of self-purification when arrested by death. Imperfect as he remained, he has not been excelled by any English poet in the subtlety and burning force of his imagination and in exquisitely chosen diction.

"The strong imagination of Shelley made him an idolater in his own despite. Out of the most indefinite terms of a hard, cold, dark, metaphysical system, he made a gorgeous Pantheon, full of beautiful, majestic, life-like forms. He turned Atheism itself into a mythology, rich with visions as glorious as the gods that live in the marble of Phidias, or the Virgin saints that smile on us from the canvas of Murillo. The Spirit of Beauty, the Principle of Good, the Principle of Evil, when he treated of them, ceased to be abstractions. They took shape and color. They were no longer mere words, but 'intelligible forms,' 'fair humanities, objects of love, of adoration, or of fear.' As there can be no stronger sign of a mind destitute of the poetical faculty than that tendency which was so common among the writers of the French school, to turn images into abstractions, -Venus, for example, into Love, Minerva into Wisdom, Mars into War, and Bacchus into festivity, so there can be no stronger sign of a mind truly poetical than a disposition to reverse this abstracting process, and to make individuals out of generalities. Some of the metaphysical and ethical theories of Shelley were certainly most absurd and pernicious. But we doubt whether any modern poet has possessed in an equal degree the highest qualities of the great ancient masters. The words bard and inspiration, which seem so cold and affected when applied to other modern writers, have a perfect propriety when applied to him. He was not an author, but a bard. His poetry seems not to have been an art but an inspiration. Had he lived to the full age of man, he might not improbably have given to the world some great work of the very highest rank in design and execution."-Macaulay.

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY, 1798-1851, daughter of the wellknown William Godwin, and second wife of Shelley, was herself a writer of considerable abilities.

Mrs. Shelley is chiefly known to the literary world by her edition of her husband's works, to which she has prefixed a good biographical sketch, and also by her novels, among which are Frankenstein, Valperga, The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck, etc. They belong to the sensational class. Frankenstein, otherwise named The Modern Prometheus, is among the first of what might be called the galvanic novels, i, e. novels in which the occult, demoniacal forces of nature play a leading part. Germany is the birthplace of such vagaries. Fraukenstein is the result of a compact between the authoress, Byron, and Shelley himself, that each should write a romance in imitation of the German school. In Mrs. Shelley's work, the hero discovers the secret of life and generation, and actually succeeds in creating a man-monster, who is the agent of numerous horrid performances. Mrs. Shelley's Rambles in Germany, etc., form a pleasing account of her travels with her husband.

Keats.

JOHN KEATS, 1796-1821, was a poet of great promise, who died before reaching the full maturity of his powers.

Career.- Keats was a native of Moorfields, London. He received a meagre clas sical education, and was apprenticed in his fifteenth year to a surgeon, but soon abandoned medicine for literature. He made the acquaintanceship of Leigh Hunt, then editor of The Examiner, and published some effusions in that periodical. In 1817, he published a volume of poems dedicated to Hunt. In 1818 appeared Endymion, a Po

etical Romance. This work was reviewed with unsparing severity by Gifford, in the Quarterly Review, and many, misled by the allusion in Byron's Don Juan and by Shelley's lines, have supposed that the shock thus given to Keats's sensibilities was the cause of his speedy death. It is now generally believed, however, that Keats would have died early in any case, as his constitution was of the frailest.

Other Works. In 1820 he published a second volume, containing Lamia, The Eve of St. Egues, Hyperion, and several minor poems. Keats's merits and defects as a poet are now generally understood and acknowledged. Endymion has many rich passages, but, as a whole, is weak. Hyperion and The Eve of St. Agnes display immense progress, and there is every reason for supposing that, had the author been permitted to ripen to maturity, he would have added another to the list of great English poets.. As it is, he falls just short of greatness.

Of Keats's minor poems the most admired are the Lines on Chapman's Homer, The Ode to a Nightingale, The Ode to a Grecian Urn. Keats is distinguished for his sensuous warmth, the play of his imagery, and his exquisite ear for harmony.

Kirke White.

HENRY KIRKE WHITE, 1785-1806, gave in very early life evidence of poetical genius, but died before accomplishing anything of permanent value.

He was the son of a butcher, and attracted attention by his precocity. Through the influence of friends he was placed at Cambridge, where his health was ruined by excessive study, and he sank into an early grave. During his lifetime he had published several poetical pieces in local magazines, and also a volume of poetry, entitled Clifton Grove. This was criticized by the London Monthly Review in what the poet's friend Southey called "cruel and insulting" terms, although it can scarcely be said that the reviewer exceeded his province. After White's death his unpublished pieces were edited by Southey, with a biographical sketch, under the title, Remains of Henry Kirke White. His Correspondence has also been published.

White's place is among those poets who attract us more through sympathy with their adverse fate than by the intrinsic value of their productions. His poems unquestionably possess merit, but not such merit as entitles the poet to rank in the first or even the second class. It is idle, of course, to speculate upon what White might have become, had his faculties had a fair chance to develop and mature. Judged by what he actually accomplished, we must admit that he has left us nothing profound, or even intensely passionate. His verses are rather plaintive and agreeable than vigorous. The best known of them are The Star of Bethlehem, To an Early Primrose, Song of the Consumptive, Savoyard's Return, etc.

Campbell.

Thomas Campbell, 1777-1844, has an honored place among the fixed stars of the poetical firmament. His poems are not so considerable in amount as those of some other writers. But there is an excellence and finish in all that he did write that secures for him a permanent place in letters.

Career. Campbell was born and educated in Glasgow, and was early distinguished for his proficiency in classical studies. His first publication, The Pleasures of Hope, at once gave him rank as a poet of mark. Being on a visit to the continent, he was a spectator of the battle of Hohenlinden, and commemorated the scene in the brilliant poem with which we are all familiar. While abroad, he wrote two other of his most popular lyrics, Ye Mariners of England, and The Exile of Erin. On returning to Scotland, he wrote Lochiel's Warning; subsequently appeared Gertrude of Wyoming; The Battle of the Baltic; The Pilgrim of Glencoe, and other Poems.

As a lyric and didactic poet, Campbell has few superiors in English literature. Several of his poems seem absolutely perfect.

Campbell has written voluminously in prose also. Lectures on Poetry; Specimens of the British Poets, with Biographical and Critical Notices, 7 vols., 8vo; Life of Mrs. Siddons; Life and Times of Petrarch; Life of Shakespeare; A Poet's Residence in Algiers; Letters from the South. He edited also, for a time, the Metropolitan Magazine, and the New Monthly Magazine. His Lectures on Poetry and the critical remarks in his Selections from the Poets, form together a most valuable body of poetical criticism by one who was himself a great master of the art of poetry.

In 1827 he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. "It was deep snow when he reached the college-green; the students were drawn up in parties, pelting one another; the poet ran into the ranks, threw several balls with unerring aim, then summoning the scholars around him in the hall, delivered a speech replete with philosophy and eloquence."- Allan Cunningham.

Rogers.

Samuel Rogers, 1763-1855, the banker, poet, art collector, and giver of breakfasts, is as well known by his Pleasures of Memory as is Campbell by the Pleasures of Hope.

Career. Rogers was the son of a banker, and inherited, with his younger brother, a profitable business, from the active management of which he retired when little more than thirty. The remaining sixty years of his protracted life were passed in the cultivation of letters, the arts, and society. He gathered around his social board all that was genial and distinguished in each successive generation. Like Henry Crabb Robinson, he remained a bachelor. Indeed, there is throughout the lives of both a striking parallelism. There is, however, this difference, that Rogers is known chiefly by his original works, Robinson by his diary. Rogers, it is true, published a volume of Recollections, but they are not equal in continuity and fulness to Robinson's celebrated journal.

Works.- Rogers evinced poetical talents while still very young. He published a series of eight papers, the Scribbler, in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1781. In 1786 appeared An Ode to Superstition, in which were prefigured the poet's peculiar qualities. In 1792 appeared The Pleasures of Memory, which was at once warmly received by critic and public. Byron, in 1809, in his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, pronounced it and l'ope's Essay on Man "the most didactic poems in our language," and, in 1813, dedicated his Giaour to Rogers. Sir James Mackintosh and Professor Wilson were also among the conspicuous admirers of the Pleasures of Memory. Jacqueline, a pastoral tale, was published with Byron's Lara, in 1813. Human Life appeared in 1819. Rogers's chief work, however, is his Italy, published 1822-3. Appearing anonymously, it was ascribed by some to Southey.

Estimate of his Poetry.- Rogers's poetry has lost in favor. The present generation demands something stronger and deeper than easy descriptions and commonplace reflections. Rogers is a finished versifier, and his lines betray a cultured mind. Especially in his Italy does he show himself to be a man of great liberality in his judgments of what might have been distasteful to him as an Englishman and a Protestant. There can be no doubt that he has exercised a wholesome influence, indirectly, upon the development of English literature, by widening the range of its sympathies and its culture. When we compare him, however, with his really great contemporaries, Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge, we can scarcely fail to perceive that he was lacking in real poetic inspiration.

Southey.

Robert Southey, 1774-1843, was another of the great literary celebrities in the earlier part of the present century. His fame and fortunes are intimately associated with those of Coleridge and Wordsworth. He was not equal to either of them in genius, but he had abilities of a high order. He was methodical and unwearied in labor, and he made himself, while he lived, a magnate in the world of letters.

Career. Southey was educated by his aunt, Miss Tyler, an eccentric lady who had a passion for the theatre. At a very early age, Southey became familiar with Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, and the great body of English dramatists. Sent to Westminster School, he was expelled for a satire on corporal punishment, published in the school paper. He afterwards went to Oxford, and embraced enthusiastically radical and Unitarian doctrines. It was at this time that he wrote the notorious "Wat Tyler," which was not published, however, until much later, and then surreptitiously. At the University he made the acquaintance of Coleridge. His aunt, a Tory, turned him away on account of his religious and political heresies. He formed, with Coleridge, the plan of founding a "pantisocracy" in Pennsylvania,

already referred to, but, as neither of them had any money, the plan was abandoned.

In 1795, Southey, who had just married Miss Fricker, joined his uncle, Rev. Mr. Hill, then chaplain to the British embassy in Portugal, and remained on the Peninsula some six months. It was at this time that he laid the foundation for his knowledge of the Romance languages and literature.

He returned to England, and, after essaying the study of the law for a brief period, finally settled down to literary occupation. He fixed his residence in 1803 at Greta Hall, not far from Wordsworth, in that lovely region which has become famous under the name of the “lake district" of England. Here, in literary labor and seclusion, he passed the remainder of his days.

The once enthusiastic radical and Unitarian now became the staunch

supporter of Church and State. Southey was sincere and unselfish, however, in his conversion, and a generous friend to Coleridge, and many other needy poets and writers.

Southey's intercourse with Wordsworth was interrupted only by death. In 1839 he married his second wife, Miss Bowles, also a writer. Soon after that, his mind gave way under the strain to which it had been put by protracted literary cares, and the remaining three years of his life were passed in hopeless imbecility.

His Literary Character. — Southey's works are extremely voluminous, both in prose and verse, and cover a wide range of subjects. Southey the poet, so famous in his day, and ranked with Wordsworth, Byron, Scott, and Coleridge, is now comparatively ignored. His extravagance and want of naturalness are repugnant to the tastes of this realistic age. His poems abound in beautiful and striking passages, but are faulty in conception and tedious in execution. Some of his prose works, on the contrary, such as the Life of Nelson and The Life of Wesley, will always rank among English prose classics. The Doctor is a queer book, full of whimsicalities and bits of wisdom, but, as a whole, rather tiresome. No one of Southey's professedly literary works, however, surpasses in interest his Correspondence. His Wat Tyler, a Jacobinical effusion of Southey's Oxford days, was published in 1817, surreptitiously, after the author had changed his views: it created much excitement, and was even denounced in Parliament.

Works. The list of his principal works would probably embrace the following: in verse, Joan of Arc, Thalaba, The Cid (translated from the Spanish), The Curse of Kehama, Roderick, the Last of the Goths; in prose, a History of the Peninsular War, History of Brazil, Essays, Moral and Political. The Doctor, Espriella's Letters from England (a pretended translation from the Spanish), and the lives of Nelson, Wesley, Kirke White, and Cowper. In addition to these and other long pieces, Southey is the author of many short poems and sketches.

His Rank as a Writer. In his life, opinions, and writings, Southey is a type of literary England during and after the Napoleonic wars. He was classified with