Of limber bees that in the monkshood bells
House diligent; the imperishable glow
Of summer sunshine never more confessed
The harmony of nature, the divine
Diffusive spirit of the Beautiful.

Out in the snowy dimness, half revealed,
Like ghosts in glimpsing moonshine, wildly run
The children in bewildering delight.

The young poet received this specimen page as 'good news, and said he could now subside tranquilly without tears' into his eternal rest. A monument was erected to his memory at Kirkintilloch in 1865, Mr Henry Glassford Bell, the sheriff of Glasgow, delivering an interesting speech on the occasion. The monument bears the following inscription, from the pen of Lord Houghton: This monument of affection, admiration, and regret, is erected to DAVID GRAY, the poet of Merkland, by friends from far and near, desirous that his grave should be remembered amid the scenes of his rare genius and early death, and by the Luggie, now numbered with the streams illustrious in Scottish song. Born 29th January 1838; died 3d December 1861.' Three of the most active of the literary friends of David Gray-namely, Lord Houghton, Mr Hedderwick (the accomplished and affectionate biographer of the poet), and Sheriff Bell (whose latest literary task was editing a new edition of Gray's Poems)—have borne testimony to the rich though immature genius of this young poet, and to the pure and noble thoughts which fired his ambition, and guided his course through the short period of his life. Besides his principal poem, The Luggie, Gray wrote a series of Sonnets entitled In the Shadows, which are no less touching than beautiful in composition, and greatly superior to the poetry of Michael Bruce, written under similarly affecting circumstances.

An Autumnal Day.

Beneath an ash in beauty tender leaved,

And through whose boughs the glimmering sunshine flowed

In rare ethereal jasper, making cool

A chequered shadow in the dark green grass,
I lay enchanted. At my head there bloomed
A hedge of sweet-brier, fragrant as the breath
Of maid beloved, when her cheek is laid
To yours in downy pressure, soft as sleep.
A bank of harebells, flowers unspeakable
For half-transparent azure, nodding, gleamed
As a faint zephyr, laden with perfume,
Kissed them to motion, gently, with no will.
Before me streams most dear unto my heart,
Sweet Luggie, sylvan Bothlin-fairer twain
Than ever sung themselves into the sea,
Lucid Ægean, gemmed with sacred isles-
Were rolled together in an emerald vale;
And into the severe bright noon, the smoke
In airy circles o'er the sycamores
Upcurled a lonely little cloud of blue
Above the happy hamlet. Far away,
A gently rising hill with umbrage clad,
Hazel and glossy birch and silver fir,
Met the keen sky. Oh, in that wood, I know,
The woodruff and the hyacinth are fair
In their own season; with the bilberry
Of dim and misty blue, to childhood dear.
Here on a sunny August afternoon,
A vision stirred my spirit half-awake
To fling a purer lustre on those fields

That knew my boyish footsteps; and to sing Thy pastoral beauty, Luggie, into fame.

If it must be that I Die young.

If it must be; if it must be, O God!
That I die young, and make no further moans;
That, underneath the unrespective sod,

In unescutcheoned privacy, my bones

Shall crumble soon-then give me strength to bear
The last convulsive throe of too sweet breath!

I tremble from the edge of life to dare
The dark and fatal leap, having no faith,
No glorious yearning for the Apocalypse;
But like a child that in the night-time cries
For light, I cry; forgetting the eclipse
Of knowledge and our human destinies.
O peevish and uncertain soul! obey
The law of life in patience till the day.

All Fair Things at their Death the Fairest. Why are all fair things at their death the fairest ? Beauty, the beautifullest in decay? Why doth rich sunset clothe each closing day With ever new apparelling the rarest ? Why are the sweetest melodies all born Of pain and sorrow? Mourneth not the dove, In the green forest gloom, an absent love? Leaning her breast against that cruel thorn, Doth not the nightingale, poor bird, complain And integrate her uncontrollable woe To such perfection, that to hear is pain? Thus Sorrow and Death-alone realitiesSweeten their ministration, and bestow On troublous life a relish of the skies!

Spring.

Now, while the long-delaying ash assumes
The delicate April green, and loud, and clear,
Through the cool, yellow, twilight glooms,
The thrush's song enchants the captive ear;
Now, while a shower is pleasant in the falling,
Stirring the still perfume that wakes around;
Now that doves mourn, and from the distance calling,
The cuckoo answers with a sovereign sound-
Come with thy native heart, O true and tried!
But leave all books; for what with converse high,
Flavoured with Attic wit, the time shall glide
On smoothly, as a river floweth by,

Or as on stately pinion, through the gray
Evening, the culver cuts his liquid way.

THOMAS RAGG THOMAS COOPER.

Two other poets sprung from the people, and honourably distinguished for self-cultivation, merit notice. THOMAS RAGG was born in Nottingham in 1808. In 1833 he issued his first publication, The Incarnation, and other Poems, being at that time engaged in a lace-factory. The Incarnation was part of a philosophical poem on The Deity, and was published for the purpose of ascertaining whether means could be obtained for the publication of the whole. In consequence of favourable critical notices, two gentlemen in the west of England-whose names deserve to be recorded-Mr Mann of Andover, and Mr Wyatt of Stroud, offered to become responsible for the expenses of bringing out The Deity, and the then venerable James Montgomery undertook to revise the manuscript. It was published in 1834 with considerable success. In 1835 he produced The Martyr of Verulam, and other Poems; in 1837, Lyrics from the Pentateuch; in 1840, Heber and

other Poems; in 1847, Scenes and Sketches; in 1855, Creation's Testimony to its Author; and in 1858, Man's Dreams and God's Realities. The poet had been successively newspaper reporter and bookseller; but in 1858 Dr Murray, Bishop of Rochester, offered him ordination in the church, and he is now vicar of Lawley, near Wellington, Salop.

The Earth full of Love.-From 'Heber?' The earth is full of love, albeit the storms Of passion mar its influence benign, And drown its voice with discords. Every flower That to the sun its heaving breast expands Is born of love. And every song of bird That floats, mellifluent, on the balmy air, Is but a love-note. Heaven is full of love; Its starry eyes run o'er with tenderness, And soften every heart that meets their gaze, As downward looking on this wayword world They light it back to God. But neither stars, Nor flowers, nor song of birds, nor earth, nor heaven, So tell the wonders of that glorious name, As they shall be revealed, when comes the hour Of nature's consummation, hoped-for long, When, passed the checkered vestibule of time, The creature in immortal youth shall bloom, And good, unmixed with ill, for ever reign. THOMAS COOPER, 'the Chartist,' while confined in Stafford jail, 1842-44, wrote a poem in the Spenserian stanza, entitled The Purgatory of Suicides, which evinces poetical power and fancy, and has gone through several editions. This work was published in 1845; and the same year Mr Cooper issued a series of prose tales and sketches, Wise Saws and Modern Instances. In the following year he published The Baron's Yule Feast, a Christmas Rhyme. Though addressed, like the Corn-law Rhymes of Elliott, to the working-classes, and tinged with some jaundiced and gloomy views of society, there is true poetry in Mr Cooper's rhymes. The following is a scrap of landscape-painting-a Christmas scene:

How joyously the lady bells

Shout, though the bluff north breeze
Loudly his boisterous bugle swells!

And though the brooklets freeze,
How fair the leafless hawthorn tree
Waves with its hoar-frost tracery!

While sun-smiles throw o'er stalks and stems
Sparkles so far transcending gems,

The bard would gloze who said their sheen
Did not out-diamond

All brightest gauds that man hath seen
Worn by earth's proudest king or queen,
In pomp and grandeur throned!

In 1848 Mr Cooper became a political and historical lecturer, set up cheap political journals, which soon died, and wrote two novels, Alderman Ralph, 1853, and The Family Feud, 1854. He was tinged with infidel opinions, but these he renounced, and commenced a course of Sunday evening lectures and discussions in support of Christianity. He has also written an account of his Life, which has reached a third edition.

LORD JOHN MANNERS-HON. MR SMYTHE.

A series of poetical works, termed 'Young England' or 'Tractarian Poetry' appeared in 1840 and 1841. England's Trust, and other Poems, by LORD JOHN MANNERS; Historic Fancies, by the

HON. MR SMYTHE (afterwards Lord Strangford); The Cherwell Water Lily, &c., by the REV. F. W. FABER. The chief object of these works was to revive the taste for feudal feeling and ancient sports, combined with certain theological and political opinions characteristic of a past age. The works had poetical and amiable feeling, but were youthful, immature productions; and Lord John Manners must have regretted the couplet which we here print in Italics, and which occasioned no small ridicule :

No; by the names inscribed in History's page,
Names that are England's noblest heritage;
Names that shall live for yet unnumbered years
Shrined in our hearts with Cressy and Poictiers;
Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die,
But leave us still our old nobility.

Lord John has since applied himself to politics. He held office in the Conservative administrations from 1852 to 1867, and again in Mr Disraeli's administration of 1874, being appointed Postmaster-general. His lordship is author also of Notes of an Irish Tour, 1849; English Ballads and other Poems, 1850; A Cruise in Scotch Waters; and several pamphlets on religious and political questions.

Lord Strangford (the seventh viscount) also took a part in public affairs, and promised to become an able debater, but ill health withdrew him from both politics and literature. He died in 1857, at the age of forty.

CHARLES MACKAY.

Among the authors of the day, uniting political sympathies and aspirations with lyrical poetry, is DR CHARLES MACKAY. Some of his songs are familiar as household words both in this country and in America, and his influence as an apostle or minstrel of social reform and the domestic affections must have been considerable. Dr Mackay commenced his literary career in 1834, in his twentieth year, by the publication of a small volume of poems. Shortly afterwards he became connected with the Morning Chronicle daily journal, and continued in this laborious service for nine years. In 1840, he published The Hope of the World, a poem in verse of the style of Pope and Goldsmith. In 1842 appeared The Salamandrine, a poetical romance founded on the Rosicrucian system, which supplied Pope with the inimitable aërial personages of his Rape of the Lock. The Salamandrine is the most finished of Dr Mackay's works, and has passed through several editions. From 1844 to 1847, our author conducted a Scottish newspaper, the Glasgow Argus; and while resident in the north, he received the honorary distinction of LL.D. from the university of Glasgow. Returning to London, he resumed his connection with the metropolitan press, and was for several years editor of the Illustrated London News, in the columns of which many of his poetical pieces first appeared. His collected works, in addition to those already enumerated, consist of Legends of the Isles, 1845; Voices from the Crowd, 1846; Voices from the Mountains, 1847; Town Lyrics, 1848; Egeria, or the Spirit of Nature, 1850; The Lump of Gold, &c. 1856; Songs for Music, 1857; Under Green Leaves, 1858; A Man's Heart, 1860; Studies from the Antique, 1864, &c.

Some prose works have also proceeded from the pen of Dr Mackay-The Thames and its Tributaries, two volumes, 1840; Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions, two volumes, 1852; &c. In 1852, Dr Mackay made a tour in America, and delivered a course of lectures on Poetry, which he has repeated in this country. His transatlantic impressions he has embodied in two volumes of lively description, bearing the title of Life and Liberty in America. The poet, we may add, is a native of Perth, born in 1814, while his father, an officer in the army, was on recruiting service. He was in infancy removed to London, and five years of his youth were spent in Belgium.

Apologue from Egeria.

In ancient time, two acorns, in their cups,
Shaken by winds and ripeness from the tree,
Dropped side by side into the ferns and grass.
'Where have I fallen? to what base region come?'
Exclaimed the one. The joyous breeze no more
Rocks me to slumber on the sheltering bough;
The sunlight streams no longer on my face;
I look no more from altitudes serene
Upon the world reposing far below;
Its plains, its hills, its rivers, and its woods.
To me the nightingale sings hymns no more;
But I am made companion of the worm,
And rot on the chill earth. Around me grow
Nothing but useless weeds, and grass, and fern,
Unfit to hold companionship with me.

Ah me! most wretched! rain, and frost, and dew,
And all the pangs and penalties of earth,
Corrupt me where I lie-degenerate.'

And thus the acorn made its daily moan.

The other raised no murmur of complaint,

And looked with no contempt upon the grass,

Nor called the branching fern a worthless weed, Nor scorned the woodland flowers that round it blew.

All silently and piously it lay

Upon the kindly bosom of the earth.

It blessed the warmth with which the noonday sun
Made fruitful all the ground; it loved the dews,
The moonlight and the snow, the frost and rain,
And all the change of seasons as they passed.
It sank into the bosom of the soil :
The bursting life, inclosed within its husk,
Broke through its fetters; it extended roots,
And twined them freely in the grateful ground;
It sprouted up, and looked upon the light;
The sunshine fed it; the embracing air
Endowed it with vitality and strength;
The rains of heaven supplied it nourishment,
And so from month to month, and year to year,
It grew in beauty and in usefulness,
Until its large circumference inclosed
Shelter for flocks and herds; until its boughs
Afforded homes for happy multitudes,

The dormouse, and the chaffinch, and the jay,
And countless myriads of minuter life;
Until its bole, too vast for the embrace
Of human arms, stood in the forest depths,
The model and the glory of the wood.
Its sister-acorn perished in its pride.

Love New and Old.

And were they not the happy days
When Love and I were young,

When earth was robed in heavenly light,

And all creation sung?

When gazing in my true love's face,
Through greenwood alleys lone,

81

I guessed the secrets of her heart,
By whispers of mine own.

And are they not the happy days
When Love and I are old,
And silver evening has replaced
A morn and noon of gold?
Love stood alone mid youthful joy,
But now by sorrow tried,
It sits and calmly looks to heaven
With angels at its side.

Song-Tubal Cain.

Old Tubal Cain was a man of might

In the days when Earth was young;
By the fierce red light of his furnace bright
The strokes of his hammer rung;

And he lifted high his brawny hand

On the iron glowing clear,

Till the sparks rushed out in scarlet showers,
As he fashioned the sword and spear.
And he sang: 'Hurra for my handiwork!
Hurra for the spear and sword!

Hurra for the hand that shall wield them well,
For he shall be king and lord!'

To Tubal Cain came many a one,

As he wrought by his roaring fire,

And each one prayed for a strong steel blade
As the crown of his desire :

And he made them weapons sharp and strong,
Till they shouted loud for glee,

And gave him gifts of pearl and gold,
And spoils of the forest free.

And they sang: 'Hurra for Tubal Cain,
Who has given us strength anew!
Hurra for the smith, hurra for the fire,
And hurra for the metal true!'

But a sudden change came o'er his heart
Ere the setting of the sun,

And Tubal Cain was filled with pain
For the evil he had done;

He saw that men, with rage and hate,

Made war upon their kind,

That the land was red with the blood they shed,
In their lust for carnage blind.

And he said: 'Alas! that ever I made,

Or that skill of mine should plan,

The spear and the sword for men whose joy
Is to slay their fellow-man!'

And for many a day old Tubal Cain

Sat brooding o'er his woe;

And his hand forebore to smite the ore,
And his furnace smouldered low.
But he rose at last with a cheerful face,
And a bright courageous eye,
And bared his strong right arm for work,
While the quick flames mounted high.
And he sang: 'Hurra for my handiwork!'
And the red sparks lit the air;

'Not alone for the blade was the bright steel made;' And he fashioned the first ploughshare.

And men, taught wisdom from the past,

In friendship joined their hands,

Hung the sword in the hall, the spear on the wall,

And ploughed the willing lands;

And sang: Hurra for Tubal Cain!

Our staunch good friend is he;

And for the ploughshare and the plough

To him our praise shall be.

But while oppression lifts its head,

Or a tyrant would be lord,

Though we may thank him for the plough,
We'll not forget the sword!'

449

PHILIP JAMES BAILEY-RICHARD HENRY

HORNE.

PHILIP JAMES BAILEY was born at Basford, county of Nottingham, in 1816. He was educated in his native town and at Glasgow University, after which he studied for the bar. In 1819 he produced his first and greatest poem, Festus, subsequently enlarged, and now in its fifth edition. The next work of the poet was The Angel World, 1850, which was followed in 1855 by The Mystic, and in 1858 Mr Bailey published The Age, a Colloquial Satire. All of these works, excepting the last, are in blank verse, and have one tendency and object-to describe the history of a divinely instructed mind or soul, soaring upwards to communion with the universal life.' With the boldness of Milton, Mr Bailey passes 'the flaming bounds of space and time,' and carries his Mystic even into the presence of the 'fontal Deity.' His spiritualism and symbolical meanings are frequently incomprehensible, and his language crude and harsh, with affected archaisms. Yet there are fragments of beautiful and splendid imagery in the poems, and a spirit of devotional rapture that has recommended them to many who rarely read poetry. The Colloquial Satire is a failure -mere garrulity and slipshod criticism.

war:

Thus of

Of all conceits misgrafted on God's Word,
A Christian soldier seems the most absurd.
That Word commands us so to act in all things,
As not to hurt another e'en in small things.
To flee from anger, hatred, bloodshed, strife;
To pray for, and to care for others' life.

A Christian soldier's duty is to slay,
Wound, harass, slaughter, hack in every way

Those men whose souls he prays for night and day;
With what consistency let prelates say.

He's told to love his enemies; don't scoff;
He does so; and with rifles picks them off.
He 's told to do to all as he 'd be done

By, and he therefore blows them from a gun;
To bless his foes, he 'hangs them up like fun.'

We may contrast this doggerel with a specimen of Mr Bailey's ambitious blank verse, descriptive of the solitary, mystic recluse, dwelling 'lion-like within the desert:'

Lofty and passionless as date-palm's bride,
High on the upmost summits of his soul-
Wrought of the elemental light of heaven,
And pure and plastic flame that soul could shew,
Whose nature, like the perfume of a flower
Enriched with aromatic sun-dust, charms
All, and with all ingratiates itself,
Sat dazzling Purity; for loftiest things,
Snow-like, are purest. As in mountain morns
Expectant air the sun-birth, so his soul
Her God into its supranatural depths
Accepted brightly and sublimely. Vowed
To mystic visions of supernal things;
Daily endowed with spheres and astral thrones,
His, by pre-emptive right, throughout all time;
Immerged in his own essence, clarified
From all those rude propensities which rule
Man's heart, a tyrant mob, and, venal, sell
All virtues-ay, the crown of life-to what
Passion soe'er prepotent, worst deludes
Or deftliest flatters, he, death-calm, beheld,
As though through glass of some far-sighting tube,
The restful future; and, consummed in bliss,

In vital and ethereal thought abstract,
The depth of Deity and heights of heaven.

Or the following fine lines from Festus:

We live in deeds, not years, in thoughts, not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives

Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.
And he whose heart beats quickest lives the longest :
Lives in one hour more than in years do some
Whose fat blood sleeps as it slips along the veins.
Life is but a means unto an end; that end,
Beginning, mean, and end to all things-God.
The dead have all the glory of the world.
And on universal love :

Love is the happy privilege of the mind-
Love is the reason of all living things.
A Trinity there seems of principles,
Which represent and rule created life-
The love of self, our fellows, and our God.
In all throughout one common feeling reigns:
Each doth maintain, and is maintained by the other :
All are compatible-all needful; one

To life-to virtue one-and one to bliss:
Which thus together make the power, the end,
And the perfection of created Being.

From these three principles doth every deed,

Desire, and will, and reasoning, good or bad, come;
To these they all determine-sum and scheme:
The three are one in centre and in round;
Wrapping the world of life as do the skies
Our world.

Hail! air of love, by which we live! How sweet, how fragrant! Spirit, though unseenVoid of gross sign-is scarce a simple essence, Immortal, immaterial, though it be.

One only simple essence liveth-God-
Creator, uncreate. The brutes beneath,
The angels high above us, with ourselves,
Are but compounded things of mind and form.
In all things animate is therefore cored
An elemental sameness of existence ;
For God, being Love, in love created all,
As he contains the whole and penetrates.
Seraphs love God, and angels love the good:
We love each other; and these lower lives,
Which walk the earth in thousand diverse shapes,"
According to their reason, love us too:
The most intelligent affect us most.
Nay, man's chief wisdom 's love-the love of God.
The new religion-final, perfect, pure-
Was that of Christ and love. His great command-
His all-sufficing precept-was 't not love?
Truly to love ourselves we must love God-
To love God we must all his creatures love-
To love his creatures, both ourselves and Him.
Thus love is all that 's wise, fair, good, and happy!

In 1867 Mr Bailey added to his poetical works a production in the style of his early Muse, entitled The Universal Hymn.

RICHARD HENRY HORNE, born in London in 1803, commenced active life as a midshipman in the Mexican navy. When the war between Mexico and Spain had ceased, Mr Horne returned to England and devoted himself to literature. He is the author of several dramatic pieces -Cosmo de Medici, 1837; The Death of Marlowe, 1838; and Gregory the Seventh, 1840. In 1841 he produced a Life of Napoleon; and in 1843, Orion, an Epic Poem, the most successful of his works, of which the ninth edition is now (1874) before us. In 1844 Mr Horne published two volumes of prose sketches entitled A New Spirit