Old Familiar Faces Part 10

Although, owing to his intimacy with George Borrow, Hake was a.s.sociated in the public mind with the Eastern Counties, he was not an East Anglian.

It was at Leeds (in 1809) that he first saw the light. His mother was a Gordon of the Huntly stock, and came of "the Park branch" of that house.

The famous General Gordon was his first cousin, and it was owing to this fact that Hake's son, Mr. Egmont Hake, was entrusted with the material for writing his authoritative books upon the heroic Christian soldier.

Between Hake's eldest son, Mr. T. St. E. Hake, a rising novelist, and the General the likeness was curiously strong. Nominated by one of his uncles to Christ's Hospital, Hake entered that famous school. He gives in his 'Memoirs of Eighty Years' a very vivid picture of it and also a really vital portrait of himself. From his very childhood he was haunted by a literary ambition which can only be called an insatiable pa.s.sion.

It lasted till the very hour of his death. When eleven years of age he became acquainted with that one poet whose immensity of fame has for more than three centuries been the flame into which the myriad Shakespeare moths of English literature have been flying. The Shakespearean of eleven summers did not, like so many Shakespeare enthusiasts from Davenant down to those latest Shakespeares, Homers, and Miltons of our contemporary paragraphists, get himself up to look like the Stratford bust. The only man who ever really looked like that bust was the late Dion Boucicault, who did so without trying. But Shakespeare's wonderful work acted on the imagination of the child of eleven in an equally humorous way. "Shakespeare's perfection," he says in his memoirs, "not only made me envious of the greatest of writers, but it depressed me in turn with the feeling that I could never equal it howsoever long I might live."

Yet although this pa.s.sion never pa.s.sed away, but waxed with his years, it must not be supposed that Hake suffered from what in the "new criticism"

is sweetly and appropriately called "modernity"-in other words, that vulgar greed for notoriety that in these days, when literature to be listened to must be puffed like quack medicine and patent soap, has made the atmosphere of the literary arena somewhat stifling in the nostrils of those who turn from "modernity" to poetic art. Nor was Hake's feeling akin to that fine despair

Before the foreheads of the G.o.ds of song

which true poets, great or small, know-that fine despair which, while it will sometimes stop the breath of one of the true sons of Apollo, as it actually did strike mute Charles Wells, and as at one time it threatened to stop the breath of Rossetti, will lead others to write, and write, and write. It is, however, life's illusions that in most cases make life tolerable. When in old age calamity came upon Hake, and he was shut out from life as by a prison wall, his one solace, the one thing that really bound him to life, was this ambitious dream which came upon the Bluecoat boy of eleven.

His mother was in easy circ.u.mstances, and when a youth Hake travelled a good deal on the Continent, where his success in the "great world" of that time was swift and complete. If this success was owing as much to his exceptionally striking personal appearance and natural endowment of style as to his intellectual equipments-high as these were-that is not surprising to those who knew him. Of course he was well advanced in years before I was old enough to call him my friend; but even then he was so extremely handsome a man that I can well believe the stories I have got from his family connexions (such as his wife's sisters) of his appearance in youth. With the single exception of Tennyson, he was the most poetical-looking poet I have ever seen. And circ.u.mstances put to the best uses his natural gift of style; for it was in the plastic period of his life that he met the best people on the Continent and in England.

I suspect, indeed, that after the plastic period in a man's life is pa.s.sed it is not of much use for him to come into contact with what used to be called "the great world." To be, or to seem to be, unconscious of one's own bearing towards the world, and unconscious of the world's bearing towards oneself, is, I fancy, impossible to a man-even though he have the genius and intellectual endowment of a Browning-who is for the first time brought into touch with society after the plastic period is pa.s.sed.

I have told elsewhere the whimsical story of Hake and Rossetti, of Rossetti's delightful account of his reading as a boy, in a coffee-house in Chancery Lane, Hake's remarkable romance 'Vates,' afterwards called 'Valdarno,' in a magazine; his writing a letter about it to the unknown author, and getting no reply until many years had pa.s.sed. Hake's relations towards Rossetti were of the deepest and most sacred kind.

Rossetti had the highest opinion of Hake's poetical genius, and also felt towards him the greatest love and grat.i.tude for services of an inestimable kind rendered to him in the direst crisis of his life. To enter upon these matters, however, is obviously impossible in a brief and hurried obituary notice; and equally impossible is it for me to enter into the poetic principles of a writer whose very originality has been a barrier to his winning a wide recognition.

Hake's best work is that, I think, contained in the volume called 'New Symbols,' in which there is disclosed an extraordinary variety of poetic power. In execution, too, he is at his best in that volume. Christina Rossetti has often told me that 'Ecce h.o.m.o' impressed her more profoundly than did any other poem of her own time. Also its daring startled her.

It was, however, the previous volume, 'Madeline, and other Poems,' which brought him into contact with Rossetti-the great event of his literary life.

If the man ever lived who could take as much interest in another man's work as his own, Dr. Hake in finding Rossetti found that man. Although at that time Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, William Morris, and Swinburne were running abreast of each other, there was no poet in England who would not have felt honoured by having his work reviewed by Rossetti. But Dr. Hake, whose name was absolutely unknown, had made his way into Rossetti's affections-as, indeed, he made his way into the affections of all who knew him-and this was quite enough to induce Rossetti to ask Dr. Appleton for leave to review 'Madeline' in '71 in _The Academy_-a request which Appleton, of course, was delighted to grant. And again, when in 1873 'Parables and Tales' appeared, Mr. John Morley, we may be sure, was something more than willing to let Rossetti review the book in _The Fortnightly Review_; and, again, when 'New Symbols' appeared, there was some talk about Rossetti's reviewing it in _The Fortnightly Review_; but this, for certain reasons which Rossetti explained to me-reasons which have been misunderstood, but which were entirely adequate-was abandoned. Down to the period when Dr. Hake went to live in Germany he and his son Mr. Gordon Hake were among the most intimate friends of the great poet-painter. Mr. Gordon Hake, indeed, a man of admirable culture and abilities, lived with Rossetti, who certainly benefited much by contact with his bright and lively companion.

The portrait of Dr. Hake prefixed to Mrs. Meynell's selections from his works is one of Rossetti's finest crayons. It is, however, too heavy in expression for Hake.

Full of fine qualities as is his best poetry, full of intellectual subtlety, imagination, and a rare combination of subjective with objective power, there is apparently in it a certain _je ne sais quoi_ which has prevented him at present from winning his true meed of fame.

His hand, no doubt, is uncertain; but so is the hand of many a successful poet-that of Christina Rossetti, for instance. For sheer originality of conception and of treatment what recent poems surpa.s.s or even equal 'Old Souls' and the 'Serpent Charmer'? Then take the remarkable mastery over colour exhibited by 'Ortrud's Vision.' His volume of pantheistic sonnets in the Shakespearean form, 'The New Day,' written in his eighty-first year, is on the whole, however, his most remarkable work. The kind of Sufeyistic nature ecstasy displayed therein by a man of so advanced an age is nothing less than wonderful. And as to knowledge of nature, not even Wordsworth or Tennyson knew nature so completely as did Hake, for he had a thorough training as a naturalist. In looking at a flower he could enjoy not only its beauty, but also the delight of picturing to himself the flower's inherited beauty and the ancestors from which the flower got its inheritance. And as regards the lyrical flow imported into so monumental a form as the sonnet, every student of this form must needs study the book with the greatest interest. His very latest work, however, is in prose. I find it extremely difficult to write about 'Memoirs of Eighty Years.' It is full of remarkable qualities: wit, humour, an ebullience of animal spirits that is Rabelaisian. What it lacks (and in some portions of it greatly lacks) is delicacy, refinement of tone. And surely this is remarkable when we realize the kind of man he was who wrote it.

It has been my privilege to go about with him not only in London, but also in Rome, in Paris, in Venice, in Florence, Pisa, &c.; and no matter what might be the quality of the society with which he was brought into contact, it always seemed to me that he was distinguished by his very lack of that accentuated movement which the _litterateur_ generally displays. I merely dwell upon this to show how inscrutable are the mental processes in the crowning puzzle of the great humourist Nature, the writing man. Just as the most angular and _gauche_ man in a literary gathering may possibly turn out to be the poet whose lyrics have been compared to Sh.e.l.ley, or the prose writer whose mellifluous periods have been compared to those of Plato, so the most dignified man in the room may turn out to be the writer of a book whose defect is a noticeable lack of dignified style. It was hard, indeed, for those who knew Hake in the flesh to believe that the 'Memoirs of Eighty Years' was written by him.

I suppose I shall be expected to say a word about the famous intimacy between Hake and Borrow. After Hake went to live in Germany, Borrow told me a good deal about this intimacy and also about his own early life; for reticent as he naturally was, he and I got to be confidential and intimate. His friends.h.i.+p with Hake began when Hake was practising as a physician in Norfolk. It lasted during the greater part of Borrow's later life. When Borrow was living in London, his great delight was to walk over on Sundays from Hereford Square to Coombe End, call upon Hake, and take a stroll with him over Richmond Park. They both had a pa.s.sion for herons and for deer. At that time Hake was a very intimate friend of my own, and having had the good fortune to be introduced by him to Borrow, I used to join the two in their walks. Afterwards, when Hake went to live in Germany, I used to take these walks with Borrow alone.

Two more interesting men it would be impossible to meet. The remarkable thing was that there was between them no sort of intellectual sympathy.

In style, in education, in experience, whatever Hake was Borrow was not.

Borrow knew almost nothing of Hake's writings, either in prose or in verse. His ideal poet was Pope, and when he read, or rather looked into, Hake's 'World's Epitaph,' he thought he did Hake the greatest honour by saying, "There are lines here and there that are nigh as good as Pope's."

On the other hand, Hake's acquaintance with Borrow's works was far behind that of some Borrovians who did not know Lavengro in the flesh, such as Mr. Saintsbury and Mr. Birrell.

Borrow was shy, eccentric, angular, rustic in accent and in locution, but with a charm for me, at least, that was irresistible. Hake was polished, easy, and urbane in everything, and, although not without prejudice and bias, ready to s.h.i.+ne gracefully in any society. As far as Hake was concerned, the sole link between them was that of reminiscence of earlier days and adventures in Borrow's beloved East Anglia. Among many proofs that I could adduce of this, I will give one. I am the possessor of the ma.n.u.script of Borrow's 'Gypsies in Spain,' written partly in a Spanish note-book as he moved about Spain in his colporteur days. It was my wish that Hake would leave behind him some memorial of Borrow more worthy of himself and his friend than those brief reminiscences contained in 'Memoirs of Eighty Years.' I took to Hake this precious relic of one of the most wonderful men of the nineteenth century in order to discuss with him differences between the MS. and the printed text. Hake was sitting in his invalid chair, writing verses. "What does it all matter?" he said. "I do not think you understand Lavengro," said I. Hake replied, "And yet Lavengro had an advantage over me, for _he_ understood _n.o.body_.

Every individuality with which he was brought into contact had, as no one knows better than you, to be tinged with colours of his own before he could see it at all."

This, of course, was true enough; and Hake's asperities when speaking of Borrow in 'Memoirs of Eighty Years'-asperities which have vexed a good many Borrovians-simply arose from the fact that it was impossible for two such men to understand each other. When I told him of Andrew Lang's angry onslaught upon Borrow, in his notes to the "Waverley Novels," on account of his attacks upon Scott, he said, "Well, and does he not deserve it?" When I told him of Miss Cobbe's description of Borrow as a _poseur_, he said to me, "I told you the same scores of times. But I saw that Borrow had bewitched you during that first walk under the rainbow in Richmond Park. It was that rainbow, I think, that befooled you."

Borrow's affection for Hake, however, was both strong and deep, as I saw after Hake had gone to Germany and in a way dropped out of Borrow's ken.

Yet Hake was as good a man as ever Borrow was, and for certain others with whom he was brought in contact as full of a genuine affection as Borrow was himself.

JOHN LEICESTER WARREN, LORD DE TABLEY.

18351895.

I.

In the death of Lord de Tabley, the English world of letters has lost a true poet and a scholar of very varied accomplishments. His friends have lost much more. Since his last attack of influenza, those who knew him and loved him had been much concerned about him. The pallor of his complexion had greatly increased; so had his feebleness. As long ago as May last, when I called upon him at the Athenaeum Club in order to join him at a luncheon he was giving at the Cafe Royal, I found that he had engaged a four-wheeled cab to take us over those few yards. The expression in his kind and wistful blue-grey eyes showed that he had noted the start of surprise I gave on seeing the cab waiting for us.

"You know my love of a growler," he said; "this is just to save us the bother of getting across the Piccadilly cataracts." I thought to myself, "I wish it were only the bother of crossing the cataracts which accounts for the growler."

Another sign that the physical part of him was in the grip of the demon of decay was that, instead of coming to the Pines to luncheon, as had been his wont, he preferred of late to come to afternoon tea, and return to Elm Park before dinner. And on the occasion when he last came in this way it seemed to us here that he had aged still more; yet his intellectual forces had lost nothing of their power. And as a companion he was as winsome as ever. That fine quality with which he was so richly endowed, the quality which used to be called "urbanity," was as fresh when I saw him last as when I first knew him. That sweet sagacity, mellowed and softened by a peculiarly quiet humour, shone from his face at intervals as he talked of the pleasant old days when he was my colleague on _The Athenaeum_, and when I used to call upon him so frequently on my way to Rossetti in Cheyne Walk to chat over "the walnuts and the wine" about poetry.

My own friends.h.i.+p with him began at my first meeting him, and this was long ago. Being at that time a less-known man of letters than I am now, supposing that to be possible, I was astonished one day when my friend Edmund Gosse told me that his friend Leicester Warren had expressed a wish to meet me on account of certain things of mine which he had read in _The Examiner_ and _The Athenaeum_. I accepted with alacrity Mr. Gosse's invitation to one of those charming _salons_ of his on the banks of Westbournia's Grand Ca.n.a.l which have become historic. I was surprised to find Warren, who was then scarcely above forty, looking so old, not to say so old-fas.h.i.+oned. At that time he did not wear the moustache and beard which afterwards lent a picturesqueness to his face. There was a kind of rural appearance about him which had for me a charm of its own; it suited so well with his gentle ways, I thought. This being the impression he made upon me, it may be imagined how delighted I was shortly afterwards to see him come to the door of Ivy Lodge, Putney, where I was then living alone. Nor was I less surprised than delighted to see him. On realizing at Gosse's _salon_ that my new acquaintance was a botanist, I had fraternized with him on this point, and had described to him an extremely rare and lovely little tree growing in the centre of my garden, which some unknown lover of trees had imported. I had given Warren a kind of general invitation to come some day and see it. So early a call as this I had not hoped to get. Perhaps I thought so reclusive a man as he even then appeared would never come at all.

After having duly admired the tree he turned to the Rossetti crayons on the walls of the rooms; but although he talked much about 'The Spirit of the Rainbow' and the design from the same beautiful model which William Sharp has christened 'Forced Music,' the loveliness of which attracted him not a little, I perceived that he had something else that he wanted to talk about, and allowed him to lead the conversation up to it. To my surprise I found that, so far from having perceived how much he had interested me, he had imagined that my att.i.tude towards him was constrained, and had explained it to his own discomfort after the following fas.h.i.+on: "Watts has an intimate friend of whose poetry I am a deep admirer-so deep indeed that some people, and not without reason, have said that my own poetry is unduly influenced by it. But an article by me in _The Fortnightly_ goes out of its way to dub as a 'minor poet'

the very writer to whose influence I have succ.u.mbed. It is the incongruity between my dubbing my idol a 'minor poet' and my real and most obvious admiration of his work that makes Watts, in spite of an external civility, feel unfriendly towards me. Yet there is no real incongruity, for it was the editor, G. H. Lewes, who, after my proof had been returned for press, interpolated the objectionable words about the minor poet."

This was how he had been reasoning. When I laughed and told him to recast his syllogism-told him that I had never seen the article in question, and doubted whether my friend had-matters became very bright between us. He stayed to luncheon; we walked on the Common; I showed him our Wimbledon sun-dews; in a word, I felt that I had discovered a richer gold mine than the richest in the world, a new friend. Had I then known him as well as I afterwards did, I should have been aware that he had a strong dash of the sensitive, not to say the morbid, in his nature. He had a habit of submitting almost every incident of his life to such an a.n.a.lysis as that I have been describing.

On another occasion, when years later he had a difference with a friend, I reminded him of the incident recorded above, and made him laugh by saying, "My dear Warren, you are so afraid of treading on people's corns that you tread upon them."

On first visiting him, as on many a subsequent occasion, I was struck by the variety of his intellectual interests, and the thoroughness with which he pursued them all. I have lately said in print what I fully believe-that he was the most learned of English poets, if learning means something more than mere scholars.h.i.+p. He was a skilled numismatist, and in 1862 published, through the Numismatic Society, 'An Essay on Greek Federal Coinage,' and an essay 'On Some Coins of Lycia under Rhodian Domination and of the Lycian League.' He even took an interest in book-plates, and actually, in 1880, published 'A Guide to the Study of Book-Plates.' I should not have been at all surprised to learn that he was also writing a guide for the collectors of postage stamps.

At this time he had published a good deal of verse; for instance, 'Eclogues and Monodramas' in 1865; 'Studies in Verse' in 1866; 'Orestes'

in 1867; a collection of poems called 'Rehearsals' in 1873; another collection, called 'The Searching Net,' in 1876. From this time, during many years, I saw him frequently, although, for a reason which it is not necessary to discuss here, he became seized with a deep dislike of the literary world and its doings, and I am not aware that he saw any literary man save myself and the late W. B. Scott, the bond between whom and himself was "book-plates"! Then he took to residing in the country.

As a poet he seemed to be quite forgotten, save by students of poetry, until his name was revived by means of Mr. Miles's colossal anthology 'The Poets and the Poetry of the Nineteenth Century,' Mr. Miles, it seems, was a great admirer of Lord de Tabley's poetry, and managed to reach the hermit in his cell. In the sixth volume of his work Mr. Miles gave a judicious selection from Lord de Tabley's poems and an admirable essay upon them. The selection attracted a good deal of attention.

On finding that the public would listen to him, I urged him to bring out a volume of selected pieces from all his works, an idea which for some time he contested with his usual pessimistic vigour. Having, however, set my heart upon it, I spoke upon the subject to Mr. John Lane, who at once saw his way to bring out such a volume at his own risk. To the poet's astonishment the book was a success, and it at once pa.s.sed into a second edition. In the spring of this year he was emboldened to bring out another volume of new poems, and his name became firmly re-established as a poet. It was after the success of the first book that he consulted me upon a question which was then upon his mind: Should he devote his future energies to literature or to making himself a position as a speaker in the Lords? He had lately had occasion to speak both in the country and in the Lords upon some local matter of importance, and his success had in some slight degree revived an old aspiration to plunge into the world of politics. He was a Liberal, and in 1868 he had contested-but unsuccessfully-Mid-Ches.h.i.+re. This was on the first election for that division after the Reform Act of 1867. His support in a county so Conservative as Ches.h.i.+re had really been very strong, but he never made another effort to get into Parliament. "You know my way," he used to say. "I can make one spring-perhaps a pretty good spring-but not more than one."

On the whole, he leaned towards the idea of going into politics. The way in which he put the case to me was thoroughly characteristic of him: "Even if my verse were strong and vital, which I fear it is not, there is almost no chance for men of my generation receiving more than a slight attention at the present day. Things have altogether changed since the sixties and seventies, when I published my most important work-at a time when the prominent names were Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne. The old critical oracles are now dumb; the reviewers are all young men whose knowledge of poetry does not go back so far as the sixties. Those who reviewed the selection from my work in Miles's book showed themselves to be entirely unconscious of the name of Leicester Warren, and treated the poems there selected as being the work of a new writer; and even when the poems published by Lane came out, no one seemed to be aware that they were by a writer who was very much to the fore a quarter of a century ago. That book has had a flutter of success, but in how large a degree was the success owing to the curiosity excited by the book of a man of my generation being brought out now, and by the publisher of the men of this? With all my sympathy with the work of the younger men and my admiration of some of it, things, I say, have changed since those days."

I did not share these pessimistic views. Moreover, knowing as I did how extremely sensitive he was, I knew that his figuring in Parliament would result in the greatest pain to him, and if I gave a somewhat exaggerated expression with regard to my hopes of him in the literary world, it was a kindly feeling towards himself that impelled me to do so. He took my advice and proceeded to gather material for another volume.

To define clearly the impression left upon one by intercourse with any man is difficult. In De Tabley's case it is almost impossible. His remarkable modesty, or rather diffidence, was what, perhaps, struck me most. It was a genuine lack of faith in his own powers; it had nothing whatever to do with "mock-modesty." I had a singular instance of this diffidence in the autumn of last year. Lord de Tabley, who was staying at Ryde, having learnt that I was staying with a friend near Niton Bay, wrote to me there saying that he somewhat specially wanted to see me, and proposed our lunching together at an hotel at Ventnor. I was delighted to accede to this, for, like all who fully knew Lord de Tabley, I was thoroughly and deeply attached to him. He was so genuine and so modest and so genial-unsoured by the great and various sorrows of which he used sometimes to talk to me by the cosy study fire-nay, sweetened by them, as I often thought-so grateful for the smallest service rendered in an arena where ingrat.i.tude sometimes seems to be the _vis motrix_ of life-a truly lovable man, if ever there was one.

I drove over to Ventnor. As I chanced to reach the hotel somewhat before the appointed time, and he had not arrived, I drove on to Bonchurch along the Shanklin road. On my way back, I pa.s.sed a four-wheel cab; but not dreaming that his love of the "growler" reached beyond London, I never thought of him in connexion with it until I saw the well-known face with its sweet thoughtful expression looking through the cab window. On this occasion it looked so specially thoughtful that I imagined something serious had occurred. At the hotel I found that he had secured a snug room and a luxurious luncheon. An ominous packet of writing-paper peering from his overcoat pocket convinced me that it was a ma.n.u.script brought for me to read, and feeling that I should prefer to get it over before luncheon, I asked him to show it to me. He then told me its history. Having sent by special invitation a poem to _The Nineteenth Century_, the editor had returned it-returned it with certain strictures upon portions of it. This incident he had at once subjected to the usual a.n.a.lysis, and had come to the conclusion that certain outside influences of an invidious kind had been brought to play upon the editor.

Time was when I should have shrunk with terror from so thankless a task as that of reading a ma.n.u.script with such a frightful history, but it is astonis.h.i.+ng what a long experience in the literary world will do for a man in perplexities of this kind. I read the ma.n.u.script and the editor's courteous but sagacious comments, and I found that the poet had undertaken a subject which was utterly and almost inconceivably alien to his genius. As I read I felt the wistful gaze fixed upon me while the waiter was moving in and out of the room, preparing the luncheon table.

"Well," said he, as I laid the ma.n.u.script down, "what do you think? do you agree with the editor?" "Not entirely," I said. "Not entirely!" he exclaimed; then turning to the waiter, he said, "You can leave the soup, and I will ring when we are ready." "Not entirely," I repeated. "With all the editor's strictures I entirely agree, but he says that by working upon it you may make it into a worthy poem: there I disagree with him. I consider it absolutely hopeless. I regret now that we did not leave the matter until after luncheon, but we will not let it spoil our appet.i.tes."

I am afraid it did spoil our appet.i.tes nevertheless, for I felt that I had been compelled, for his own sake, to give him pain. He was much depressed, declared that the success of his late book was entirely fact.i.tious, and vowed that nothing should ever persuade him to write another line of verse, and that he would now devote his attention to a peer's duties in the House of Lords. I was so disturbed myself at thus paining so lovable a friend that next day I wrote to him, trying to soften what I had said, and urged him to do as the editor of _The Nineteenth Century_ had suggested, write another poem-a poem upon some cla.s.sical subject, which he would deal with so admirably. The result of it all was that he found the editor's strictures on the unlucky poem to be absolutely well grounded, and wrote for _The Nineteenth Century_ 'Orpheus,' one of the finest of his later poems.

I think these anecdotes of Lord de Tabley will show why we who knew him were so attached to him.

II.

Can it be claimed for Lord de Tabley that in the poetical firmament which hung over the days of his youth-when the heavens were bright with such luminaries as Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, Rossetti, Swinburne, and Morris-he had a place of his own? We think it can. And in saying this we are fully conscious of the kind of praise we are awarding him.

Whatever may be said for or against the artistic temper of the present hour, it must certainly be said of the time we are alluding to that it was great as regards its wealth of poetic genius, and as regards its artistic temper greater still. It was a time when "the beauteous damsel Poesy, honourable and retired," whom Cervantes described, dared still roam the English Parna.s.sus, "a friend of solitude," disturbed by no clash of Notoriety's brazen cymbals, "where fountains entertained her, woods freed her from _ennui_, and flowers delighted her"-delighted her for their own sakes. In order to write such verses as the following from the concluding poem of the volume before us {231} a man must really have pa.s.sed into that true mood of the poet described by the great Spanish humourist:-

How idle for a spurious fame To roll in thorn-beds of unrest; What matter whom the mob acclaim, If thou art master of thy breast?