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Alexander Smith.

quaint old handiwork by Dr. Giles Fletcher, father of the famous
Giles, which may be regarded as its Elizabethan correlative.
'Marlowe himself,' says his editor, 'might have written the twelfth
verse.' (Licia, 1593, Son. 12, ed. Grosart, 1876):

I wish sometimes, although a worthlesse thing,
Spurd by ambition, glad for to aspyre,
My selfe a Monarch, or some mightie King:
And then my thoughtes doe wish for to be hyer.
But when I view what windes the Cedars tosse,
What stormes men feele that covet for renowne,
I blame my selfe that I have wisht my losse,
And scorne a kingdome, though it give a crowne.
Ah! Licia thou, the wonder of my thought,
My heartes content, procurer of my blisse,
For whom a crowne I doe esteeme as nought,
And Asias wealth too meane to buy a kisse:
Kisse me, sweete love, this favour doe for me,
Then Crownes and Kingdomes shall I scorne for thee.
Giles Fletcher.

229-230-CCCCLIII-CCCCLV. From his Poems: 1853.

CCCCLVI. Surprised to tears. 'Flatter'd to tears' (Keats's Eve of St. Agnes, iii, 3). This fine sonnet is one of Smith's contributions to the little pamphlet, Sonnets on the War, published by him and Dobell in 1855.

Babid Gray.

These selections from David Gray-with William Caldwell Roscoe, and Oliver Madox Brown later, the most deeply deplored since Keats of 'Those dying hearts that come to go,

And sing their swan-song flying home'

are from his only volume, The Luggie and Other Poems. With a Memoir by James Hedderwick, and a Prefatory Notice by R. M. Milnes, M.P.— Cambridge: 1862; of which a second and enlarged edition, without the Memoir, was published by Mr. Maclehose, Glasgow, in 1874.

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232-CCCCLIX, 10. A recollection of In Memoriam, LIV—and, I pre

sume, an instance of that 'direct and seemingly unconscious transference of some of the best known lines or phrases from such obscure authors as Shakespeare and Wordsworth into the somewhat narrow and barren field of his own verse,' which Mr. Swinburne contemptuously asserts to be one of the two most remarkable points in the 'poor little book' of this 'poor young Scotchman'! (Essays and Studies, 1875, p. 153, foot-note).

CCCCLX, 1. Cp. Tennyson's Princess (p. 79, 4th ed., 1851):

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'Delaying as the tender ash delays

To clothe herself, when all the woods are green.'

This sonnet was addressed to his brother-poet, Robert Buchanan. See Mr. Buchanan's David Gray, and Other Essays, 1868, p. 117. 233-CCCCLXII. There is something infinitely touching in the fondness with which young poets passing through 'the shadows' have looked to this little flower as the emblem of hope for them. One of our latest ‘inheritors of unfulfilled renown' thus glorifies it in sonnetform (The Life of a Scottish Probationer: being a Memoir of Thomas Davidson. With his Poems and Extracts from his Letters. By Dr. James Brown, of Paisley: 1878, 2nd ed., p. 226):

A SICK MAN TO THE EARLIEST SNOWDROP.

From off the chill and misty lower verge

Of Autumn, when the flowers were all gone past,
Looks, that were prayers, o'er Winter I did cast,
To see beyond thy fancied form emerge:

Thy advent was my dream, while storms did surge,
And if Hope walked with me 'tween blast and blast,
With phantom Snowdrops her pale brows were graced.
And now thy presence and my heart's fulness urge
This word of hail to thee, Emblem of meekness,—
Yet in thy meekness brave and militant,
Leading flower-armies from the bloomy South,
Hard on the heels of Frost and Cold and Bleakness!
O when I spied thee in this yearly haunt

'Life! Life! I shall not die!' brake from my mouth.
Thomas Davidson.

It was probably the reference in the text to the snowdrop that suggested the exquisitely tender episode in Mr. Buchanan's Poet Andrew, which manifestly depicts the brief sad life of David Gray. Age cannot wither such poetry as that in which Andrew's father, the simple-hearted handloom weaver, tells the story of his son's death (Idyls and Legends of Inverburn, 1865, p. 59):

DD

'One Sabbath day

The last of winter, for the caller air

Was drawing sweetness from the bark of trees-
When down the lane, I saw to my surprise

A snowdrop blooming underneath a birk,
And gladly pluckt the flower to carry home
To Andrew.

Saying nought,

Into his hand I put the year's first flower,
And turn'd awa' to hide my face; and he..
.. He smiled.. and at the smile, I know not why,
It swam upon us, in a frosty pain,

The end was come at last, at last, and Death
Was creeping ben, his shadow on our hearts.

David Gray.

We gazed on Andrew, call'd him by his name,
And touch'd him softly. . and he lay awhile,
His een upon the snow, in a dark dream,
Yet neither heard nor saw; but suddenly,
He shook awa' the vision wi' a smile,
Raised lustrous een, still smiling, to the sky,
Next upon us, then dropt them to the flower
That trembled in his hand, and murmur'd low,
Like one that gladly murmurs to himsel'—
"Out of the Snow, the Snowdrop-out of Death
Comes Life;" then closed his eyes and made a moan,
And never spake another word again.'

The following tribute in sonnet-form to David Gray's memory from the pen of another living writer, originally printed in Hedderwick's Miscellany, 7 March, 1863, will fittingly close our selection from Luggie's poet. (A Scholar's Day-Dream, Sonnets, and Other Poems, 1870, p. 190):

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IN MEMORIAM'
DAVID GRAY.

Oh, rare young soul! Thou wast of such a mould
As could not bear the poet's painful dower!
Hence, in the sweet spring-tide of opening power,
Ere yet the gathering breeze of song had roll'd
Out on the world its music manifold,

Death gently hushed the harp, lest storm or shower-
Which surely life had brought some later hour-
Should snap the quivering strings or dim their gold.
Yet not the less shall tender memories dwell

In those sweet notes-and sad as sweet they seem-
Which from the burning touch of boyhood fell;
For long as little Luggie winds her stream,
And the twin Bothlin prattles down the dell,
Thither shall many a pilgrim turn and dream!
Alsager Hay Hill.

Oliver Mador Brown.

234-CCCCLXIII. descries: used in the old sense = marks, points out. From The Dwale Bluth, Hebditch's Legacy, and other Literary Remains of Oliver Madox Brown, Author of 'Gabriel Denver.' Edited by William M. Rossetti and F. Hueffer. With a Memoir and Two Portraits: 1876. The editors note that the sonnet was found prefixed to the first MS. of 'The Black Swan,' a tale written in the winter of 1871-2 and published in an altered form under the title of 'Gabriel Denver,' in 1873; and that there were duplicate readings to several of the lines. They record also that even some years earlier, while in his fourteenth year, and before it had ever been supposed by his family that he so much as understood the meaning

of the word sonnet, this truly 'marvellous boy' had produced a number of sonnets, which he unfortunately destroyed 'in a fit of morbid irritability or bashfulness caused by their being shown to a few friends.' One of these, however, written for a picture by Mrs. Stillman (then Miss Spartali), and printed on the gilt of the frame, has survived. It is as follows:

Leaning against the window, rapt in thought,

Of what sweet past do thy soft brown eyes dream,
That so expressionlessly sweet they seem?
Or what great image hath thy fancy wrought
To wonder round and gaze at? or doth aught
Of legend move thee, o'er which eyes oft stream,
Telling of some sweet saint who rose supreme
From martyrdom to God, with glory fraught?
Or art thou listening to the gondolier,
Whose song is dying o'er the waters wide,
Trying the faintly-sounding tune to hear
Before it mixes with the rippling tide?

Or dost thou think of one that comes not near,

And whose false heart, in thine, thine own doth chide?

End of the Notes