The Canadian Elocutionist / Designed for the Use of Colleges, Schools and Self Instruction, Together with a Copious Selection in Prose and Poetry of Pieces Adapted for Reading, Recitation and Practice

by Anna K. Howard

FROM THE FIRST ORATION AGAINST CATILINE.

How far wilt thou, O Catiline, abuse our patience? How long shall thy madness outbrave our justice? To what extremities art thou resolved to push thy unbridled insolence of guilt! Canst thou behold the nocturnal arms that watch the palatium, the guards of the city, the consternation of the citizens; all the wise and worthy clustering into consultation; this impregnable situation of the seat of the senate, and the reproachful looks of the fathers of Rome? Canst thou, I say, behold all this, and yet remain undaunted and unabashed? Art thou sensible that thy measures are detected?

Art thou sensible that this senate, now thoroughly informed, comprehend the full extent of thy guilt? Point me out the senator ignorant of thy practices, during the last and the proceeding night: of the place where you met, the company you summoned, and the crime you concerted. The senate is conscious, the consul is witness to this: yet mean and degenerate—the traitor lives! Lives! did I say? He mixes with the senate; he shares in our counsels; with a steady eye he surveys us; he anticipates his guilt; he enjoys his murderous thoughts, and coolly marks us out for bloodshed. Yet we, boldly passive in our country's cause, think we act like Romans if we can escape his frantic rage.

Long since, O Catiline! ought the consul to have doomed thy life a forfeit to thy country; and to have directed upon thy own head the mischief thou hast long been meditating for ours. Could the noble Scipio, when sovereign pontiff, as a private Roman kill Tiberius Gracchus for a slight encroachment upon the rights of this country; and shall we, her consuls, with persevering patience endure Catiline, whose ambition is to desolate a devoted world with fire and sword?

There was—there was a time, when such was the spirit of Rome, that the resentment of her magnanimous sons more sternly crushed the Roman traitor, than the most inveterate enemy. Strong and weighty, O Catiline! is the decree of the senate we can now produce against you; neither wisdom is wanting in this state, nor authority in this assembly; but we, the consuls, we are defective in our duty.

Cicero.

* * * * *

THE INEXPERIENCED SPEAKER.

The awkward, untried speaker rises now,
And to the audience makes a jerking bow.
He staggers—almost falls—stares—strokes his chin—
Clears out his throat, and.. ventures to begin.
"Sir, I am.. sensible"—(some titter near him)—
"I am, sir, sensible"—"Hear! hear!" (they cheer him).
Now bolder grown—for praise mistaking pother—
He pumps first one arm up, and then the other.
"I am, sir, sensible—I am indeed—
That,.. though—I should—want—words—I must proceed
And.. for the first time in my life, I think—
I think—that—no great—orator—should—shrink—
And therefore,—Mr. Speaker,—I, for one—
Will.. speak out freely.—Sir, I've not yet done.
Sir, in the name of those enlightened men
Who sent me here to.. speak for them—why, then..
To do my duty—as I said before—
To my constituency—I'll … say no more."

* * * * *

SKETCHES OF AUTHORS.

ADDISON, JOSEPH, born May 1st, 1672, at Milston, Wiltshire, son of the Rev. Lancelot Addison, was educated at the Charterhouse and at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was destined for the church, but turned his attention to political life, and became eventually a member of parliament, and in 1717, one of the principal Secretaries of State. He first rose into public notice, through his poem on the battle of Blenheim, written in 1704, and entitled, The Campaign. He was chief contributor to The Spectator. His tragedy of Cato, produced in 1713, achieved a great popularity, which, however, has not been permanent. He died on June 17th, 1719. As an observer of life, of manners, of all shades of human character, he stands in the first class.

ALDRICH, THOMAS BAILEY, an American poet, born at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 1836. He has been an industrious worker on the newspaper press, and is the author of Baby Bell, a beautiful poem of child-death. He has published his collected poems under the title of Cloth of Gold, and of Flower and Thorn. He is also a prose writer of considerable note, having an exquisite humour. His published novels are Prudence Palfrey, The Queen of Sheba, The Still-water Tragedy, etc.

AYTOUN, WILLIAM EDMONDSTOUNE, an eminent critic and poet, born in Fifeshire, Scotland, in 1813. He studied law, and was appointed Professor of Rhetoric in Edinburgh University in 1845, and was closely connected with Blackwood's Magazine for many years. He was a poet of the highest order, and his Execution of Montrose, and the Burial March of Dundee, are two noble historical ballads. He was author of the celebrated Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, Bon Gaultier Ballads, Firmilian, a Spasmodic Tragedy, Bothwell, Poland, and other Poems, The Life and Times of Richard Coeur de Lion, etc. Died August 4th, 1865.

BEECHER, HENRY WARD, a celebrated author and divine, born at Litchfield, Connecticut, on the 24th of January, 1813. He studied at Amherst College, where he graduated in 1834. In 1847, he became pastor of Plymouth Church (Congregational), Brooklyn. He is one of the most popular writers, and most successful lecturers of the day in the United States. He has published, Lectures to Young Men, Life Thoughts, a novel entitled Norwood, etc.

BRONTE, CHARLOTTE (Currer Bell). A popular English novelist, born at Thornton, Yorkshire, April 21st, 1816, was a daughter of the Rev. Patrick Bronté. In 1846, in conjunction with her sisters—Anne and Emily— published a small volume of poems. It was as a writer of fiction, however, that Charlotte achieved her great success, and in 1848, her novel of Jane Eyre, obtained great popularity, and brought the talented author well merited fame. She afterwards published Shirley and Villette, both very successful works. In June, 1854, she married the Rev. Arthur B. Nicholls, but after a brief taste of domestic happiness, she died at Haworth, March 31st, 1855. The Professor, her first production (written in 1846), was published in 1856, after her death.

BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT, one of the most gifted female poets that have ever lived, the daughter of Mr. Barrett, an opulent London merchant, born near Ledbury, Herefordshire, about 1807. She began to write verse when only ten years of age, and gave early proofs of great poetical genius. At the age of seventeen, she published An Essay on Mind, with other Poems, and her reputation was widely extended by The Seraphim and other Poems, published in 1838. In 1846, she was married to Robert Browning, the poet, and they lived for many years in Italy. In 1851, she published Casa Guidi Windows, the impressions of the writer upon events in Tuscany, and in 1856, appeared Aurora Leigh, a poem, or novel in verse, which is greatly admired. "The poetical reputation of Mrs. Browning," says the North British Review (February, 1857), "has been growing slowly, until it has reached a height which has never before been attained by any modern poetess." She died at Florence, June 29th, 1861.

BROWNING, ROBERT, a distinguished English poet, born at Camberwell, London, in 1812. He was educated at the University of London, and in 1836 published his first poem, Paracelsus, which attracted much attention by its originality. He has been a voluminous writer, and of all his works, Pippa Passes, and The Blot in the Scutcheon, are perhaps the best. The Ring and the Book appeared in 1868. He is considered by some critics as one of the greatest English poets of his time, but is not very popular.

BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN, an American poet, born at Cummington, Massachusetts, November 3rd, 1794. At the age of ten years he made very creditable translations from the Latin poets, which were printed, and at thirteen he wrote The Embargo, a political satire which was never surpassed by any poet of that age. He wrote Thanatopsis when but little more than eighteen, and it is by many considered as his finest poem. In 1826 he became one of the editors of the Evening Post, which he continued to edit until his death. He published a complete collection of his poems in 1832, and in 1864. Among his prose works are, Letters of a Traveller, and in 1869 he published a translation of Homer's Iliad, which is an excellent work. Washington Irving says of Bryant: "That his close observation of the phenomena of nature, and the graphic felicity of his details, prevent his descriptions from becoming commonplace." He died June 12th, 1878.

BURNS, ROBERT, the national poet of Scotland, was the son of a small farmer, and was born near the town of Ayr, on January, 25th, 1759. His early life was spent in farming, but he was about emigrating to the West Indies, when the publication of a volume of his poems, in 1786, which were very favourably received, determined him on remaining in his native land, and he proceeded to Edinburgh, where he made the acquaintance of the distinguished men of letters of that famous city. His reception was triumphant, and a new edition of his poems was issued, by which he realised more than £500. In 1788 he was married to Miss Jean Armour (Bonnie Jean), and soon after obtained a place in the excise, and in 1791 he removed to Dumfries, where he spent the remainder of his life. He died on July 21st, 1796. Nature had made Burns the greatest among lyric poets; the most striking characteristics of his poetry are simplicity and intensity, in which qualities he is scarcely, if at all, inferior to any of the greatest poets that have ever lived. "No poet except Shakespeare," says Sir Walter Scott, "ever possessed the power of exciting the most varied and discordant emotions with such rapid transitions."

BYROM, DR. JOHN, an English poet, born at Kersal, near Manchester, in 1691. He contributed several pieces to the Spectator, of which the beautiful pastoral of Colin and Phoebe, in No. 603, is the most noted. He invented a system of shorthand, which is still known by his name. Died at Manchester in 1763.

BYRON, GEORGE GORDON NOEL (Lord), an English poet and dramatist of rare genius, was born in London, January 22nd, 1788. He was educated partly at Harrow, and in 1805 proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge. While at College he published, in 1807, his Hours of Idleness, a volume of juvenile poems, which was severely criticised in the Edinburgh Review. Two years later he published his reply, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, a satire which obtained immediate celebrity. In 1812 he gave the world the fruits of his travels on the continent, in the first two Cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. The success of this was so extraordinary that, as he tells us, "he awoke one morning and found himself famous." He then took his seat in the House of Lords, but soon lost his interest in politics. In 1813 he published The Giaour, and The Bride of Abydos, and in 1814, The Corsair. In January, 1815, he married Anne Isabella Milbank, only daughter of Sir Ralph Milbank, but the marriage was an unhappy one, and she returned to her father's in the January of 1816. In April, 1816, Byron left his country with the avowed intention of never seeing it again, and during his absence he published, in rapid succession, the remaining cantos of Childe Harold, Mazeppa, Manfred, Cain, Sardanapalus, Marino Faliero, The Two Foscari, Werner, and Don Juan, besides many other smaller poems. During his residence on the Continent, his sympathies for Grecian liberty became strongly excited, and he resolved to devote all his energies to the cause, and left Italy in the summer of 1823. He arrived in Missolonghi on January 10th, 1824. On February 15th he was seized with a convulsive fit, which rendered him senseless for some time. On April 9th he got wet, took cold and a fever, on the 11th he grew worse, and on the 19th he died, inflammation of the brain having set in. Among the most remarkable characteristics of Byron's poetry, two are deserving of particular notice. The first is his power of expressing intense emotion, especially when it is associated with the darker passions of the soul. "Never had any writer," says Macaulay, "so vast a command of the whole eloquence of scorn, misanthropy and despair…. From maniac laughter to piercing lamentation, there is not a single note of human anguish of which he was not master."

CAMPBELL, THOMAS, an eminent British poet, born at Glasgow in 1777. In 1799 he published The Pleasures of Hope, of which the success has perhaps had no parallel in English literature. He visited the continent in 1800 and witnessed the battle of Hohen-linden, which furnished the subject of one of his most exquisite lyrics. Gertrude of Wyoming, published in 1809, is one of his finest poems. He wrote several spirited odes, etc., and other literary work, has placed his fame on an enduring basis. He died at Boulogne, in 1844, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

CARY, ALICE, an American author, born near Cincinnati, Ohio, about 1822. She first attracted attention by her contributions to the National Era, under the name of Patty Lee; she afterwards published several volumes of poems and other works, including Hagar, Hollywood, etc. Her sketches of Western Life, entitled Clovernook, have obtained extensive popularity. She died, February 12th, 1871.

CARY, PHOEBE, a sister of Alice, has also contributed to periodical literature and in 1854 published a volume entitled Poems and Parodies. She died July 31st, 1871.

COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, an eminent English poet and critic, born at Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, October 21st, 1772. In 1796, he published a small volume of poems and in 1797, in conjunction with Mr. Wordsworth, he formed the plan of the Lyrical Ballads, for which he wrote the Ancient Mariner. In 1800 he removed to Keswick, where he resided in company with Wordsworth and Southey, the three friends receiving the appellation of the Lake Poets. He wrote several excellent works, of which Christabel is the best. He led a somewhat wandering life and died on July 25th, 1834. As a poet, he was one of the most imaginative of modern times, and as a critic his merits were of the highest order.

COLLINS, WILLIAM, an eminent English lyric poet, born at Chichester, in 1720. He was a friend of Dr. Johnson, who speaks well of him. His best known work is his excellent ode on, The Passions, which did not receive the fame its merits deserve. Before his death, which occurred in 1756, he was for some time an inmate of a lunatic asylum.

COWPER, WILLIAM, a celebrated English poet, originally intended for a lawyer, and appointed as Clerk of the Journals in the House of Lords at the age of 31 years, but his constitutional timidity prevented him from accepting it. He had to be placed in a lunatic asylum for some time. He was born at Berkhampstead in 1731. In 1767 he took up his abode at Olney, in Buckinghamshire, where he devoted himself to poetry, and in 1782 published a volume of poems, which did not excite much attention, but a second volume, published in 1785, stamped his reputation as a true poet. His Task, Sofa, John Gilpin, are works of enduring excellence. In 1794 his intellect again gave way, from which he never recovered, and he died at Dereham, in Norfolk, April 25th, 1800.

CROLY, REV. GEORGE, a popular poet, born in Dublin in 1780. He was for many years rector of St. Stephen's, Wallbrook, London, and was eminent as a pulpit orator. His principal works are: The Angel of the World; a tragedy, entitled Cataline, Salathiel, etc. He died November 24th, 1860.

DICKENS, CHARLES, one of the most successful of modern novelists, was born at Landport, Portsmouth, February 7th, 1812. Intended for the law, he became a most successful reporter for the newspapers, and was employed on the Morning Chronicle, in which paper first appeared the famous Sketches by Boz, his first work. The Pickwick Papers which followed, placed him at once in the foremost rank of popular writers of fiction. His novels are so well known that any list of their titles is superfluous. In 1850 he commenced the publication of Household Words, which he carried on until 1859 when he established All the Year Round, with which he was connected until his death, which occurred very suddenly at his residence. Gad's Hill, Kent, on June 9th, 1870. He left his latest work, The Mystery of Edwid Drood, unfinished, and it remains a fragment. It was not merely as a humorist, though that was his great distinguishing characteristic, that Dickens obtained such unexampled popularity. Be was a public instructor, a reformer and moralist. Whatever was good and amiable, bright and joyous in our nature, he loved, supported and augmented by his writings; whatever was false, hypocritical and vicious, he held up to ridicule, scorn and contempt.

DRYDEN, JOHN, a celebrated English poet, born at Aldwinckle, Northamptonshire, August 9th, 1631. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he received his degree of M.A. He removed to London in 1657, and wrote many plays, and on the death of Sir William Davenport he was made poet laureate. On the accession of James II. Dryden became a Roman Catholic and endeavoured to defend his new faith at the expense of the old one, in a poem entitled The Hind and the Panther. At the Revolution he lost his post, and in 1697 his translation of Virgil appeared, which, of itself alone is sufficient to immortalize his name. His ode, Alexander's Feast, is esteemed by some critics as the finest in the English language. He died May 1st, 1700.

GOLDSMITH, OLIVER, one of the most distinguished ornaments of English literature, born at Pallas, Ireland, in 1728. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin and afterward at Edinburgh. He traveled over Europe, on foot, and returned to England in 1756, and settled in London. It was not until 1764 that he emerged from obscurity by the publication of his poem entitled The Traveller. In the following year appeared his beautiful novel of the Vicar of Wakefield. In 1770 he published The Deserted Village, a poem, which in point of description and pathos, is beyond all praise. As a dramatist he was very successful and he produced many prose works. He died in London on the 4th of April, 1774.

GRAY, THOMAS, an English poet of great merit, born in London in 1716. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge and in 1738 entered the Inner Temple, but never engaged much in the study of the law. In 1742 he took up his residence in Cambridge, where, in 1768, he became professor of modern history. The odes of Gray are of uncommon merit, and his Elegy in a Country Churchyard has long been considered as one of the finest poems in the English language. He died in July, 1771. He occupied a very high rank in English literature, not only as a poet, but as an accomplished prose writer.

HALLECK, FITZ-GREENE, an American poet, born at Guildford, Conn., July 8th, 1790. He became a clerk in the office of J. J. Astor, and employed his leisure moments in the service of the Muses. In 1819, in conjunction with his friend, Joseph R. Drake, he wrote the celebrated Croaker Papers, a series of satirical poems which brought him into public notice. On his martial poem, Marco Bozzaris, published in 1827, his fame principally rests, although he has written other pieces of great merit. He died November 19th, 1867.

HARTE, FRANCIS BRET, a native of Albany, N.Y., has written short stories and sketches of Californian life, and several poems in dialect, of which The Heathen Chinee, is the most celebrated. He possesses great wit and pathos, and has been very successful in novel writing, and also in writing for the stage.

HEMANS, FELICIA DOROTHEA, an excellent English poet, born at Liverpool, September 25th, 1794, was the daughter of a merchant named Browne. Her first volume of poems was published in 1808. In 1812 she married Capt. Hemans, but the marriage was a very unhappy one and they separated in 1818. She is the most touching and accomplished writer of occasional verse that our literature has yet to boast of. "Religious truth, moral purity and intellectual beauty, ever meet together in her poetry." She died in Dublin, in 1835.

HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL, M.D., a distinguished American poet, author and wit, was born at Cambridge, Mass., August 29th, 1809. He studied law, but soon left it for medicine, and took his degree of M.D. in 1836. In 1847, he was appointed Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in Harvard University. He early began writing poetry, publishing a collected edition of his poems in 1836. He is a genuine poet, and as a song writer, has few if any superiors in America, excelling in the playful vein. He is best known by his series of excellent papers, contributed to the Atlantic Monthly, under the title of The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, published in 1857-8; The Professor at the Breakfast Table and the Poet at the Breakfast Table. He has also written some successful novels, one of which, The Guardian Angel, is one of the best American novels yet produced. He has also written able works on subjects connected with his profession.

HOOD, THOMAS, a famous poet, humorist and popular author, born in London in 1798. He was the son of a bookseller, served an apprenticeship as an engraver, but soon betook himself to literature. In 1821 he was sub-editor of the London Magazine. His novels and tales were less successful than his humorous works. Among his most popular poems are:—The Song of the Shirt, The Bridge of Sighs and the Dream of Eugene Aram. In the latter years of his life—which was one of prolonged suffering—he was editor of The New Monthly Magazine. As a punster he is unrivalled, and some of his serious poems are exquisitely tender and pathetic. In all his works a rich current of genial humour runs, and his pleasant wit, ripe observation and sound sense have made him an ornament to English literature. He died March 3rd, 1845.

HUNT, J. H. LEIGH, a popular English poet, born at Southgate, near London October 19th, 1784. He early turned his attention to literature, and obtained a clerkship in the War Office, which he resigned in 1808, to occupy the joint editorship (along with his brother John) of the Examiner. Their boldness in conducting this paper led to their being imprisoned for two years and fined £500 each, for some strictures on the Prince Regent which appeared in its columns. He was a copious writer and his productions occupy a wide range. Rimini, written while in prison, is one of his best poems. Prof. Wilson styles Hunt "as the most vivid of poets and the most cordial of critics." He died August 28th, 1859.

INGELOW, JEAN, a native of Ipswich, Suffolk, born about 1826, is the author of several volumes of poems, the first of which ran through 14 editions in five years. She wrote A Story of Doom and other poems, published in 1867, Mopsa the Fairy in 1869, and several prose stories, etc.

IRVING, WASHINGTON, a distinguished American author and humorist, born in New York City, April 3rd, 1783. He studied law and was admitted to the bar, but soon abandoned the legal profession for literature. In 1809 he published his Knickerbockers History of New York, a humorous work which was very successful. His works, are very numerous, including the famous Sketch Book, The Alhambra, Conquest of Granada, Life of Columbus, Life of Washington, etc., etc. For easy elegance of style, Irving has no superior, perhaps no equal, among the prose writers of America. If Hawthorne excels him in variety, in earnestness and in force, he is, perhaps, inferior to Irving in facility and grace, while he can make no claim to that genial, lambent humour which beams in almost every page of Geoffrey Cravon. He died November 28th, 1859.

LAMB, CHARLES, a distinguished essayist and humorist, born in London, Feby. 18th, 1775, and educated at Christ's Hospital. In 1792 he became a clerk in the India House, a post he retained for 33 years. He was a genial and captivating essayist and his fame mainly rests on his delightful Essays of Elia, which were first printed in the London Magazine. His complete works include two volumes of verse, the Essays of Elia, Specimens of the English Dramatic Poets, etc., etc. For quaint, genial and unconventional humour, Lamb has, perhaps, never been excelled. He died December 27th, 1834.

LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH, the most popular and artistic of all American poets, was born in Portland, Maine, Feby. 27th, 1807. He graduated at Bowdoin College in 1825, and one year afterwards was offered the professorship of Modern Languages at that Institution, which he occupied until 1835, when he accepted that of professor of Modern Languages at Harvard, which he continued to hold until 1854, when he resigned the chair. His poetical works are well known and are very numerous, the most noted of his longer pieces being Evangeline, The Golden Legend, Hiawatha, Courtship of Miles Standish, etc. All his poetical works are distinguished by grace and beauty, warmed by a greater human sympathy than is displayed in the writings of the majority of eminent poets. He relies chiefly for his success on a simple and direct appeal to those sentiments which are common to all mankind, to persons of every rank and of every clime. He wrote only three prose works, Outre-Mer, Hyperion and Kavanagh, and a few dramas, all of which deserve to rank with the best American productions. Evangeline is considered "to be the most perfect specimen of the rhythm and melody of the English hexameter." He died at Cambridge, Mass., March 24th 1882.

LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL, a distinguished American poet, critic and scholar, born in Cambridge, Mass., February 22nd, 1819. He graduated from Harvard, in 1838, and was admitted to the bar, but soon abandoned law as a profession and devoted himself to literature. His Biglow Papers first made him popular, in 1848. In 1857, on the establishment of the Atlantic Monthly, he was made editor of that popular magazine. His prose works consisting chiefly of critical and miscellaneous essays, "show their author to be the leading American critic, are a very agreeable union of wit and wisdom, and are the result of extensive reading, illuminated by excellent critical insight." His humour is rich and unrivalled and he seems equally at home in the playful, the pathetic, or the meditative realms of poetry. In 1880, he was appointed Envoy Extraordinary to Great Britain, which office he held until 1885.

LYTTON, LORD, Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer Lytton, a distinguished novelist, poet, dramatist and politician, was born May, 1805. He was the son of William Earle Bulwer, and owes his chief fame to his novels, some of which are among the best in the English language, notably The Caxtons, My Novel, What will He do with It? and A Strange Story. As a playwright he was equally successful; he was the author of The Lady of Lyons—the most popular play of modern days;—Richelieu, Not so Bad as we Seem, the admirable comedy of Money, etc. A man of prodigious industry he showed himself equal to the highest efforts of literature; fiction, poetry, the drama, all were enriched by his labours. As a politician he was not quite so successful. In 1866 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Lytton. He assumed the name of Lytton, his mother's maiden name, in 1844, on succeeding to the Knebworth estates. He died January 18th, 1873, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

LYTTON, EDWARD ROBERT BULWER, The son of the preceding author, better known perhaps by his nom de plume, Owen Meredith, born November 8th, 1831. He entered the diplomatic service in 1849. and has represented the British Government with great distinction. His chief works are Clytemestra, Lucile, The Wanderer, Fables in Song, The Ring of Amasis, a prose romance, etc.

MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON, a celebrated historian, orator, essayist and poet, was born at Rothley Temple, Lincolnshire, October 26th, 1800. From his earliest years he exhibited signs of superiority and genius, and earned a great reputation for his verses and oratory. He studied law and was called to the Bar, commencing his political career in 1830, and in 1834 he went to India, as a member of the Supreme Council, returning in 1838 to England, where for a few years he pursued politics and letters, representing Edinburgh in the House of Commons, but being rejected, on appearing for re-election, he devoted himself to literature. During the last twelve years of his life his time was almost wholly occupied with his History of England, four volumes of which he had completed and published, and a fifth left partly ready for the press when he died. Besides the History and Essays, he wrote a collection of beautiful ballads, including the well-known Lays of Ancient Rome. In 1849 he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, and in 1857, his honours culminated in his elevation to the peerage as Baron Macaulay. He died on the 28th of December, 1869.

MILTON, JOHN, An immortal poet, and with the exception of Shakespeare, the most illustrious name in English Literature, was born in Bread Street, London, on December 9th, 1608. He graduated at Cambridge, and was intended for the law or the Church, but did not enter either calling. He settled at Horton in Buckinghamshire, where he wrote his Comus, L'Allegro, Il Penuroso, and Lycidas. He took the side of the Parliament in the dispute with King Charles I. and rendered his party efficient service with his pen. About 1654 he became totally blind, and after serving the Protector as Latin Secretary for four or five years, he retired from public life in 1657. In 1665, the time of the Great Plague, he first showed the finished manuscript of his great poem, Paradise Lost, which was first printed in 1667, this immortal work being sold to a bookseller for £5! He afterwards wrote Paradise Regained, but it is, in all respects, quite inferior to Paradise Lost. He died in London, on the 8th of November, 1674.

MOORE, THOMAS, a celebrated poet, born in Dublin, May 28th, 1779, and was educated at Trinity College in that city. He studied law but never practised. He published two volumes of poems previous to the production of Lalla Rookh, his masterpiece, which was highly successful and was published in 1817. His works are very numerous and some of them are extremely popular, the best being Lalla Rookh and Irish Melodies. As a poet he displays grace, pathos, tenderness and imagination, but is deficient in power and naturalness. He died February 26th, 1852.

POE, EDGAR ALLAN, a distinguished American poet and prose writer, born in Baltimore in 1809. He was an entirely original figure in American literature, his temperament was melancholy, he hated restraint of every kind and he gave way to dissipation, and his life is a wretched record of poverty and suffering. But the Bells, The Raven and Annabel Lee, his principal poetical works, are wonderfully melodious, constructed with great ingenuity, and finished with consummate art. He wrote several weird prose tales and some critical essays. He died at Baltimore, under circumstances of great wretchedness, October 7th, 1849.

POPE, ALEXANDER, a popular English poet and critic, born in London, May 22nd, 1688. During his childhood he displayed great ability and resolved to be a poet. His Pastorals were written at the age of sixteen. He wrote a large number of poems, the most celebrated being; the Essay on Criticism, The Rape of the Lock and the Essay on Man. He also published translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. His talent for satire is conspicuous in the Duncaid. He possessed little originality or creative imagination, but he had a vivid sense of the beautiful, and an exquisite taste. He owed much of his popularity to the easy harmony of his verse, the keenness of his satire, and the brilliancy of his antithesis. He has, with the exception of Shakespeare, added more phrases to the English language than any other poet. He died on the 30th of May, 1744.

PROCTER, ADELAIDE ANNE, an English poet, born in London, October 30th, 1825. She was a daughter of Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall). She was a contributor to Household Words and All the Year Round, and published in 1858, a volume of poetry, Legends and Lyrics. A second volume was issued in 1861. She died February 3rd, 1864.

READ, THOMAS BUCHANAN, a distinguished American artist and poet, born in Pennsylvania, March 12th, 1822. He visited England and also spent several years in Florence and Rome. He wrote several good poems, but his Sheridan's Ride, brought him more popularity than any of his previous works. He died May 11th, 1872.

ROGERS, SAMUEL, an eminent English poet, born in London, July 30th, 1763. He was a rich banker and enabled to devote much leisure time to literature, of which he was a magnificent patron. His best works are Pleasures of Memory, Human Life, and Italy, the last appeared in a magnificent form, having cost £10,000 in illustrations alone. Died December 18th, 1855.

SAXE, JOHN GODFREY, a humorous American poet, born in Vermont, in 1816. He has been most successful in classical travesties and witty turns of language, and he has won a good place as a sonneteer. A complete edition of his poems (the 42nd) was published in 1881.

SCOTT, SIR WALTER. An illustrious Scotch author, novelist and poet, born in Edinburgh, August 15th, 1771. He was called to the bar in 1792, and being in circumstances favourable for the pursuit of literature, he commenced his poetical career, by translating several poems from the German. In 1805, he published the Lay of the Last Minstrel, and became at once one of the most distinguished poets of the age. It was speedily followed by Marmion and the Lady of the Lake (1810), and many other poems, all of which added to his fame. In August, 1813, he was offered the position of poet-laureate, which he declined. But he was destined to add to his already great reputation as a poet, by a success equally as great in the realms of prose fiction. In 1814 appeared Waverley, published anonymously, and its success was enormous. It was quickly followed by the other volumes of the "Great Unknown," as Scott was now designated, amounting in all to twenty-seven volumes. In 1820 he was created a baronet and his degree of success had been unparalleled and had raised him to apparent affluence, but, in 1826, by the failure of two publishing houses with which he was connected, he was reduced to bankruptcy. He set himself resolutely to redeem himself from the load of debt (£147,000) but, although successful, his faculties gave way before the enormous mental toil to which they were subjected. He died at Abbotsford, Sept. 21st, 1832. In addition to the poetical works and the Waverley Novels, Scott was the author of many other popular works, too well known to need mentioning here.

SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM.—The greatest poet of England, born at Stratford-on- Avon, Warwickshire, April 23rd, 1564. Unfortunately the materials for a biography of the poet are very meagre, and are principally derived from tradition. He appears to have been well educated, married very early, when about nineteen years of age, his wife, Anne Hathaway, being then twenty- six. Shortly after this he left Stratford for London, where he became an actor and eventually a writer of plays. His first printed drama (Henry VI., part II.) was issued in 1594. In 1597, he purchased the best house in his native town, and about 1604 he retired to Stratford, where he spent the last twelve years of life, and where he is supposed to have written many of his plays, but we have no means of determining the exact order in which they were composed. He died April 23rd, 1616. His works are of world-wide fame, and need not be enumerated here. The name is often spelled SHAKSPEARE.

SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE.—An eminent English poet, born near Horsham, Sussex, August 4th, 1792. He studied at Oxford, from whence he was expelled for publishing a Defence of Atheism. He made an unhappy marriage and soon separated from his wife. He published Queen Mab, Alsator, and in 1817 the Revolt of Islam. In 1818 he left England, to which he was destined never to return. In July, 1822, (July 8th), while residing at Leghorn, he went out on the Gulf of Spezzia, in a sail boat, which was upset in a squall, and the poet perished. In addition to the poems already mentioned he wrote The Cenci, Adonais, Prometheus, and a number of smaller pieces. As a poet he was gifted with genius of a very high order, with richness and fertility of imagination, but of a vague and partly unintelligible character.

SHERIDAN, RICHARD BRINSLEY BUTLER.—A celebrated Irish orator and dramatist, born in Dublin in 1751. He directed his attention to literature, and in 1775 produced the comedy of The Rivals, and several other pieces. In 1777, his celebrated comedy of The School for Scandal, established his reputation as a dramatic genius of the highest order. He managed Drury Lane Theatre for some time, and also entered Parliament. His speech on the impeachment of Warren Hastings is regarded as one of the most splendid displays of eloquence in ancient or modern times. He died in London, in July, 1816.

SOUTHEY, ROBERT.—An eminent author and poet, born at Bristol, August 12th, 1774. Intended for the church, he studied at Oxford, but abandoned divinity for literature. His first poem was Joan of Arc, published in 1796. He was a most voluminous writer, being the author of more than 100 volumes of poetry, history, travels, etc., and also of 126 papers, upon history, biography, politics and general literature. His principal works are Madoc, Thalaba the Destroyer, The Curse of Kehama, lives of Nelson, Bunyan, John Wesley, etc., etc. He was appointed poet laureate in 1813. He died at Keswick, Cumberland, March 21st, 1843.

TENNYSON, ALFRED (Lord Tennyson), a distinguished and the most popular English poet, born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, August 5th, 1809. He early displayed poetic genius, his first volume (written in conjunction with his brother Charles) entitled, Poems by Two Brothers, having been issued in 1827. In 1842, a volume of his poems was published and was most enthusiastically received, since which period his well-known productions have been issued at intervals. We need only mention The Princess, In Memoriam, (a record of the poet's love for Arthur Hallam), Maud, Idyls of the King, Enoch Arden, and the dramas of Queen Mary, Harold, etc. In 1833 he was appointed poet-laureate. Refined taste and exquisite workmanship are the characteristics of all he has written. His range of poetic power is very wide, and as a describer of natural scenery he is unequalled, while his rich gift of imagination, his pure and elevated diction, and his freedom from faults of taste and manner, give him a high place amongst those who are the great masters of song. He was elevated to the peerage in January, 1884, as Baron Tennyson.

THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE.—A distinguished English novelist and humourist, was born in Calcutta, July 18th, 1811. He I was educated at Cambridge, and at first inclined to be an artist, but after a few years, devoted himself to literature. He gained popularity as a contributor to Punch, but his progress in popular favour was not rapid, until in 1846, when he published his Vanity Fair, one of his best works, which raised him into the first rank of English novelists. His subsequent works all tended to enhance his popularity. We need only mention Pendennis, the Newcomes, History of Henry Esmond, the Virginians, etc. He was also a popular lecturer, and his lectures on the Four Georges, and The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century, were very successful. He edited the Cornhill Magazine from 1860 until April, 1862, when he relinquished it, continuing however to write for the Magazine. He died somewhat suddenly on December 24th, 1863, leaving a novel, Denis Duval, unfinished. His inimitably graceful style, in which he has been excelled by no novelist, may be in part due to his familiarity with Addison, Steele, Swift and their contemporaries. His pathos is as touching and sincere as his humour is subtle and delicate. His fame as a novelist has caused his poems to be somewhat neglected, but his admirable ballads and society verses attain a degree of excellence rarely reached by such performances.

THOMSON, JAMES.—A celebrated poet, born in Roxburghshire, Scotland, September 11th, 1700. He went to London to seek his fortune in 1725, and his poem of The Seasons, published in 1726-30, was an important era in the history of English poetry, as it marked the revival of the taste for the poetry of nature. Besides the Seasons, Thomson wrote some tragedies, which were failures, also what some critics consider his best work, The Castle of Indolence, published in 1748. He is often careless and dull, his poetry disfigured by classic allusions to Ceres, Pomona, Boreas, etc., but he had a genuine love of nature, and his descriptions, despite their artificial dress, bear the stamp of reality. He was successful in obtaining a comfortable competence by his literary exertions, and died August 27th, 1748.

TWAIN, MARK (Samuel Langhorne Clemens.) An American humourist, who has achieved great popularity, was born in Florida, Missouri, in 1835, and after an apprenticeship on the "Press," sprang into notice on the publication of his Innocents Abroad, published in 1869, a semi- burlesque account of the adventures of a party of American tourists in Europe and the East. Roughing It, and other works of his published subsequently, have been equally successful. The qualities of his style are peculiar, slyness and cleverness in jesting being his predominant qualities.

WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF.—The Quaker Poet of America, born December 17th, 1807, near Haverhill, Mass. He passed his early years on his father's farm, but in 1829 he began to be connected with the "Press" and edited newspapers until 1839. He early identified himself with the Anti-Slavery movement and rendered it noble service by his pen and influence. His first work, Legends of New England, was published in 1831. His works are very numerous, Maud Müller being the best known of his poems, and Barbara Frietchie of his poems connected with the Civil War. As a writer of prose he unites strength and grace in an unusual degree, and his poetic effusions are characterized by intense feeling and by all the spirit of the true lyric poet.

WILLIS, NATHANIEL PARKER.—A distinguished American poet and writer, born at Portland, Maine, January 20th, 1806. He graduated from Yale in 1827 and devoted himself to literature, publishing a volume in that year which was well received. He wrote between thirty and forty separate publications, in addition to editing the Evening Mirror and other periodicals including the Home Journal. Though marred by occasional affectation, the sketches of Willis are light, graceful compositions, but the artificiality of his poems have caused them to be neglected. He died at Idlewild, New York, January 20th, 1867.

WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM.—An illustrious English poet, born at Cockermouth, Cumberland, April 7th, 1770. He studied at Cambridge and took his B. A. degree in 1791. In 1793 (after a residence for a short time in France) he produced his first verses, entitled An Evening Walk. In 1798, a small volume entitled Lyrical Ballads, was published in conjunction with ST. Coleridge, but was not a success. In 1800, he settled in Grasmere, Westmoreland, where also resided Southey, Coleridge, de Quincy, and Wilson, to whom the critics applied the term "Lake School." In 1813 he removed to Rydal Mount, where he published The Excursion in 1814, The White Doe of Rylston, Peter Bell, The Waggoner, The Prelude, etc. In 1843 he was appointed to succeed Southey as poet-laureate. He is undoubtedly a poet of the first rank. Regarding Nature as a living and mysterious whole, constantly acting on humanity, the visible universe and its inhabitants were alike to him full of wonder, awe and mystery. His influence on the literature and poetry of Britain and America has been immense, and is yet far from being exhausted. He died April 23rd, 1850.

YOUNG, EDWARD, An English divine and poet, born at Upham, Hampshire, in 1684. He was educated at Oxford, and in 1727 was ordained and appointed to the living of Welwyn, Hertfordshire. As a poet he excels most in his Night Thoughts, which abound with ornate images, but are often very obscure. He wrote several other works. Died in 1765.