His first considerable poem, The Psalm of Life, was published in 1838, and it gained immediate popularity, and in the next year he published a volume of poems with the title, Voices of the Night.

In the same year he published his beautiful prose romance Hyperion, which tells the story of his own wanderings through the Rhineland.

A few years later another volume of ballads was published, containing such well-known favourites as The Wreck of the Hesperus, Excelsior, and The Village Blacksmith, and in 1847 Longfellow published his best and sweetest poem, Evangeline.

Longfellow wrote within the next few years The Building of the Ship, one of his most stirring poems, and The Golden Legend, a story of the Middle Ages. Then, in 1855, appeared Hiawatha, a quaint and beautiful poem, descriptive of Indian life.

Longfellow continued to write new poems till the end of his long life.

RICHARD LOVELACE (1618-1658) belonged to a Kentish family. He became a soldier, and was one of the Court poets who surrounded Queen Henrietta Maria. At the age of sixteen he wrote a comedy, The Scholar, and at twentyone a tragedy, The Soldier.

When the troubles with the Parliament broke out, he was committed to prison for presenting a petition on the King's behalf from the loyalists of Kent. It was then he wrote his fine song, To Althea from Prison. He was soon afterwards liberated on a bail of 40,000/., and throughout the war he was a prisoner on parole.

After 1646 he raised a regiment for the French king, and took part in the siege of Dunkirk. In 1648 he returned to England, and was once more thrown into prison.

In the next year he made a collection of his poems, and published them under the title Lucasta (Lux casta) naming them from a lady (Lucy Sacheverell). Little is known of his later years, but it is supposed that he fell into distress, and it is said that he died in a cellar in Long Acre.

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY (1800-1859) was the son of Zachary Macaulay, a man of great energy and enterprise, who had been Governor of Sierra Leone and who was greatly interested in negro emancipation.

The son went in due course to Cambridge and was one of the most brilliant orators in the Union Debating Society. With other talented young men of the University, he began to

write in Charles Knight's Quarterly Magazine, and his stirring poem Ivry appeared in 1824, and in the next year he won instant reputation by his article on Milton in the Edinburgh Review. This was the first of a long series of eloquent articles which appeared at intervals during the next twenty years in the Edinburgh Review.

A few years later he entered Parliament, and in 1833 he was appointed a member of the Supreme Council of India and spent four or five years in that distant land.

In 1832 he wrote the noble ballad, The Armada, and after his return from India he spent some time in Italy, and there wrote the beautiful Lays of Ancient Rome. The remaining years of his life were devoted mainly to the writing of his History of England, of which the first volume was published in 1848, the last in 1855. The work remains a fragment.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1564-1593) was born in Canterbury. His father was a shoemaker, but the boy was sent to school and college, and took his degree in 1583. Of the next few years of his life nothing certain is known, and some think that he came to London and was an actor, others that he went with Sidney to the wars in the Netherlands.

In 1588 his first great drama, Tamburlaine the Great, was performed. The play is extravagant both in plot and language, but there are passages of splendid poetry in it, and it became immensely popular. Within the next few years three other fine plays, Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta, and Edward II., appeared, and Marlowe left fragments of one or two other plays, and also a fine poem, Hero and Leander.

Marlowe is believed to be the author of portions of Henry VI., and his influence can be pretty plainly traced in several of Shakespeare's early plays. The pretty song beginning

'Come live with me and be my love'

is commonly attributed to Shakespeare, but Izaak Walton claims it for Marlowe. Marlowe was a man of wild, reckless life, and he met his death in a tavern brawl in Deptford, in 1593.

ANDREW MARVELL (1621-1678) was the son of a Yorkshire clergyman. He went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and from 1641 to 1646 he travelled on the Continent.

Some time after 1650 he gained the friendship of Milton, on whose recommendation he was appointed tutor to Cromwell's nephew. In 1657 he was appointed Assistant Latin Secretary under the Government, and in 1658 he became M. P. for Hull, an honour which he retained till his death. From 1663 to 1665

he was secretary to Lord Carlisle's Embassy to Muscovy, Sweden and Denmark. He wrote many poetical and prose satires, which were very popular in their day, but which are now forgotten. One of his best prose satires is The Rehearsal Transposed, which was written in controversy with Dr. Parker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford. Marvell's best known poem is that on The Emigrants in the Bermudas.

WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE (1734-1788) was the son of a Scotch minister of Langholm, in Dumfriesshire. He showed an early taste for poetry, and at eighteen wrote a poem on Knowledge. He went into business as a brewer in Edinburgh, but failed, and then came to London and wrote for the magazines.

In 1775 he translated the Lusiad of Camoens, and he was received with much honour in Lisbon when he visited that city a few years later.

Mickle's finest original work is the ballad of Cumnor Hall, which charmed the youthful fancy of Scott and led him in later years to the composition of Kenilworth. A schoolfellow of Scott tells us: 'We often walked in the meadows, especially in the moonlight nights, and Scott seemed never weary of repeating the stanza.

"The dews of summer night did fall.”

Another beautiful Scotch ballad,

'There's nae luck aboot the hoose,

is also believed to be Mickle's, and it is a pity he has left so little of such excellent work.

JOHN MILTON (1608-1674) was born in Bread Street, Cheapside, where his father was a scrivener. He was a scholar at St. Paul's School, and from thence went to Cambridge. He had intended to enter the Church, but scruples as to signing the Articles prevented him. The beautiful ode On the Morning of Christ's Nativity is said to have been written in 1629 and was probably composed as a college exercise.

Milton left Cambridge in 1632, and came to live at Horton, a pleasant village in Buckinghamshire, to which his father had retired. It was in this calm retreat that he wrote the three beautiful poems, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and Lycidas, and also the masque of Comus, which was performed in Ludlow Castle in 1634. Lycidas belongs to 1637, and is the eloquent lament of Milton over his dear friend and college companion, Edward King, who was drowned while crossing the Irish Sea.

Soon after writing Lycidas Milton paid a visit to Italy, and

returned in 1639. During the troubles of the Civil War he was actively engaged with his pen on the side of the Parliament, and in 1649 he was appointed Latin Secretary to the new Government, and held the post till the Restoration. The calamity of blindness was gradually creeping over him, and in *1652 the sight of both eyes was gone.

His greatest work, Paradise Lost, was begun about 1658, though the plan was conceived much earlier. It was finished and published in 1667. In the seven years of life that were still left to him he wrote Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and a fragment of a History of Britain.

TOM MOORE (1779-1852) was born in Dublin, and at an early age began to write verses, and in 1800 he published a translation of the Odes of Anacreon. He then obtained a post in Bermuda, and paid a visit to Canada, of which his Canadian Boat Song is a memorial. He soon returned to England, and published two volumes of Odes and Epistles, which were severely reviewed in the Edinburgh, and the poet and reviewer met at Chalk Farm to fight a duel, but the police interfered.

The songs, As Slow our Ship, The Minstrel Boy, and The Harp that once through Tara's Halls, are from a collection of Irish Melodies which were written and issued in ten numbers at irregular intervals between 1807 and 1834, and which were intended to rescue and preserve old Irish airs that were in danger of being forgotten.

The song, Oft in the Stilly Night, is from a collection of National Airs written by Moore to illustrate the favourite songs of many nations. The well-known song, Those Evening Bells, and Hark the Vesper Hymn is Stealing, belong to the same

collection.

In 1817 Moore wrote the Oriental romance, Lalla Rookh, which is perhaps his greatest work.

In 1810 he gained the friendship of Byron, and in 1830 published his Life of Byron.

CAROLINE OLIPHANT, BARONESS NAIRNE (1766-1845) was born at the family seat, the Auld Hoose' of Gask, in Perthshire. Her father, Lawrence Oliphant, was a devoted Jacobite, and she was named in memory of Prince Charlie. She was married to Lord Nairne in 1800. The baroness was one of the earliest admirers of Burns, and, like him, she laboured to make a collection of national airs set to appropriate words. She contributed a large number of original songs to the six volumes of the Scottish Minstrel, 1821-4.

The best of these is the pathetic song, The Land o' the Leal,

and perhaps the next best The Laird o' Cockpen, with its broad humour. Lady Nairne also wrote many Jacobite songs, Wha'll be King but Charlie? Charlie is my Darling, and others.

TOM NASH (1567-1601 ?) was one of the wild and witty young men of letters of Queen Elizabeth's time. He was born at Lowestoft and was a scholar at St. John's, Cambridge, but it is thought he was expelled for some youthful indiscretion. He afterwards travelled in Italy.

He came to London about 1589, and was a friend and companion of the dramatists Greene, Marlowe, and Peele. He took part with Marlowe in writing Dido Queen of Carthage, and he himself wrote a play, The Isle of Dogs, which is not now extant. For some expressions in the play he was put in prison, and his many enemies made merry over this mishap.

His single play which has been preserved is Will Summer's Last Will and Testament, which was printed in 1600, but appears to have been acted as early as 1592. Will Summers is the famous Court jester of Henry VIII. supposed to come to life again, but the play is not very amusing. The four seasons are amongst the characters represented, and the song of the Spring is sung by Spring herself.

Nash was more famous as a fierce pamphleteer than as a dramatist. He mixed freely in the strife of the Marprelate Controversy, and furiously assailed Dr. Gabriel Harvey, who had insulted the memory of his dead friend Greene.

THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK (1785-1866), born at Weymouth, was the son of a London glass merchant. He himself made a brief trial of business, but gave it up for study and literature. In 1812 he became acquainted with Shelley, and continued to be one of his most trusted friends.

Peacock's earliest works were poetical: Monks of St. Mark, 1804; Palmyra, 18c6, and at a considerably later date he wrote Rhododaphne, the best of his long poems. But his poems,

though sparkling and amusing, have little of the fire of genius, and Peacock's peculiar powers are best shown in a series of witty and whimsical novels, Headlong Hall, 1815; Nightmare Abbey, 1817; Misfortunes of Elphin, 1829; Crochet Castle, 1831; and Grilly Grange, 1860.

Snatches of verse are interspersed in all of these novels, and in the Misfortunes of Elphin there are fourteen of these little poems, the War Song of Dinas Vawb being one of them. The story itself is a comic satirical rendering of a portion of the legend of Arthur, Taliesin, and other British heroes of the sixth century.

S