he worshipped wherever he found it, except in himself. What he was to his parents and in his family the newness of their sorrow may make it unseasonable to touch at; his loss, alas! was but one in a complication of afflictions which have fallen so heavy of late upon a worthy house. But as a Friend, the writer of this memorial can witness, that what he once esteemed and loved, it was an unalterable law of his nature to continue to esteem and love.

""Absences of years, the discontinuance of correspondence, from whatever cause, for ever so great a length of time, made no difference. It seemed as if the affectionate part of his nature could suffer no abatement. The display of what the world calls shining talents would have been incompatible with a character like his; but he oftentimes let fall, in his familiar conversation, and in his letters, bright and original illustrations of feeling which might have been mistaken for genius, if his own watchful modest spirit had not constantly interposed to recall and substitute for them some of the ordinary forms of observation which lay less out of the circle of common sympathy, within which his kind nature delighted to move.

"To conclude:

Love, Sweetness, Goodness, in his countenance shin'd

So clear, as in no face with more delight.

But now he is gone, he has left his earthly companions; yet his departure had this in it to make us less sorrowful, that it was but as a gentle removing of the veil, which while he walked upon earth, seemed scarcely to separate his spirit from that world of heavenly and refined essences with which it is now indissolubly connected.'

'I contemplate his character,' wrote Charles Lloyd of Robert, 'as the most sweet and affecting that I ever knew.' Further testimony came from Charles in the shape of four sonnets which he sent to Hannah Lloyd a few days after Robert's death. This is the first and simplest :

My friend, my Brother, no more shall I see

That face affectionate, that face benign, Those eyes where tenderness did always shine Whene'er they turn'd their gentle beams on me!

The article appeared in the Obituary of the Gentleman's Magazine'—unsigned-in November 1811. A comparison of Lamb's copy, as sent to Charles Lloyd, with the printed version discloses certain textual changes which may have been made in proof by himself, or by the editor. In the

If ever Faith, and Generosity,

Love and benevolence almost divine, Forgetfulness of self, Humility,

Blest Human-nature,-Robert they were thine!

Thy smile-I see it now-was kind and sweet As the first dawnings of a vernal morn: Thy warm solicitude each wish to meet

And catch the struggling meaning e'er 'twas born,

Ne'er shall I see again! Who o'er thy Urn, Lov'd friend, like Him who lov'd thee most, should mourn?

Another brother-James-in sending Hannah Lloyd a bundle of Robert's letters added this note: You will see, my dear Sister, by these letters written by Beloved Robert before you knew him that he was the dear affectionate and truly sincere Brother and friend as you have since proved him to be in the character of a Husband. No time can obliterate the sweet fragrance of his person.'

Robert Lloyd left four children, three girls and a boy named after his father. To end this chapter on a gayer note, it may be remarked that among the Lloyd correspondence is one letter written to the young Robert by

'Gentleman's Magazine the little memoir ended at the words within which his kind nature delighted to move.'

his mother in 1824, when he was a schoolboy of twelve. 'I hope [it begins] my dearest boy will like the cake which accompanies this.' Then follow home news and a few maternal counsels, and at the end is a further reference to the cake: I am extremely mortified at the cake being so much less than I ordered.' Little Robert Lloyd probably was mortified too. His answer is concise: 'It came during our Easter Holidays. We were both at Gateacre at the time. 3 of us eat it one day.'

XII

MR. LLOYD'S 'ILIAD'

1807-1809

OF Mr. Lloyd's love of classics and his unusual powers of memory something has already been said. But his interest in Greek and Latin did not stop at reading and repeating his favourite poems in these languages: he passed on to make versions of them in English. Mr. Lloyd was always a very busy man, yet in direct defiance of Cowper's sentiment

It is a maxim of much weight,
Worth conning o'er and o'er,
He who has Homer to translate,
Had need do nothing more.-

he turned the whole of the 'Odyssey' into verse, a portion, if not all, of the Iliad,' and the Epistles of Horace.

Mr. Lloyd's object was amusement and selfinstruction, yet the desire for print, which almost always accompanies authorship, coming