JOHN WILLIAM BURGON (1813-1888) went up late to Oxford, but the best piece of work which he did belonged to his earlier time there. His Newdigate "Petra" has had few superiors. He lived on to

be in elderly life a compendium of all the prejudices which grew and flourished in his University before the hand of Reform was laid upon its venerable abuses, and died as Dean of Chichester without ever producing again anything so good as the prize poem of his youthful days.

It is not by his verse that CHARLES KINGSLEY (1819-1875) is best remembered in the present generation, but some of it may outlive his novels as long as these have outlived his rather confused theology. The impression of his fresh bright personality will remain as long as those who knew him survive, but their number is rapidly dwindling.

From RUSKIN (1819-1900) I have taken nothing save a few lines, of surpassing beauty, which describe one of those little shrines of the Blessed Virgin on which one comes amid the lagunes of Venice.

Miss SMEDLEY (1820-1877), who wrote the sonnet about Bishop Patteson which I have reprinted, lived most of her life at Tenby, where she wrote, and wrote exceedingly well, both in prose and poetry. Patteson has become a sort of Anglican saint, and quite deservedly. My recollections of him belong to his time as an undergraduate at Balliol, and none of us who knew him even at that early period would, I appre

"clarum et

hend, think that to speak of him as venerabile nomen was at all excessive.

Professor AYTOUN (1813-1865) was the son of a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh. At first it seemed probable that he would follow his father's profession, but he went later to the Scotch Bar, where he succeeded fairly, and obtained from his political party (he was a High Tory) the well-deserved Sheriffship of Orkney. He was a successful teacher of rhetoric and literature in Edinburgh, co-operated with Sir Theodore Martin in writing the extremely amusing "Bon Gaultier Ballads," published the "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers," a book which has had very many editions, but died at the comparatively early age of fifty-two.

FREDERICK LOCKER (1821-1895), as we all called him forty years ago, but whom a very happy marriage later turned into Locker-Lampson, was one of the most successful pupils in the school of Praed. He wrote much and well in the style of his master, became famous on both sides of the Atlantic not only as the writer of excellent verse, but as one of the first of bibliophiles, a taste in which he has been emulated by his son, whose Appendix to his father's Catalogue of the Rowfant Library is a truly remarkable performance for so young a man.

If I am blamed for giving so much space to MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888), I can only say, without attempting in the slightest degree to impugn

the general verdict which puts Tennyson first, and Browning second, amongst the poets of the Victorian Age, that Arnold's poems say more to me individually than those of either of his two great rivals.

Full of wisdom as are his prose works, they often contain things which one would wish away; but with his poetry it is not so. If we put on one side a few things which, like "Merope," may be considered mere tours de force, it is all but perfect. I should have preferred "Thyrsis Thyrsis" to the "Scholar-Gipsy," and have added "Calais Sands," "Stanzas Carnac," "Westminster Abbey," and "A Southern Night," if they had been publici juris.

from

JOHN O'HAGAN (1822-1890) was an Irish lawyer, and the son-in-law of Lord O'Hagan, who was so much better known on this side of St. George's Channel. The highest office filled by him was that of Judicial Commissioner under the not very successful Irish Land Act of 1881, but he had a very considerable literary faculty, and was connected in early youth with the rather foolish but very vigorous polemics of the Nation. The poem I have selected has, however, nothing to do with polemics, but treats of a subject much more generally interesting.

SYDNEY THOMPSON DOBELL (1824-1874) was the son of a wine merchant residing in Kent, who, however, removed to Cheltenham while his son was still a boy. All through his life he carried on more or less his father's business, but the strength of his mind went chiefly to literature. In 1850 he made a considerable

success by a poem called "The Roman," and in 1856 he published a collection called "England in Time of War," containing the poem which will be found on a subsequent page. He wrote a great deal which was much more admired forty years ago than it is now, but was sometimes even then very sharply criticised, as, for instance, in Aytoun's "Firmilian." He appears, too, to have been a very useful man in Gloucestershire, where he usually lived when on this side of the Channel. Starting with wildly Radical ideas, he gradually sobered into a sensible, steady-going Liberal.

WILLIAM CORY (1823-1892), better known by his former name of Johnson, was long an Eton Master, and published in the year 1858 a small volume called "Ionica," from which I take what is perhaps the most beautiful of many beautiful pieces, a translation from "Callimachus."

ADELAIDE ANN PROCTER (1825-1864) was the eldest daughter of Mr. Procter, best known as Barry Cornwall. She joined the Latin Church in 1851, and published a good deal in Household Words and other publications without either her own family or their intimate friend, Mr. Dickens, knowing who Mary Berwick" really was. In 1858 her poems were collected and published. The one which I have selected has become extremely familiar as a song. She never had strong health, and died before she was forty.

"

Her father, who was born in 1787, outlived his gifted child, dying only in 1874. He did not absolutely

abandon the writing of verse after the Queen's accession, but he was too essentially a poet of the earlier decades of the century to make it desirable to include him in this collection.

The remarkable poem, "Crowned and Discrowned," by Canon BRIGHT (1825-1901), who died a few months ago, was published originally, if my memory serves me correctly, in the Rugby Miscellany. If it was reprinted I never chanced to see it, and the copy in this volume is taken from a manuscript written out for me many years ago by Professor Conington.

DINAH MARIA CRAIK (1826-1887) was known in her early days as Miss Mulock, and the authoress of "Olive," a novel which had a deserved success. In 1857 she published a work which was even more admired, "John Halifax, Gentleman." Her poems, some of which first appeared in 1852, were collected in 1881. The one which I have quoted belongs to her earlier life, and seems to me very lovely.

MORTIMER COLLINS (1827-1876) was born at Plymouth, where his father was a solicitor. He became a Mathematical Master in Guernsey when he was still very young, but left the island and devoted himself to literature in 1856. He was a most prolific writer both in verse and prose, a violent Tory and devotee of Aristophanes, extremely fond of Bohemian society, a good ornithologist, a great walker, a lover of dogs, and altogether the sort of open-air