He graduated B. A. in 1820; travelled in Greece in 1832, '33; was elected Fellow of Trinity; was appointed Public Orator at Cambridge in 1836; was Head Master of Harrow from 1836 to 1814; became Canon of Westminster in 1844; and Bishop of Lincoln in 1869.

Bishop Wordsworth's writings are in the highest repute for scholarship, and for the vigorous grasp which he gives to whatever he has in hand. Among his publications on classical subjects may be named, Athens and Attica, Journal of a Residence there; Greece, Pictorial, Descriptive, and Historical; Inscriptiones Pompeianæ, ancient writings copied from the walls of the city of Pompeii. Other works: Preces Selectæ, prayers for the use of the Harrow School; Sermons, preached at IIarrow; Discourses on Public Education; The Destructive Character of the Church of Rome; On the Canon of Scriptures; Lectures on the Apocalypse; The Apocalypse, an edition with translations and notes; Is the Church of Rome the Babylon of the Apocalypse? The New Testament in the Original Greek, with Notes, 4 vols., 8vo, a work of uncommon value; The Inspiration of the Bible; The Interpretation of the Old and New Testa ment; The Holy Bible, with Notes and Introductions, 5 vols., 8vo; Memoirs of William Wordsworth, 2 vols., 8vo; The Church of Ireland, her history and claims; and a large number of other volumes and pamphlets. Bishop Wordsworth is indeed one of the most voluminous writers of the day.

Keble.

John Keble, 1792-1866, gained his chief distinction as a writer of sacred lyrics, though honored also for his theological writings, and held in the highest reverence for the singular sweetness of his disposition and the purity of his life.

Keble was born at Fairford, Gloucestershire, and educated at Oxford. After leaving the University, he was for twenty years Curate for his father in the church at Fairford. He became Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1833, and Vicar of Hursley in 1835.

Keble's name is intimately associated with that of Newman and Pusey in the socalled Tractarian movement, which caused such excitement in England thirty or forty years ago. According to Newman's statement, Keble was the originator and mastermind of the movement.

His best known works are: The Christian Year, or Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holidays throughout the Year; his Lyra Innocentium, or Thoughts in Verse on Children; his contributions to Tracts for the Times; and his article in the London Quarterly on Sacred Poetry. He was also one of the editors of the Bibliotheca Patrum Ecclesiæ Catholicæ, or Library of Fathers of the Catholic Church.

Keble appears to have been a man of uncommon talents, and of the most winning disposition. While at Oxford, he was the idol of the University. His subsequent life was mainly one of retirement and parochial duty. His Christian Year is the most valuable contribution to religious poetry made in the present century, and has been received as a household treasure in families of every creed,

"Keble is a poet whom Cowper himself would have loved; for in him piety inspires genius, and fancy and feeling are celestialized by religion. We peruse his book in a tone and temper of spirit similar to that which is breathed on us by some calm day in spring, when

'Heaven and earth do make one imagery,'

and all that imagery is serene and still,-cheerful in the main, yet with a touch and tinge of melancholy which makes all the blended bliss and beauty at once more enduring and profound. We should no more think of criticizing such poetry than of criticizing the clear blue skies, the soft green earth, the liquid lapse' of an unpol. luted stream that

'Doth make sweet music with the enamelled stones,

Giving a gentle kiss to every flower

It overtaketh on its pilgrimage.'

Beauty is there,-purity and peace; as we look and listen we partake of the universal calm, and feel in nature the presence of Him from whom it emanated."-Christopher North.

Croly.

George Croly, LL. D., 1780-1860, attained great celebrity as an author, and was almost equally distinguished as a poet and as a writer of prose.

Croly was a native of Dublin, and was educated at Trinity College, in that city. He was a clergyman of the Church of England, and had a parish in Londen, where he attained celebrity as a preacher.

His writings are very numerous, and hold a high rank. Most of them are of a popular character. The following are the chief: Catiline, a Tragedy, and Other Poems; Paris in 1815, and Other Poems; The Angel of the World, an Arabian Tale; Sebastian, a Spanish Tale; The Modern Orlando, a Poem; Poetical Works; Salathiel, a Story of the Past, the Present, and the Future; Marston, or the Soldier and Statesman; The Year of Liberation; Tales of the St. Bernard; Historical Sketches, Speeches, and Characters; The History of George IV.; Life of Burke; Works of Alexander Pope, with Memoir and Critical Notes; Works of Jeremy Taylor, with Life and Notes; Beauties of the English Poets; Divine Providence, or the Three Cycles of Revelation; The Apocalypse of St. John, a New Interpretation; The True Idea of Baptism; Speeches on the Papal Aggression; Exposition on Popery and the Popish Question; The Admission of Jews into Parliament; Marriage with a Deceased Wife's Sister; etc., etc.

Dr. Croly succeeded as a poet, as a writer of fiction, as an historian, as a literary edi tor, as a religious polemic. In this long list of works, there is scarcely one that at the time of its publication did not make its mark. His Catiline, in poetry, his Salathiel, in fiction, his George IV. and Edmund Burke, in history, fall but little short of being of the first class in their several kinds.

Ebenezer Elliott.

EBENEZER ELLIOTT, 1781-1849, is familiarly known as "The CornLaw Rhymer."

Elliott was obliged in his youth to work at the forge in an iron foundry in Yorkshire, and had few advantages of education. But an inward prompting led him to the cultivation of letters by means of private study, and in his case, as in that of several others in like circumstances, the inspiration to verse first came from reading Thomson's Seasons.

Elliott's first ventures with the public, The Vernal Walk, and Night, were unsuccessful. He published also a volume of poems, with like want of success. But Southey encouraged him to go on. "There is power in the least of these tales, but the higher you pitch your tones, the better you succeed. Thirty years ago, they would have made your reputation; thirty years hence the world will wonder that they did not do so."

But Elliott was out of his element in the subjects which thus far he had chosen. Neither his education nor his rugged nature fitted him for gentle themes. The agitation for the repeal of the corn laws, and the light thrown upon the appalling hardships of the operatives, enlisted, of course, Elliott's warmest sympathies, and furnished him with topics which called out all the resources of his strong and fiery nature. His Corn-Law Rhymes had the ring of the anvil. They received almost immediate recognition, and gave the author an established position as The Poet of the People.

"The inspiration of his verse is a fiery hatred of injustice. Without possessing much creative power, he almost places himself beside men of genius, by the singular intensity and might of his sensibility. He understands the art of condensing passion. 'Spread out thunder,' says Schiller, 'into its single tones, and it becomes a lullaby for children; pour it forth together, in one quick peal, and the royal sound shall move the heavens.' The great ambition of Elliott is to thunder. He is a brawny man, of nature's own make, with more than the usual portion of the old Adam stirring within him, and he says, 'I do well to be angry.' The mere sight of tyranny, bigotry, meanness, prompts his smiting invective. His poetry would hardly have been written by a man who was not physically strong. You can hear the ring of his anvil, and see the sparks fly off from the furnace, as you read his verse."-Whipple.

REV. RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM, 1788-1845, a humorous writer, is better known by his assumed name of Thomas Ingoldsby.

The Ingoldsby Legends, a series of tales in verse and prose, appeared first in Bentley's Miscellany, and were received with general favor. None of these probably had a wider circulation than the thoroughly laughable story of the famous Lord Tomnoddy. My Cousin Nicholas, a story of college-life, came out in Blackwood. Mr. Barham was also one of the chief contributors to Gorton's Biographical Dictionary. He was a friend of Sydney Smith, Theodore Hook, and other wits of the day.

"There is a deficiency in the Legends which must prevent their becoming classic. They are devoid of poetry. Master of the grotesque as he was, Barham had no mastery of the picturesque. Keen to see and seize the humorous aspects of affairs, he had none of that deeper humor which creates character. A real poet, who had written fifty or more eccentric legends, could not have helped inventing or describing certain individual characters in the course of his work. He must have done it unconsciously, must have done it if even he had tried to avoid it. There are two tests on the very surface of the true poet. If he describes a scene, you see it; if he describes a man, you know him. Barham's grotesque descriptions are often remarkable; indeed, his legends somewhat remind us of the hideous gurgoyles of old churches, wherein tradition sayeth the old ecclesiastic architects depicted their enemies, making of them waterspouts, that during rain they might seem to vomit. The men who carved those gurgoyles could not have sculptured an Apollo; and of Barham it may be said that, though he wrote laughable stories with supreme felicity, he never produced a line of poetry.".” — British Quarterly Review. 88*

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Hood.

THOMAS HOOD, 1798-1845, was the prince of comic humorists, the most audacious and successful of punsters.

Hood was the son of a London publisher. He left the counting-house for the engraver's stool, and that in turn for the life of a man of letters. He became sub-editor of The London Magazine, editor of The New Monthly, and, for one year, of The Gem, besides being a regular contributor to Punch.

Hood's most successful publications were his Whims and Oddities, The Comic Annual, Hood's Own, Up the Rhine, Whimsicalities, Hood's Comic Album. The three most famous of his serious poems are The Dream of Eugene Aram, The Song of the Shirt, and The Bridge of Sighs. The two latter, apart from their beauty of sentiment, are probably unsurpassed in English verse in the wonderfully delicate interlacing of their rhymes.

Hood is the most comical humorist in the language, and also the most inveterate punster. No English writer has ever equalled him in the audacity with which he plays upon words. In the single ballad of Miss Killmansegg and Her Wooden Leg the puns number many hundreds. Still, even in Hood's most fantastic pieces, there is always a deep undercurrent of genuine pathos.

"Hood's verse, whether serious or comic - whether serene like a cloudless autumn evening, or sparkling with puns like a frosty January midnight with stars was ever pregnant with materials for thought. . . . Like every author distinguished for true comic humor, there was a deep vein of melancholy pathos running through his mirth; and even when his sun shone brightly, its light seemed often reflected as if only over the rim of a cloud. Well may we say, in the words of Tennyson, Would he could have stayed with us!' for never could it be more truly recorded of any one-in the words of Hamlet characterizing Yorick-that he was a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy."-D. M. Moir.

Hook.

THEODORE EDWARD Hook, 1788-1841, another humorist and wit of this period, was second only to Hood.

Hook was sent to Harrow to be educated. When only seventeen, he made his debut as a dramatic author in the comic opera of The Soldier's Return, which met with extraordinary success. This was followed, the next year, by the musical farce, Catch Him Who Can. Ilis brother had entered him at Oxford, but young Hook, now the lion of the stage, remained in London.

His brilliant talents, especially as an improvisatore, attracted universal attention and won the favor of the Regent, who appointed him Accountant-General of Mauritius, with a salary of £2000. This position Hook held six years, until 1818, when a deficit was discovered in his accounts, and he was arrested and imprisoned. It is now generally agreed that his only culpability was a gross neglect of official duties. Dur ing the two years of his imprisonment, and afterwards, he gave himself up with renewed energy to writing.

He wrote, in all, thirty-eight works and pieces, besides editing The John Bull and The New Monthly, and contributing to other periodicals. One of his stories, Gilbert Gurney, is almost an autobiography. With regard to Hook's permanent value as an author, critics differ, as may be seen from the following quotations:

"His knowledge of city life in its manners, habits, and language seemed intuitive,

and has been surpassed only by Fielding and Dickens. Many and multifarious, however, as are his volumes, he has left behind him no great creation, nothing that can be pointed to as a triumphant index of the extraordinary powers which he undoubt edly possessed." - D. M. Moir.

"His name will be preserved. His political songs and jeur d'esprit, when the hour comes for collecting them, will form a volume of sterling and lasting attraction; and after many clever romances of this age shall have sufficiently occupied public attention, and sunk, like hundreds of former generatious, into utter oblivion, there are tales in his collection which will be read with, we venture to think, even a greater interest than they commauded in their novelty."-J. G. Lockhart,

Montgomery.

JAMES MONTGOMERY, 1771-1854, holds a high rank among the poets of England. His devotional poetry especially has made a deep impression on the national heart, hardly inferior to that produced by the poetry of Cowper.

Montgomery was a native of Scotland. He was for more than thirty years editor of the Sheffield Iris, a liberal journal. In his capacity as editor, he was twice fined and imprisoned for seditious publications. The last twenty years of his life were passed in retirement.

Montgomery is one among the instances in which Jeffrey made shipwreck in attempting to criticize poetical productions. The slashing reviewer broke the staff over Montgomery's Wanderer in Switzerland, but all in vain. Despite the maledictions and prognostications of the Edinburgh, Montgomery's poems gained steadily in favor, until the poet obtained his just rank by the side of Campbell, Rogers, and Southey. Montgomery's larger works are: The Wanderer in Switzerland; The West Indies, a poem against the slave-trade; The World before the Flood; Greenland; The Pelican Island. Besides these, he wrote a large number of short devotional pieces that have been adopted into the hymnology of all Christian denominations. Many lines and passages, such as "There is a land, of every land the pride," have passed into the common stock of the language.

"With the exception, perhaps, of Moore, Campbell, and Hemans, I doubt if an equal number of the lyrics of any modern poet have so completely found their way to the national heart, there to be enshrined in hallowed remembrance. One great merit which may be claimed for James Montgomery is that he has encroached on no man's property as a poet: he has staked off a portion of the great common of literature for himself, and cultivated it according to his own taste and fancy." — Moir.

ROBERT MONTGOMERY, 1807-1856, is the author of a large number of works, chiefly poetical, on religious subjects.

Robert Montgomery was a native of England. He graduated at Oxford, and took orders in the Established Church. He enjoyed great temporary popularity as a poet, but is at present little read. His principal works are: The Omnipresence of the Deity; Satan, or Intellect without God; The Messiah. Satan and The Omnipresence of the Deity were the subjects of a scathing notice by Macaulay in the Edinburgh Review. It cannot be doubted that Montgomery has committed in his poetry grievous violations of all the canons of good taste, and even of good sense.