Italian poem, A Story of Rimini, was published after his liberation. His visit to Italy, and alliance with Byron in the publication of The Liberal were unfortunate undertakings. A narrative poem called The Palfrey, and a drama, A Legend of Florence, are among his other works. His prose Essays, Sketches, and Memoirs have all the characteristics of his verse-a light picturesque gracefulness being the prevailing quality of both. He died in 1859.

HENRY KIRKE WHITE, the son of a butcher, was born at Nottingham on the 21st of August 1785. At fourteen he was apprenticed to a stocking-weaver; but, disliking the trade, he afterwards entered an attorney's office. A silver medal, awarded him for a translation of Horace, which was proposed in the Monthly Preceptor, confirmed the boy's desire to cultivate poetry. In 1803 he published a volume of poems, the chief piece in which was called Clifton Grove. The notice of Southey cheered the young poet's heart, and the kindness of new friends enabled him to enter St. John's College, Cambridge, as a sizar. There he wrought so hard to win the honours of scholarship and science, that he died in 1806, a victim to intense study acting on a somewhat delicate frame. Southey edited his Remains, consisting of poems on various subjects and letters to his friends.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, a baronet's son, born in 1792 at Field Place in Sussex, lived a short, unhappy life. The young student of romance wrote two novels while yet a school-boy. Expelled from Oxford for his atheism, he wrote at eighteen a poem called Queen Mab, full of power and beauty, but debased in its very grain and ground-work by rank infidelity and blasphemy. Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude, a poetical picture of his own lawless and unresting soul; The Revolt of Islam, written in his country-house at Great Marlow in Bucks; Prometheus Unbound, a classic drama, mystical and impious, written under the blue Roman sky amid bowers of fragrant blossom; and The Cenci, a powerful but repulsive tragedy, form the leading works of this brilliant, wayward, ill-fated youth. Some of his minor poems, among which we may specify The Cloud, The Skylark, and the delicious Sensitive Plant, actually overflow with lyrical beauty both of thought and

language. Delicacy of constitution forced him to the sweet air of Italy, where he saw a good deal of Byron. Boating was his favourite recreation; and one July day in 1822, returning from Leghorn, a squall overset his little craft in the Gulf of Spezzia, and he perished in the waves.

JOHN KEATS, born in London in October 1795, was early bound apprentice to a surgeon. Cultivating poetry with great earnestness, he published Endymion, a Poetic Romance, in 1818. A severe and scornful review of this first effort, which appeared in the "Quarterly," struck like a dagger to the heart of the sensitive poet, and probably hastened his death. Before consumption, which was a family disease, slew this brilliant young "singer of the senses," he had written Hyperion, The Eve of St. Agnes, Lamia, Isabella, and other poems, which showed that his untrained, over-luxuriant imagination, springing from the root of true genius, could bo pruned into the production of works well worthy to live. Keats died at Rome on the 27th of December 1820, and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery there, under a sweet carpeting of violets and daisies. When the body of drowned Shelley drifted ashore, a volume of Keats was found in the pocket of his brine-soaked coat. He had already shown his love for the young surgeon-poet by an elegy called Adonais.

Supplementary List.

MICHAEL BRUCE.(1746-1767)—Portmoak, Kinross-a schoolmaster-Lochleven; An Elegy written in Spring.

SIR WILLIAM JONES.-(1746-1794)-London-a Judge in the Supreme Court in Bengal-Song of Hafiz; Hindoo Wife.

JOHN LOGAN.-(1748-1788)-Soutra, Mid-Lothian-a Scottish minister-The Cuckoo; The Country in Autumn; Runnimede.

ROBERT FERGUSSON.-(1751-1774)-Edinburgh-a lawyer's clerk-poet of Scottish town life-Guid Braid Claith; To the Tron Kirk Bell.

WILLIAM GIFFORD.-(1756-1826)-Ashburton, Devonshire-The Baviad; The Mæviad-Editor of "Quarterly."

WILLIAM SOTHEBY.-(1757-1833)-London-a dragoon officer-Orestes, Saul, Italy; translations from Wieland, Virgil, and Homer.

WM. L. BOWLES.-(1762-1850)-King's-Sutton, Northamptonshire-canon of Salisbury-Sonnets; Sorrows of Switzerland; Missionary of the Andes. JAMES GRAHAME.-(1765–1811)-Glasgow-curate of Sedgefield, Durham—The Sabbath; Mary Queen of Scots.

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ROBERT BLOOMFIELD.-(1766-1823)-Honington, near Bury St. Edmunds, Suf folk-The Farmer's Boy; Rural Tales; Mayday with the Muses.

·J. HOOKHAM FRERE.-(1769-1846)-diplomatist-Most Interesting Particulars relating to King Arthur, by the Brothers Whistlecraft.

HON. WM. R. SPENCER.-(1770-1834)-author of Beth Gelert and minor poems; translator of Lenore.

MARY TIGHE.-(1773-1810)-Miss Blackford-county of Wicklow, Ireland— Psyche, in six cantos.

JOHN LEYDEN. (1775-1811)-Denholm, Roxburghshire Scenes of Infancy; The Mermaid; Ode to a Gold Coin.

JAMES SMITH.-(1775-1839)-London-solicitor-in conjunction with his brother Horace wrote Rejected Addresses, in imitation of popular authors. GEORGE CROLY.-(1780-1860)-Dublin-Rector of St. Stephen's, Walbrook-Paris in 1815; Angel of the World; Catiline, a tragedy; Salathiel, a romance. ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.-(1784-1842)-Blackwood, Dumfries-shire-Chantrey's assistant-Scottish Songs; Sir Marmaduke Maxwell; The Maid of Elvan; Life of Wilkie.

WILLIAM TENNANT.-(1785-1848)-Anstruther, Fife-professor at St. Andrews -Anster Fair; Thane of Fife; Dinging Down of the Cathedral. EBENEZER ELLIOTT.-(1781-1849)-Masborough, Yorkshire-iron-founder-Corn Law Rhymes.

RICHARD BARHAM.-(1788-1845)-Canterbury-an Episcopal clergyman-Ingoldsby Legends, in prose and verse; My Cousin Nicholas, (a novel). JOHN KEBLE.-(1790-1866)-Episcopal clergyman-Professor of Poetry at Oxford-The Christian Year.

CHARLES WOLFE.-(1791-1823)-Dublin-Episcopal minister-Burial of Sir John Moore; Jugurtha in Prison.

ROBERT POLLOK.-(1799-1827)—Muirhouse, Renfrewshire-theological student -The Course of Time, a sacred epic.

DRAMATISTS.

HANNAH MORE, the daughter of a Gloucestershire schoolmaster, was born in 1745. Her three tragedies, produced under Garrick's encouragement, were The Inflexible Captive, Percy, and The Fatal Falsehood. Of these, "Percy" is the best. She is also remembered for her very numerous Tales and other prose works, many of which treat of female education. Of the former, Calebs in search of a wife, was remarkably popular. She died in 1833. RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, distinguished as a manager, dramatist, and statesman, was born in Dublin in 1751. twenty-four he produced The Rivals, in which Captain Absolute and Mrs. Malaprop are well-known characters. But his greatest

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work was The School for Scandal, which, produced in 1777, is justly regarded as the finest comedy of our later literature. The Duenna, an opera; The Critic, a witty farce, containing the capital character of Sir Fretful Plagiary; and Pizarro, an adaptation from Kotzebue's American drama, may be named among his other works. Sheridan's chief political appearance was his great speech on the impeachment of Hastings. He died in 1816.

JOANNA BAILLIE was born in 1762, at the manse of Bothwell in Lanarkshire. Her dramatic works, written during thirty-eight years, fill many volumes; but they are nearly all fitter to be read than acted. She commenced in 1798 a Series of Plays on the Passions, intending to make each passion the central theme of a tragedy and a comedy. Sir Walter Scott considered her to be most successful in the delineations of Fear. De Montfort is the only one of Miss Baillie's plays that has been put upon the stage. Count Basil is a drama of similar stamp. She wrote also fine Scottish songs and many minor poems. She died at Hampstead in 1851.

Supplementary List.

RICHARD CUMBERLAND.-(1732-1811)-Cambridge-secretary to Board of Trade -comedies, The West Indian; The Wheel of Fortune.

GEORGE COLMAN.-(1733–1794)-—Florence-manager of Covent Garden and the Haymarket theatres-comedies, The Jealous Wife; The Clandestine Marriage. THOMAS HOLCROFT.-(1745-1809)-London-pedler, jockey, shoemaker, actor, author-comedies, The Road to Ruin; The Deserted Daughter.

GEORGE COLMAN the Younger.-(1762-1836)-London-manager of the Haymarket and Examiner of plays-comedies, John Bull; Heir at Law; Poor Gentleman-comic poems, Newcastle Apothecary, Lodgings for Single Gentlemen, &c.

CHARLES R. MATURIN.-(Died in 1824)-curate of St. Peter's, Dublin-Bertram, a tragedy; and Women, a romantic novel.

HISTORIANS.

WILLIAM ROSCOE, originally an attorney, but afterwards a banker, was a native of Liverpool, born there in 1753. Devoting himself early to literature, he produced a poem on slavery, called The Wrongs of Africa. But he soon turned to the work for which

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he was better suited. In 1796 he published in two volumes The Life of Lorenzo de Medici; and nine years later, in 1805, The Life and Pontificate of Leo X., a great work, but received with less enthusiasm than "Lorenzo." He represented Liverpool in Parliament for some time. The failure in 1816 of the bank in which he was a partner, plunged him in difficulties. He died in 1831.

SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH was born in 1765, at Aldourie House, on the banks of Loch Ness. Called to the English bar in 1795, he won considerable renown by his defence of Peltier, went out to India as Recorder of Bombay, and in seven years retired on a pension of £1200. Amid the whirl of public life he did something with his pen, as if to show what he might have done in greater quiet and with greater industry. Some articles in the "Edinburgh Review," a Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy for the "Encyclopædia Britannica," part of a History of England for Lardner's "Cyclopædia," and a short Life of Sir Thomas More, are almost the only works of Mackintosh. His brilliant conversation caused him to be much sought after in society, and thus little time was left for the labour of the pen. He died rather suddenly in 1832.

JOHN LINGARD, born at Winchester in 1771, was the author of a History of England from the invasion by the Romans to the abdication of James II., of which the first volumes appeared in 1819. Such a work, written by a Roman Catholic priest, as Lingard was, must naturally discuss the Reformation and kindred subjects from a hostile point of view; but, making this allowance, Lingard's "History" is a calm and learned narrative, especially valuable in those chapters which deal with the Anglo-Saxons and their life. A smaller work, on The Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church, displays a deep insight into this distant period of our national history. Lingard died in 1851, at Hornby, near Lancaster.

८ THOMAS M'CRIE, celebrated as the author of the Life of John Knox, was born in 1772, at Dunse in Berwickshire. The "Life of Knox," first published in 1813, deals not only with the man, but with the stirring times of which he was a central figure. A Life of Andrew Melville proceeded also from the pen of this eminent