roaring on the left (my darling's side); ‘Larry,' with but one lamp-candle (for we had put out the other, lest both might fall done), bending always to be straight in the light of that; I really anxious, though speaking only hopefully; my darling so full of trust in me, really happy and opulently interested in these equipments; in these poor and dangerous circumstances how opulent is a nobly royal heart! She had the worthless 'portrait' (pencil sketch by a wandering German, announced to us by poor and hospitable Mrs Richardson, once a 'novelist of mark, much of a gentlewoman and well loved by us both) safe in her reticule; 'better far than none,' she cheerfully said of it, and the price, I think, had been 5s., fruit of her thrift too :-well, could California have made me and her so rich, had I known it (sorry gloomy mortal) just as she did? To noble hearts such wealth is there in poverty itself, and impossible without poverty! I saw ahead, high in the mist, the minarets of Dunscore Kirk, at last, glad sight; at Mrs Broatch's cosy rough inn, we got 'Larry' fed, ourselves dried and refreshed (still seven miles to do, but road all plain); and got home safe, after a pleasant day, in spite of all. Then the drive to Boreland once (George Welsh's, 'Uncle George,' youngest of the Penfillans); heart of winter, intense calm frost, and through Dumfries, at least thirty-five miles for poor 'Larry' and us; very beautiful that too, and very strange, past the base of towering New Abbey, huge ruins, piercing grandly into the silent frosty sunset, on this hand, despicable cowhouse of Presbyterian kirk on that hand (sad new contrast to Devorgilla's old bounty), &c., &c. : -of our drive home again I recollect only her invincible contentment, and the poor old cotter woman offering to warm us with a flame of dry broom, 'A'll licht a bruim couey, if ye'll please to come in!' Another time we had gone to Dumfries Cattle Show (first of its race, which are many since); a kind of lark on our part, and really entertaining, though the day proved shockingly wet and muddy; saw various notabilities there - Sir James Grahame (baddish, proud man, we both thought by physiognomy, and did not afterwards alter our opinion much), Ramsay Macculloch (in sky-blue coat, shiningly on visit from London), &c., &c., with none of whom, or few, had we right (or wish) to speak, abundantly occupied with seeing so many fine specimens, biped and quadruped. (From Reminiscences, vol. ii.) The Philosophy of Clothes. It was in some such mood, when wearied and fordone with these high speculations, that I first came upon the question of Clothes. Strange enough, it strikes me, is this same fact of there being Tailors and Tailored. The Horse I ride has his own whole fell: strip him of girths and flaps and extraneous tags I have fastened round him, and the noble creature is his own sempster and weaver and spinner; nay, his own bootmaker, jeweller, and man-milliner; he bounds free through the valleys, with a perennial rain-proof court-suit on his body; wherein warmth and easiness of fit have reached perfection; nay, the graces also have been considered, and frills and fringes, with gay variety of colour, featly appended, and ever in the right place, are not wanting. While I-good Heaven!-have thatched myself over with the dead fleeces of sheep, the bark of vegetables, the entrails of worms, the hides of oxen or seals, the felt of furred beasts; and walk abroad a moving Rag-screen, overheaped with shreds and tatters raked from the Charnel-house of Nature, where they would have rotted, to rot on me more slowly! Day after day, I must thatch myself anew; day after day, this despicable thatch must lose some film of its thickness; some film of it, frayed away by tear and wear, must be brushed-off into the Ash-pit, into the Laystall; till by degrees the whole has been brushed thither, and I, the dust-making, patent Rag-grinder, get new material to grind down. O subter-brutish! vile! most vile! For have not I too a compact all-enclosing skin, whiter or dingier? Am I a botched mass of tailors' and cobblers' shreds, then; or a tightly-articulated, homogeneous little Figure, automatic, nay alive? Strange enough how creatures of the human-kind shut their eyes to plainest facts; and by the mere inertia of Oblivion and Stupidity, live at ease in the midst of Wonders and Terrors. But indeed man is, and was always, a blockhead and dullard; much readier to feel and digest, than to think and consider. Prejudice, which he pretends to hate, is his absolute lawgiver; mere use-and-wont everywhere leads him by the nose; thus let but a Rising of the Sun, let but a Creation of the World happen twice, and it ceases to be marvellous, to be noteworthy, or noticeable. Perhaps not once in a lifetime does it occur to your ordinary biped, of any country or generation, be he gold-mantled Prince or russet-jerkined peasant, that his Vestments and his Self are not one and indivisible; that he is naked, without vestments, till he buy or steal such, and by forethought sew and button them. For my own part, these considerations, of our Clothes-thatch, and how, reaching even to our heart of hearts, it tailorises and demoralises us, fill me with a certain horror at myself and mankind; almost as one feels at those Dutch Cows, which, during the wet season, you see grazing deliberately with jackets and petticoats (of striped sacking), in the meadows of Gouda. Nevertheless there is something great in the moment when a man first strips himself of adventitious wrappages; and sees indeed that he is naked, and as Swift has it, 'a forked straddling animal with bandy legs;' yet also a Spirit, and unutterable Mystery of Mysteries. (From Sartor Resartus, Book I. Chap. viii.) Sentence on King Louis. Eye-witnesses have represented this scene of the Third Voting, and of the votings that grew out of it,—a scene protracted, like to be endless, lasting, with few brief intervals, from Wednesday till Sunday morning,—as one of the strangest seen in the Revolution. Long night wears itself into day, morning's paleness is spread over all faces; and again the wintry shadows sink, and the dim lamps are lit: but through day and night and the vicissitudes of hours, Member after Member is mounting continually those Tribune-steps; pausing aloft there, in the clearer upper light, to speak his Fate-word; then diving down into the dusk and throng again. Like Phantoms in the hour of midnight; most spectral, pandemonial ! Never did President Vergniaud, or any terrestrial President, superintend the like. A King's Life, and so much else that depends thereon, hangs trembling in the balance. Man after man mounts; the buzz hushes itself till he have spoken: Death; Banishment; Imprisonment till the Peace. Many say, Death; with what cautious well-studied phrases and paragraphs they could devise, of explanation, of enforcement, of faint recommendation to mercy. Many too say, Banish ment; something short of Death. The balance trembles, none can yet guess whither ward. Whereat anxious Patriotism bellows; irrepressible by Ushers. The poor Girondins, many of them, under such fierce bellowing of Patriotism, say Death; justifying, motivant, that most miserable word of theirs by some brief casuistry and jesuitry. Vergniaud himself says, Death; justifying by jesuitry. Rich Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau had been of the Noblesse, and then of the Patriot Left Side, in the Constituent; and had argued and reported, there and elsewhere, not a little, against Capital Punishment: nevertheless he now says, Death; a word which may cost him dear. Manuel did surely rank with the Decided in August last; but he has been sinking and backsliding ever since September and the scenes of September. In the Convention, above all, no word he could speak would find favour; he says now, Banishment; and in mute wrath quits the place forever,-much hustled in the corridors. Philippe Egalité votes, in his soul and conscience, Death: at the sound of which and of whom, even Patriotism shakes its head; and there runs a groan and shudder through this Hall of Doom. Robespierre's vote cannot be doubtful; his speech is long. Men see the figure of shrill Sieyes ascend; hardly pausing, passing merely, this figure says, 'La Mort sans phrase, Death without phrases;' and fares onward and downward. Most spectral, pandemonial! And yet if the Reader fancy it of a funereal, sorrowful, or even grave character, he is far mistaken: 'the Ushers in the Mountain quarter,' says Mercier, had become as Box-keepers at the Opera;' opening and shutting of Galleries for privileged persons, for 'D'Orléans Egalité's mistresses,' or other high-dizened women of condition, rustling with laces and tricolor. Gallant Deputies pass and repass thitherward, treating them with ices, refreshments and small talk; the high-dizened heads beck responsive; some have their card and pin, pricking down the Ayes and Noes, as at a game of Rouge-et-Noir. Farther aloft reigns Mère Duchesse with her unrouged Amazons; she cannot be prevented making long Ha has, when the vote is not La Mort. In these Galleries there is refection, drinking of wine and brandy, 'as in open tavern, en pleine tabagie.' Betting goes on in all coffee-houses of the neighbourhood. But within doors, fatigue, impatience, uttermost weariness sits now on all visages; lighted up only from time to time by turns of the game. Members have fallen asleep; Ushers come and awaken them to vote other Members calculate whether they shall not have time to run and dine. Figures rise, like phantoms, pale in the dusky lamplight; utter from this Tribune, only one word: Death. Tout est optique,' says Mercier. 'The world is all an optical shadow.' Deep in the Thursday night, when the Voting is done, and Secretaries are summing it up, sick Duchâtel, more spectral than another, comes borne on a chair, wrapped in blankets, in 'nightgown and nightcap,' to vote for Mercy: one vote it is thought may turn the scale. Ah no! In profoundest silence, President Vergniaud, with a voice full of sorrow, has to say: 'I declare, in the name of the Convention, that the punishment it pronounces on Louis Capet is that of Death.' Death by a small majority of Fifty-three. Nay, if we deduct from the one side, and add to the other, a certain Twenty-six, who said Death but coupled some faintest ineffectual surmise of mercy with it, the majority will be but one. (From The French Revolution, Book II. Chap. vii.) Pig Philosophy. Pig propositions, in a rough form, are somewhat as follows: 1. The Universe, so far as sane conjecture can go, is an immeasurable Swine's trough, consisting of solid and liquid, and of other contrasts and kinds;-especially consisting of attainable and unattainable, the latter in immensely greater quantities for most pigs. 2. Moral evil is unattainability of Pig's-wash; moral good, attainability of ditto. 3. What is Paradise or the State of Innocence? Paradise, called also State of Innocence, Age of Gold, and other names, was (according to Pigs of weak judgment) unlimited Attainability of Pig's-wash; perfect fulfilment of one's wishes, so that the Pig's imagination could not outrun reality: a fable and an impossibility, as Pigs of sense now see. 4. Define the Whole Duty of Pigs.' It is the mission of universal Pighood, and the duty of all Pigs, at all times, to diminish the quantity of unattainable and increase that of attainable. All knowledge and device and effort ought to be directed thither and thither only; Pig Science, Pig Enthusiasm and Devotion have this one aim. It is the Whole Duty of Pigs. 5. Pig Poetry ought to consist of the universal recognition of the excellence of Pig's-wash and ground barley, and the felicity of Pigs whose trough is in order; and who have had enough: Hrumph! 6. The Pig knows the weather; he ought to look out what kind of weather it will be. 7. 'Who made the Pig?' Unknown ;—perhaps the Pork-butcher. 8. Have you Law and Justice in Pigdom?' Pigs of observation have discerned that there is, or was once supposed to be, a thing called justice. Undeniably at least there is a sentiment in Pig-nature called indignation, revenge, &c., which, if one Pig provoke another, comes out in a more or less destructive manner: hence laws are necessary, amazing quantities of laws. For quarrelling is attended with loss of blood, of life, at any rate with frightful effusion of the general stock of Hog'swash, and ruin (temporary ruin) to large sections of the universal Swine's-trough: wherefore let justice be observed, that so quarrelling be avoided. 9. 'What is justice?' Your own share of the general Swine's-trough, not any portion of my share. 10. But what is "my" share?' Ah! there in fact lies the grand difficulty; upon which Pig science, meditating this long while, can settle absolutely nothing. My share-hrumph!—my share is, on the whole, whatever I can contrive to get without being hanged or sent to the hulks. For there are gibbets, treadmills, I need not tell you, and rules which Lawyers have prescribed. 11. 'Who are Lawyers?' Servants of God, appointed revealers of the oracles of God, who read off to us from day to day what is the eternal Commandment of God in reference to the mutual claims of his creatures in this world. 12. Where do they find that written?' In Coke upon Lyttelton. 13. 'Who made Coke?' Unknown: the maker of Coke's wig is discoverable. What became of Coke?' Died. And then?' Went to the undertaker; went to the- But we must pull up: Sauerteig's fierce humour, confounding ever farther in his haste the fourfooted with the two-footed animal, rushes into wilder and wilder forms of satirical torch-dancing, and threatens to end in a universal Rape of Wigs, which in a person of his character looks ominous and dangerous. Here, for example, is his fifty-first Proposition,' as he calls it : 51. What are Bishops?' Overseers of souls.—'What is a soul?' The thing that keeps the body alive. -' How do they oversee that?' They tie on a kind of aprons, publish charges; I believe they pray dreadfully, macerate themselves nearly dead with continual grief that they cannot in the least oversee it.-'And are much honoured?' By the wise very much. 52. Define the Church.' I had rather not.-' Do you believe in a Future State?' Yes, surely." What is it?' Heaven, so-called. To everybody?' I understand so; hope so! What is it thought to be?' Hrumph! No Hell, then, at all?' Hrumph. (From Latter-Day Pamphlets: Jesuitism.) English and American Idols. Jefferson Brick, the American Editor, twitted me with the multifarious patented anomalies of overgrown worthless Dukes, Bishops of Durham, &c., which poor English Society at present labours under, and is made a solecism by. To which what answer could I make, except that surely our patented anomalies were some of them extremely ugly, and yet, alas, that they were not the ugliest! I said: 'Have you also overgrown anomalous Dukes after a sort, appointed not by patent? Overgrown Monsters of Wealth namely; who have made money by dealing in cotton, dealing in bacon, jobbing scrip, digging metal in California; who are become glittering man-mountains filled with gold and preciosities; revered by the surrounding flunkeys; invested with the real powers of sovereignty; and placidly admitted by all men, as if Nature and Heaven had so appointed it, to be in a sense god-like, to be royal, and fit to shine in the firmament, though their real worth is--what? Brick, do you know where human creatures reach the supreme of ugliness in idols? It were hard to know! We can say only, All idols have to tumble, and the hugest of them with the heaviest fall: that is our chief comfort, in America as here. The Idol of Somnauth, a mere mass of coarse crockery, not worth five shillings of anybody's money, sat like a great staring god, with two diamonds for eyes; worshipped by the neighbouring black populations; a terror and divine mystery to all mortals, till its day came. Till at last, victorious in the name of Allah, the Commander of the Faithful, riding up with grim battle-axe and heart full of Moslem fire, took the liberty to smite once, with right force and rage, said ugly mass of idolatrous crockery; which thereupon shivered, with unmelodious crash and jingle, into a heap of ugly potsherds, yielding from its belly half a wagonload of gold coins. You can read it in Gibbon-probably, too, in Lord Ellenborough. The gold coins, the diamond eyes, and other valuable extrinsic parts were carefully picked up by the Faithful; confused jingle of intrinsic potsherds was left lying ;-and the Idol of Somnauth once showing what it was, had suddenly come to a conclusion! Thus end all Idols, and intrinsically worthless man-mountains never so illuminated with diamonds, and filled with precious metals, and tremulously worshipped by the neighbouring flunkey populations, black or white ;even thus, sooner or later, without fail; and are shot hastily, as a heap of potsherds, into the highway, to be crunched under wagon-wheels, and do Macadam a little service, being clearly abolished as gods, and hidden from men's recognition, in that or other capacities, forever and a day! You do not sufficiently bethink you, my republican friend. Our ugliest anomalies are done by universal suffrage, not by patent. The express nonsense of old Feudalism, even now, in its dotage, is nothing to the involuntary nonsense of modern Anarchy called 'Freedom,' 'Republicanism,' and other fine names, which expresses itself by supply and demand! Consider it a little. The Bishop of our Diocese is to me an incredible man; and has, I will grant you, very much more money than you or I would now give him for his work. One does not even read those Charges of his, much preferring speech which is articulate. In fact, being intent on a quiet life, you generally keep on the other side of the hedge from him, and strictly leave him to his own fate. Not a credible man ;-perhaps not quite a safe man to be concerned with? But what think you of the 'Bobus of Houndsditch' of our parts? He, Sausage-maker on the great scale, knows the art of cutting fat bacon, and exposing it seasoned with gray pepper to advantage. Better than any other man he knows this art; and I take the liberty to say it is a poor one. Well, the Bishop has an income of five thousand pounds appointed him for his work; and Bobus, to such a length has he now pushed the trade in sausages, gains from the universal suffrage of men's souls and stomachs ten thousand a year by it. A poor art, this of Bobus's, I say; and worth no such recompense. For it is not even good sausages he makes, but only extremely vendible ones; the cunning dog! Judges pronounce his sausages bad, and at the cheap price even dear; and finer palates, it is whispered, have detected alarming symptoms of horse-flesh, or worse, under this cunningly-devised gray-pepper spice of his; so that for the world I would not eat one of his sausages, nor would you. You perceive he is not an excellent honest sausage-maker, but a dishonest cunning and scandalous sausage-maker, worth, if he could get his deserts, who shall say what? Probably certain shillings a week, say forty; possibly (one shudders to think) a long round in the treadmill, and stripes instead of shillings! And yet what he gets, I tell you, from universal suffrage, and the unshackled ne plus ultra republican justice of mankind, is twice the income of that anomalous Bishop you were talking of! The Bishop I for my part do much prefer to Bobus. The Bishop has human sense and breeding of various kinds; considerable knowledge of Greek, if you should ever want the like of that; knowledge of many things; and speaks the English language in a grammatical manner. He is bred to courtesy, to dignified composure, as to a second nature; a gentleman every fibre of him; which of itself is something very considerable. The Bishop does really diffuse round him an influence of decorum, courteous patience, solid adherence to what is settled; teaches practically the necessity of 'consuming one's own smoke;' and does practically in his own case burn said smoke, making lambent flame and mild illumination out of it, for the good of man in several particulars. While Bobus, for twice the annual money, brings sausages, possibly of horseflesh, cheaper to market than another! Brick, if you will reflect, it is not 'aristocratic England,' it is the United Posterity of Adam, who are grown, in some essential respects, stupider than barbers' blocks. Barbers' blocks would at least say nothing, and not elevate, by their universal suffrages, an unfortunate Bobus to that bad height. (From Latter-Day Pamphlets: Hudson's Statue.) The Battle of Torgau. For the thing is vital, if we knew it. Close ahead of Möllendorf, when he is through this Pass, close on Möllendorf's left, as he wheels round on the attacking Austrians, is the south-west corner of Siptitz Height. South-west corner, highest point of it; summit and key of all that Battle area; rules it all, if you get cannon thither. It hangs steepish on the southern side, over the Röhrgraben, where this Möllendorf-Austrian fight begins; but it is beautifully accessible, if you bear round to the west side,—a fine saddle-shaped bit of clear ground there, in shape like the outside or seat of a saddle; Domitsch Wood the crupper part; summit of the Height the pommel, only nothing like so steep:-it is here (on the southern saddle-flap, so to speak), gradually mounting to the crupper-and-pommel part, that the agony now is. And here in utter darkness, illuminated only by the musketry and cannon blazes, there ensued two hours of stiff wrestling in its kind: not the fiercest spasm of all, but the final which decided all. Lestwitz, Hülsen, come sweeping on, led by the sound and the fire; 'beating the Prussian march, they,' sharply on all their drums,Prussian march, rat-tat-tan, sharply through the gloom of Chaos in that manner; and join themselves, with no mistake made, to Möllendorf's, to Ziethen's, left and the saddle-flap there, and fall on. The night is pitch-dark, says Archenholtz; you cannot see your hand before you. Old Hülsen's bridle-horses were all shot away, when he heard this alarm, far off: no horse left; and he is old, and has his own bruises. He seated himself on a cannon, and so rides, and arrives; right welcome the sight of him, doubt not! And the fight rages still for an hour and more. . . . About 9 at night all the Austrians are rolling off, eastward, eastward. Prussians goading them forward what they could (firing not quite done till 10); and that all-important pommel of the saddle is indisputably won. The Austrians settled themselves in a kind of half-moon shape, close on the suburbs of Torgau; the Prussians in a parallel half-moon posture, some furlongs behind them. The Austrians sat but a short time; not a moment longer than was indispensable. Daun perceives that the key of his ground is gone from him; that he will have to send a second Courier to Vienna. And, above all things, that he must forthwith get across the Elbe and away. Lucky for him that he has Three Bridges (or Four, including the Town Bridge), and that his Baggage is already all across and standing on wheels. With excellent despatch and order Daun winds himself across,-all of him that is still coherent; and indeed, in the distant parts of the Battle-field, wandering Austrian parties were admonished hitherward by the River's voice in the great darkness,-and Daun's loss in prisoners, though great, was less than could have been expected: 8000 in all. . . On Torgau-field behind that final Prussian half-moon, there reigned, all night, a confusion which no tongue can express. Poor wounded men by the hundred and the thousand, weltering in their blood, on the cold wet ground; not surgeons or nurses, but merciless predatory sutlers, equal to murder if necessary, waiting on them and on the happier that were dead. Unutterable!' says Archenholtz; who, though wounded, had crawled or got carried to some village near. ... The living wandered about in gloom and uncertainty; lucky he whose haversack was still his, and a crust of bread in it: water was a priceless luxury, almost nowhere discoverable. Prussian Generals roved about with their Staff-officers seeking to re-form their Battalions; to little purpose. They had grown indignant, in some instances, and were vociferously imperative and minatory; but in the dark who needed mind them?— they went raving elsewhere, and, for the first time, Prussian word-of-command saw itself futile.' Pitch darkness, bitter cold, ground trampled into mire. On Siptitz Hill there is nothing that will burn: farther back, in the Domitsch Woods, are numerous fine fires, to which Austrians and Prussians alike gather: 'Peace and truce between us; to-morrow morning, we will see which are prisoners, which are captors.' So pass the wild hours, all hearts longing for the dawn, and what decision it will bring. (From History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, called Frederick the Great, Book XX. Chap. v.) The leading authorities on Carlyle are his works, of several of which numerous editions have been published, some of them elaborately annotated, such as Dr J. H. Rose's French Revolution (1902) and J. A. G. Barrett's Sartor Resartus; Reminiscences of Thomas Carlyle (two editions; Froude's and Norton's); Froude's Thomas Carlyle, a History of the First Forty Years of his Life, 1795-1835 (published in 1882); the same author's Thomas Carlyle, a History of his Life in London, 1834-1881 (published in 1884); Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle (1883); Correspondence between Carlyle and Emerson, edited by Charles Eliot Norton (1883); Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle, edited by Charles Eliot Norton (1886; second series, 1888); and Correspondence between Goethe and Carlyle, edited by Charles Eliot Norton (1887). Of the innumerable other biographies of and works dealing with Carlyle which have been published, there may be mentioned Thomas Carlyle, the Man and his Books, by W. H. Wylie (1881); Bibliog raphy of Carlyle, by R. Shepherd (1881); volumes of the 'reminiscences' order by Rev. Moncure D. Conway (1881) and Professor Masson (1885); books by Dr Richard Garnett (1887), Professor Nichol (English Men of Letters' series, 1892), Hector Macpherson (1896), and G. K. Chesterton (1902); Mrs Oliphant's article in Macmillan's Magazine, April 1881; Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's Conversations with Carlyle (1892); Life of Mrs Carlyle, by Mrs Ireland (1891), and Early Letters of hers, edited by D. G. Ritchie (1891); and Mr Froude and Carlyle, by David Wilson (1898). Two volumes of New Letters and Memorials of Mrs Carlyle, edited by Mr Alexander Carlyle in 1903, revived the controversy as to the domestic relations in a sense eminently favourable to Carlyle ; the introduction by Sir J. Crichton-Browne blames Mrs Carlyle's neurasthenia for the occasional dispeace. Estimates of Carlyle are countless; among the most elaborate are Taine's, in his History of English Literature; Scherer's, in Essays in English Literature; Sir Leslie Stephen's, in Hours in a Library; W. C. Brownell's, in Victorian Prose Masters; R. H. Hutton's, in Contemporary Thought; Edward Caird's, in Essays in Literature; John Tyndall's, in New Fragments. Minor inaccuracies in his works have been pointed out, as by Mr Oscar Browning in The Flight to Varennes (1892). The best-known German books are-Fischer, Thomas Carlyle (Leipzig, 1881); Eugen Oswald, T. C., Ein Lebensbild und Goldkörner aus Seinen Werken (Leipzig, 1882); Flügel, T. Carlyles religiöse und sittliche Entwickelung und Weltanschauung (Leipzig, 1887); Von Schultze-Gävernitz, Carlyles Welt- und Gesellschaftsanchauung (Dresden, 1893). WILLIAM WALLACE. Thomas Wright (1810-77), born near Ludlow of Quaker parentage, graduated at Trinity, Cambridge, and in 1836 commenced man of letters in London. Elected F.S.A. in 1837, he helped to found the Camden, Percy, and Shakespeare Societies and the Archæological Association. He published upwards of eighty works, several of them on medieval England in various aspects, linguistic, social, and other. He wrote on sorcery and magic, on womankind in Western Europe, on caricature. The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon is one of his best-known works: there were also a Biographia Britannica Literaria (1842–46); his dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English, and his edition of the Anglo-Latin twelfth-century satirists; besides Archæological Essays, Wanderings of an Antiquary, and many others. Thomas Crofton Croker (1798–1854) was a diligent collector of the folklore, poetical traditions, and antiquities of Ireland. A native of Cork, he was apprenticed in 1814 to a Quaker merchant, and four years later got an Admiralty clerkship through John Wilson Croker, a friend, but no relation, of his father's. This post he retained till 1850. In 1824 appeared his Researches in the South of Ireland; in 1825-27, Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland. And amongst his other works were Legends of the Lakes (1828), Daniel O'Rourke (1829), Barney Mahoney (1832), My Village versus Our Village (1832), Popular Songs of Ireland (1839), and Historical Songs of Ireland (1841). The tales of Barney Mahoney and My Village are his most original works, and neither is of supreme excellence. Miss Mitford no doubt occasionally dressed her village en vaudeville, but Croker in his village errs on the opposite side-producing a series of Dutch paintings too little relieved by imagination or passion. He is happiest among the fanciful legends of his native country, treasuring up their romantic features, quoting fragments of song, hitting off a dialogue or merry jest, or chronicling the peculiarities of his countrymen, their humours, their superstitions, their attractive and entertaining unconventionality. William Barnes (1800-86), foremost of English dialect poets, was probably England's truest pastoral poet, and was a lyrist of real power. Sprung of good old yeoman stock, he was born at Rushay in the north-east angle of Dorsetshire, and from school at Sturminster passed into a local solicitor's office. By 1820 he was practising woodengraving, studying languages, and writing verses in Dorchester. In 1822 he published Orra, a Lapland Tale, and in 1823 began schoolmaster's work at Mere in Wilts, transferred in 1835 to Dorchester. A few years later his name was on the books of St John's, Cambridge (whence in 1850 he had the degree of B.D.); and, ordained in 1847, added to his school duties a curacy at Whitcomb, three miles from Dorchester. From 1862 he was rector of Winterborne Came, within two miles of Dorchester, and there the rest of his life was spent. Meantime he had been making himself widely known by his fine idyllic poetry in the Dorsetshire dialect, 'the bold and broad Doric of England.' His first volume of poems appeared in 1844; the second, the well-known Hwomely Rhymes, in 1859; the third in 1862; the three, collected together in 1879, and published as Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect, are marked by straightforward simplicity and sincerity of style, with rare imaginative insight into the simple joys and sorrows of country life. But his sympathetic affection for the human life that 'clothes the soil' is paralleled by his patience in observing the quiet life of nature, and his power of reproducing artistically for others the impression it makes upon the mind. The sweet air of southern England blows through every stanza he writes, and has had a charm of quite singular influence on thousands who have seen Dorsetshire but with the inward eye. His verses are none the less artistic that the art is all unconscious, and none the less attractive that the representation of man and nature in them is within its limits completely true; it need not be matter of complaint that he had eyes rather for the pathos and beauty of country life than for its squalor and misery. He did not even take all Dorsetshire for his province; as Mr Hardy has pointed out, the chief scenes of his poetic inspiration were confined to the north and north-west of the county, to 'the secluded vale of Blackmore, whose margin formed the horizon of his boyhood.' But though his world was Dorsetshire, he was emphatically a man of exceptional culture; it is odd to have proof that the Dorsetshire Burns, the Wessex Theocritus, was consciously and largely-if not very visibly-influenced by the poetry of the learned humanist, Petrarch, and the philosophical Persian, Sádi. Professor Palgrave said of him: 'Few in our time equal him in variety and novelty of motive, in quantity of true, sweet inspiration and musical verse. None have surpassed him in exquisite wholeness and unity of execution.' Barnes made himself well known also by his chivalrous attempt to preserve the purity of the mother-tongue. He was an eager philologist, read French and Italian from his youth up, mastered Welsh, Russian, Hebrew, Hindustani, and Persian; but as early as 1849 published an Anglo-Saxon delectus. His Outline of English Speech-craft (1878) is an attempt to teach the English language in purely English words and to inspire abhorrence of Latinisms. His so-called English substitutes for customary 'foreign' words can hardly be accounted happy; language is 'speech-craft,' tenses are ' timetakings,' adjectives are 'mark-words of suchness,' degrees of comparison are 'pitchmarks;' and sentences like 'These pitchmarks offmark sundry things by their sundry suchnesses' make large demands upon the reader's ingenuity. He wrote several works of value on philological subjects, and kept up an active interest in the progress of English scholarship almost till his death at the ripe age of eighty-six. Evenèn in the Village. Now the light o' the west is a-turn'd to gloom, An' the wind is still, An' the house-dogs do bark, An' the rooks be a-vled to the elems high an' dark, An' the water do roar at mill. |