The Harpers have issued this charming book in a form of appropriate elegance. The paper, printing, binding, and illustrations are all that could be desired. Few volumes have been published during the season more worthy of a place upon the parlor table. The title of the book hardly conveys an idea of its full contents. It is in fact biographical and critical as well as descriptive, and portrays the poets in their homes and haunts, giving copious extracts from their writings, illustrative of their personal character, and tracing the history of their minds as they were influenced by events and circumstances. It must have cost the author much time and labor. Facts and anecdotes have been carefully culled from a wide variety of books, and England, Scotland and Ireland have been personally explored in search of the “homes and haunts.” The latter are described from the author’s own observations. Much interest is given to this portion of the work by a detail of the curious little adventures which occurred to the author in his wanderings, and the strange sort of prosers he found domesticated among places and scenes consecrated by song.
In criticising the writings and character of his band of poets, Howitt is often acute and sympathizing, but occasionally allows his own passions and prejudices to pervert his view. The chapter on Southey is an instance. Howitt is a liberal of the extreme school, and is consequently much of a bigot in politics and religion. Many uncharitable judgments, much heedless invective, and some mean malice, deform his volumes. We should judge him, in spite of his Quaker coat, to be proud and revengeful, and very impudent. The latter quality is as manifest in his praise as denunciation. Were we unfortunate enough to be a living poet, and Mr. Howitt unfortunate enough to include us in his collection, we should have a strange inclination to “insert” a dagger into him, or contrive in some way to break his neck. There is no delicacy in his personal references. Those qualities which make the book piquant to the reader, must be very offensive to the objects of its blame or eulogy. Mr. Howitt tells a great many things and hazards a great many conjectures, in regard to the personal character of late and living poets, which are at once exceedingly interesting and impertinent. To read these portions of his volumes is like getting information from a spy. We devour the narrative and despise the narrator.
The book contains chapters on Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Cowley, Milton, Butler, Dryden, Addison, Gay, Pope, Swift, Thomson, Shenstone, Gray, Goldsmith, Burns, Cowper, Keats, Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, Scott, Mrs. Hemans, Campbell, Southey, Wordsworth, Wilson, Moore, Rogers, Elliott, Landor, Tennyson, and some dozen others. It will be seen that the work is large in its subject, and that the materials are ample. It would not be fair to test the book by its value as literary history or criticism, though these are largely mixed up with the descriptive portions; but considered as a brilliant series of sketches, half way between familiar chat and refined delineation, it has very great merits, and is full of interest. Some of the anecdotes are excellent. At Stratford, Mr. Howitt saw in a country school a little boy of ten years old, who turned out to be a descendant of Shakspeare’s sister Joan. The father of the lad was wretchedly poor, and kept a low dram shop. Mr. Howitt gave the boy sixpence, and told him he hoped he would make as great a man as his ancestor. The money created a strong sensation in the school, and young Will became a lion. When Howitt was seen in the streets afterward, he was pointed out by the boys as “that gentleman who gave Bill Shakspeare sixpence.”
The chapter on Crabbe is well done. There is one anecdote given about Lord Thurlow, which had escaped our memory. When he presented Crabbe a couple of livings in the church, he accompanied it by the characteristic remark—“By —, you are as like Parson Adams as twelve to a dozen.” The account of Coleridge is replete with anecdotes of his earlier life and his family. His father, an Episcopal clergyman, was a miracle of absent mindedness. His wife once directed him, when he went on a journey, to put on a clean shirt every day. He followed her orders literally, but forgot to remove the one underneath. He came back six-shirt deep. In his sermons he gained vast reputation among the poor and ignorant by quoting Hebrew liberally, they thinking themselves especially favored in hearing “the very words the Spirit spoke in.” For his successor, who addressed them in simple English, they entertained a kind of contempt. At school young Coleridge was very miserable. The author of Cristobel was there a martyr to the itch. His appearance as a boy is indicated by the opinion expressed of him by his master after a whipping. “The lad was so ordinary a looking lad, with his black head, that I generally gave him at the end of a flogging an extra cut; for,” said he, turning to Coleridge, “you are such an ugly fellow.” Coleridge’s first attempt at verse was in commemoration of his maladies at the age of ten:
O Lord, have mercy on me!
For I am very sad!
For why, good Lord! I’ve got the itch,
And eke I’ve got the tad!
Tad is schoolboyese for ringworm.
When Coleridge left college he enlisted as a common soldier in the dragoons, under the name of Silas Tomken Comberbache. “Do you think,” said the examining officer, “you could run a Frenchman through the body?” “I don’t know,” replied Coleridge, “as I never tried; but I’ll let a Frenchman run me through before I’ll run away.” “That will do,” was the answer of the officer. He was so bad a horseman that the drill-sergeant had continually to warn the members of his squad—“Take care of that Comberbache! take care of him, for he will rids over you!”