his return published the first two cantos of Childe Harold's The Pilgrimage, and a number of brilliant metrical romances-Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, and others, which took the world by storm.

In 1815 he married, but a year later he was parted from his wife and left England never to return. He lived for a time at Geneva, and there wrote the third canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and the beautiful drama, Manfred. He then went into Italy and lived mostly in Venice, where he completed Childe Harold, and also wrote Don Juan, the greatest of his poems.

Among his minor poems, some of the most pleasing are the Hebrew Melodies, though the poet himself did not value them highly.

Byron died, after a short illness, at Missolonghi, in Greece, whither he had gone to help the Greeks in their struggle for independence.

THOMAS CAMPBELL (1777-1844) was born in Glasgow. After winning distinction in the University he became a tutor in various families in the West Highlands, and there he wrote his early poems, Glenara and Lord Ullin's Daughter. He then gave up teaching and began to do miscellaneous literary work, and in 1799 his first considerable poem, The Pleasures of Hope, was published.

In 1800 he visited Germany, and became acquainted with warlike scenes, and wrote the stirring lyrics, Ye Mariners of England, Battle of the Baltic, and Hohenlinden.

On his return to England he married and settled in London, and in 1809 he published Gertrude of Wyoming. In 1820 he became editor of the New Monthly Magazine, in which his later poems, The Brave Roland, The Last Man, and others, were published.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834) was son of the Vicar of Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire. He was a scholar at Christ's Hospital, where Charles Lamb was his friend, and he entered Cambridge just as Wordsworth left it.

In 1796 Coleridge published his first volume of poems, a collection of about fifty, of which the finest is Religious Musings. The next year he became a neighbour of Wordsworth, in Somerset, and together they planned the famous Lyrical Ballads, which appeared in 1798. They agreed to write a series of poems of two sorts. In the one the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; in the other the subjects were to be chosen from common life.

The former kind were to be Coleridge's task, and his chief contribution was The Ancient Mariner, the finest of all his poems. To the same period belong the first part of the weird story of Christabel and the strange melodious fragment of Kubla Khan, though these poems were not published till 1817.

Coleridge visited Germany in 1798, and after his return in the next year began to write for the Press. His course of life was then for many years unsettled and miserable, but in 1816 he found a peaceful refuge at Highgate, and remained there till his death. In these later years he wrote Biographia Literaria, Aids to Reflection, and other prose works treating of poetry, philosophy, and religion.

WILLIAM COLLINS (1721-1759) was born at Chichester, where his father, a worthy tradesman, was thrice mayor. At Winchester School he became the friend of Joseph Warton, the poet, and a little later, at Oxford, Gilbert White of Selborne was one of his friends.

In 1742 he published a volume of Persian Eclogues, a series of poetical sketches of Oriental life, but in later years he became dissatisfied with them, and called them, in mockery, 'Irish Eclogues.' In 1746 he published a volume of Odes, and these are his best work. They attracted little notice at first, but two of them, the Ode to Evening and the Ode on the Passions, are as beautiful, or nearly so, as anything which Gray has written.

Collins was at this time in London trying to live by literature, and, like many others, failing. Johnson knew him, and visited him when he was immured in his lodgings by a bailiff that was prowling in the street.'

In 1749 an uncle left him 2,000/., and he retired to Chichester and collected a choice library, but his reason began to fail him, and he died insane in 1759.

WILLIAM COWPER (1731-1800) was born in the rectory of Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire. He lost his mother when he was six years old, and one of his sweetest poems in later years is that On the receipt of my Mother's

Portrait.

Till he was twenty-one he spent his life in a gay and frivolous, but innocent, fashion; then his reason gave way, and though he recovered he remained sedate and melancholy all his life after.

He was never married, and lived in the family of the Unwins at Huntingdon, and afterwards at Olney. Mrs. Unwin watched over him like a mother, and her death in 1796 was a terrible blow to him. She persuaded him to try his hand at poetry,

and in 1781 he published a little volume of poems entitled Moral Satires. Lady Austen, another of his friends at Olney, tickled his fancy with the story of John Gilpin, and caused him to write his famous ballad. She also incited him to write The Task, the finest of his long poems. He afterwards translated the Iliad and the Odyssey, but these translations are not equal in merit to his original work. His letters, of which a large number have been preserved, are excellent.

Cowper's poems are all marked by a purity and simplicity of language, and his minor poems especially have a sparkle of mild and delicate humour.

CHARLES DIBDIN (1745-1814), the famous writer of sea songs, was born at Southampton, where his father was parish clerk. The boy's fame as a singer spread through all the county, and he came to London before he was twenty, and wrote ballads and operas, and became a popular actor at the Ranelagh Gardens.

He led a wild and dissolute life, and for two years he withdrew to France on account of his debts. His song Blow high, blow low, was composed in a gale of wind while he was on his way to Calais.

His elder brother, Thomas, was a sailor, who died at the Cape in 1780 on his way home from India, and Dibdin's finest song, Tom Bowling, is written in memory of him. After his return to England he became once more an actor, and wrote an immense number of dramas and songs. His songs numbered 900, and of these 90 were sea songs, which, during the stress of the struggle with France, brought more men into the navy than all the press-gangs. In recognition of this the Government in 1803 granted him a pension of 2007., but in 1806 it was

withdrawn.

MICHAEL DRAYTON (1563-1631) was born in Warwickshire. His parentage is not certainly known, but he speaks of himself as 'nobly bred' and 'well ally'd.' In 1593 he wrote The Shepheard's Garland, on the model of Spenser's Shepherd's Calender, and in it he introduced an elegy on Sir Philip Sidney.

In 1596 he published a historical poem, The Barrons' Wars, and from that time till 1603 he was busy writing for the stage in conjunction with Dekker, Webster, Middleton, and others. The play of Sir John Oldcastle is mainly Drayton's In 1605 he published Poemes, Lyric and Pastorall, containing, among others, the very fine Ballad of Agincourt. In 1613 he published his longest and most famous poem, PolyOlbion, a Description of all the Tracts, Rivers, Mountains,

work.

Forests, and other Parts of Great Britaine.' His friend the learned John Selden wrote copious annotations to each part of the poem.

Tradition makes Drayton an acquaintance and friend of Shakespeare, and in the diary of the Vicar of Stratford we read, Shakspere, Drayton and Ben Jhonson had a merry meeting and it seems drank too hard, for Shakspere died of a feaver there contracted.'

JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700) was born at Aldwinkle, on the Nen, in Northampton, where his grandfather was vicar. He was educated at Westminster School and Cambridge, but in latter years he loved Oxford better.

Dryden's first considerable poem was written in 1658, and is entitled Stanzas to the Memory of His Highness, Oliver, late Lord Protector. Then two years later he wrote Astræa Redux to welcome Charles II. home. Then in 1667 he wrote a beautiful poem, Annus Mirabilis, in which he described the Dutch war and the Fire of London of the preceding year.

The playhouses of London were reopened after the Restoration, and Dryden wrote a great number of plays which were very popular, but they are not really excellent. The Indian Emperor, The Maiden Queen, and The Conquest of Granada are some of the most celebrated of these plays.

In 1681 Dryden wrote the first of his great political satires, Absalom and Achitophel, the finest of all his poems. In the next year he wrote Religio Laici, a fine poem in defence of the Church of England, but five years later he wrote an equally fine one, The Hind and the Panther, in praise of the Church of Rome.

After the Revolution Dryden ceased to be a Court poet, but was as busy as ever with his pen. In 1697 his famous translation of Virgil was published, and to the same year belongs the magnificent Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, the song of Alexander's Feast.

JANE or JEAN ELLIOT (1727-1805) was born at Minto House, the family seat in Teviotdale. Her father, Sir Gilbert Elliot, was lord justice clerk of Scotland, and a staunch Whig, and his daughter by her ready wit and pleasantness saved his life when it was endangered by an angry party of Jacobites in 1746.

Her brother Gilbert became a lawyer and statesman, but loved literature as well, and was the author of a beautiful pastoral song,

My sheep I neglected, I broke my sheep hook,'

which Sir Walter Scott praises in the notes to The Lay of the Last Minstrel.

It was Gilbert who incited his sister in 1756 to write the beautiful ballad, The Flowers of the Forest, describing the desolation and mourning that followed Flodden. The secret of authorship was religiously kept, and many believed the ballad was a genuine relic of the olden time. Burns was the first to maintain it was modern, and Scott printed it in the Border Minstrelsy as 'by a lady of family in Roxburghshire.' Soon after 1756 Miss Elliot came with her mother and sisters to Edinburgh, and lived to be a very dignified old lady, and was the last in Edinburgh to use her own sedan chair.

6

OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728-1774) was born at the village of Pallas, in Longford, where his father was the village pastor, passing rich on 40l. a year.' Goldsmith was educated at Dublin University, but made little progress there, and it was the same at Edinburgh and Leyden, where he went to study medicine.

After wandering for some time through several countries of Europe, he came penniless to London in 1756. He tried in vain to live by medicine and by teaching, and then came to depend entirely upon literature. His struggles with poverty were not over, but he had found his true path, and he gained the friendship of Johnson, Reynolds, Burke and others, and is one of the most interesting figures in Boswell's Life of Johnson.

In 1764 two of Goldsmith's finest works were completed, The Traveller, a poem in which he described the lands he had wandered through, and The Vicar of Wakefield, a charming little novel which delighted, and will continue to delight, every

one.

In 1768 he wrote the comedy, The Good-natured Man, and in 1773 the still finer one, She Stoops to Conquer, and in 1770 he also wrote The Deserted Village, a beautiful idealised picture of the scenes of his childhood. The humorous little ballad On the Death of a Mad Dog occurs in the Vicar of Wakefield. Goldsmith was especially happy in his graceful treatment of trifles of this kind.

THOMAS GRAY (1716-1771) was born in Cornhill, where his father was a scrivener. He was at Eton and Cambridge, where he had Horace Walpole for a friend, and together they travelled on the Continent in 1739-41, and Gray's letters describing his travels are some of his best works. After his return he lived with his mother and her two sisters in the village