by active life and its duties and joys to become a 'professional poet,' Hawker is delightful. His Tendrils by Reuben, published at seventeen, he did not reprint; but by his Cornish ballads in Records of the Western Shore (1832-36), the Quest of the Sangraal (1863), and other poems he showed himself unmistakably a poet. His Footprints of Former Men in Cornwall (1870) was a collection of miscellaneous papers on local traditions. None of Hawker's poems is so well known as his spirited 'Song of the Western Men,' based on the old Cornish refrain, 'And shall Trelawny die?' a ballad so spontaneous and swinging in its rhythms as to have deceived Sir Walter Scott and Lord Macaulay into accepting it as a genuine relic of the seventeenth century. Hawker's wife died in 1863-a blow that drove the eccentric parson-poet to melancholy and opium, from which he was saved only by the loyalty of his second wife (1864), daughter of a Polish exile, who bore him three daughters, and nursed his declining years with rare devotion. He died at Plymouth 15th August 1875, having been admitted twelve hours before to the Roman Catholic communion. There was a painful controversy after his death as to whether and how long he had been a Roman Catholic at heart.

In Hawker's Sangraal, Arthur, much unlike his Tennysonian namesake, speaks to his comrades of the Table Round as a medieval English crusader might well have done :

Ho for the Sangraal, vanished vase of God!
Ye know that in old days, that yellow Jew
Accursed Herod; and the earth-wide judge,
Pilate the Roman; doomster for all lands-
Or else the judgment had not been for all-
Bound Jesu-master to the world's tall tree
Slowly to die.-Ha, sirs, had we been there
They durst not have assayed their felon deed,-
Excalibur had cleft them to the chine !-
Slowly he died, a world in every pang,
Until the hard centurion's cruel spear
Smote his high heart and from that severed side
Rushed the red stream that quenched the wrath of heaven.
Then came Sir Joseph, hight of Arimathie,
Bearing that awful vase the Sangraal !
The vessel of the Pasch, Shere Thursday night,
The self-same cup wherein the faithful wine
Heard God, and was obedient unto blood;
Therewith he knelt, and gathered blessed drops
From his dear Master's side that sadly fell,

The ruddy dews from the great tree of life :
Sweet Lord! What treasures! like the priceless gems
Hid in the tawny casket of a king-

A ransom for an army; one by one!

That wealth he cherished long: his very soul
Around his ark: bent as before a shrine.

He dwelt in Orient Syria, God's own land:

The ladder-foot of Heaven-where shadowy shapes
In white apparel glided up and down!

His home was like a garner, full of corn
And wine and oil: a granary of God.

Young men, that no one knew, went in and out
With a far look in their eternal eyes.
All things were strange and rare; the Sangraal
As though it clung to some ethereal chain
Brought down high Heaven to earth at Arimathie.

Ride! ride! with red spur, there is death in delay, 'Tis a race for dear life with the devil;

If dark Cromwell prevail, and the King must give way, This earth is no place for Sir Beville.

So at Stamford he fought, and at Lansdown he fell,
But vain were the visions he cherished,

For the great Cornish heart, that the King loved so well,
In the grave of the Granville it perished.

See Lives-from opposite points of view on the Catholic question-by Mr Baring-Gould (1875; 3rd ed. 1886) and by Dr F. G. Lee (1876); an edition of Hawker's poems, with a short Life, by J. G. Godwin (1879); one of his prose works (1893); and another of poems, with a bibliography by S. Wallis (1899).

his

Lord Houghton (1809–85), long known in literature and public life as Richard Monckton Milnes, was born in London, the only son of Robert Pemberton Milnes, Single-speech Milnes' (1784-1858), of Fryston Hall, Bawtry Hall, and Great Houghton, Yorkshire, who declined the Chancellorship of the Exchequer and a peerage; his mother was a daughter of the fourth Lord Galway. Educated by private tutors at home and in Italy, he went up in 1827 to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his M.A. in 1831, and where he was a leader in the Union and one of the famous Apostles.' From 1837 to 1863 he represented Pontefract, first as a Conservative, but latterly (after Peel's conversion to Free Trade) as an Independent Liberal; then he was called by Palmerston to the Upper House, of which for a score of years he was the 'only poet.' His friendships constituted a great part of his life; he knew everybody worth knowing at home and abroad, and cherished kindly and intimate relations with French statesmen, Italian revolutionaries, and American poets. His catholicity and the tact which enabled him to bring together at his table men widely opposed in politics and religion earned for him Carlyle's (playful) recommendation for the post of 'perpetual president of the heaven-andhell-amalgamation society.' A Mæcenas of poets, Lord Houghton got Tennyson the laureateship, soothed the dying hours of poor David Gray, and was one of the first to recognise Mr Swinburne's genius; he suffered at the hands of the Quarterly for his worship of such baby idols as Mr John Keats and Mr Alfred Tennyson.' His own verse was always graceful, cultured, and thoughtful, though wanting in force and fervour; some of the shorter pieces were in their day exceedingly popular-'Strangers Yet,' for example, and 'The Beating of my Own Heart.' Besides this, Lord Houghton the Mr Vavasour' of Disraeli's Tancred-was a traveller, a philanthropist, an unrivalled after-dinner speaker, and Rogers's successor in the art of breakfast-giving. He went up in a balloon, and down in a diving-bell; he was the first publishing Englishman who gained access to the harems of the East; he championed oppressed nationalities, liberty of conscience, the Essays and Reviews, fugitive slaves, the reform