of human nature, will be full as interesting as to Gosse himself was the study of the rotifera, or wheel animalcules, which, among all his studies, "fascinated him longest and absorbed him most." It never seemed to occur to the ardent naturalist that human nature might deserve a place in his curriculum beside the observations of earth, sea, and shore to which he devoted himself. His skill in drawing and coloring animal shapes was extraordinary, but he was utterly unable to sketch a man. No solicitation from his little boy could ever tempt him to undertake that task. secured. Under a somewhat acrid exterior lay a kind and sympathetic core. By his death many of the great booksellers of London and Paris lose a munificent customer. There were fine copies of the second, third, and fourth folios-curiously enough the first was wanting. But the great glory of the collection were the quartos, which have been allowed to be, by those best qualified to judge, by far the finest in America-perhaps, barring those in the British Museum, and at Chatsworth and Althorp-the finest in the world. [Then followed a long list of prices.] The greatest excitement was reached when" No!" he would say; "a humming-bird a copy of 'Love's Labor's Lost' was produced by the auctioneer. No one seems to have known of the existence of this copy, which was strange, as it is without the slightest question the most perfect copy in the world. Not only was it in beautiful condition and perfectly uncut, but the last ten leaves were unopened-a state which is, we believe, quite unique. It measures [so many inches]. It was enclosed in a magnificent crimson morocco case, without lettering on it, made for another work by the English Bedford. This most precious volume was sold for $3,900, and was bought by Mr. Cornelius Van der Hagen, of Chicago." After reading this paragraph Gibbs sat for a long time in his chair quite motionless. The day had faded away outside, and the only light in the room was the warm glow of the fire. He sat for many minutes staring into it. At length he got up to go. "It was for him, not for herself," he muttered-and something very like a tear rolled down his cheek on to the crisp paper below. GILFRID W. HARTLEY. From The London Quarterly Review. PHILIP HENRY GOSSE: A PURITAN NATURALIST.* A GLANCE at the portrait given as a frontispiece to this biography will show that it introduces us to no ordinary man. Decision of character and strength of will are written in every feature. It reminds us of some sea-captain accustomed to walk his quarter-deck with no one to dispute his rule. These first impressions are borne out by every page of this memoir. It is the record of a life which, to students The Life of Philip Henry Gosse, F.R.S. By his Son, Edmund Gosse, Hou. M.A. of Trinity College, Cambridge. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, & Co., Ltd. 1890. is much nicer, or a shark, or a zebra. I No one will deny the claims of those scientific studies which Philip Henry Gosse has surrounded with such charms for a multitude of readers. But the Puritan naturalist, who looked on Christmas as "a heathen survival to which the name of Christ had been affixed in hideous profanity," and once at dinner lifted the dishcover, under which appeared a magnificent goose, with the words: "I need not assure you, dear friends, that this bird has not been offered to the idol," is certainly a man whose personal character and opinions will repay somewhat microscopic observation. All the material for such a study is furnished for us by Gosse's son and biog. rapher, who is evidently at many points the exact antipodes of his father. "I have taken it," he says, "to be the truest piety to represent him exactly as I knew him and have found him." Certainly the old naturalist who used to express his contempt for "goody-goody lives of good men," would have no reason to complain of the treatment accorded to himself in these pages. The minute, yet withal loving and admiring, analysis of his character and work, of his opinions, and his manner of life makes us familiar with the man as he lived. Sometimes, so faithful is the biographer to his method, we are almost surprised into asking can these two men be father and son? but there is no lack of hearty appreciation or of filial affection in 22 this outspoken record. Such features of | delicate charm of color, but even at its best it lacked distinction, and Gosse was not the man to advertise himself, or carve out his road to fortune. Such was the man who in the spring of 1807 stepped out of the Bath coach on its arrival at Worcester. His clothes spoke of waning respectability, his somewhat rueful countenance told the story of its owner's disappointments. He was in his forty-third year, tall and thin, with hair prematurely grey. Besides the box which contained colors, brushes, and leaves of when the fashion for mezzotints passed he turned his attention to miniature painting, strolling among the country towns in his search for clients. Long practice as an engraver had taught him to draw with acPhilip Henry Gosse is not the only fig-curacy, and his best work had a certain ure that claims minute study. His father, whose skill as a miniature painter was inherited by the naturalist, was a voluminous author, who yet never managed to secure the much coveted honor of publication for one of his many manuscript tales or poems. Gosse's mother, a yeoman's daughter without education or capacity to understand literature, but with a strength of purpose and sterling sense which made her a strange contrast to her dreamy husband, was such a character as Thomas Hardy might seize upon to figure in one of his Wessex novels. Nor must we over-ivory-his stock in trade as a miniature look the two gifted women to whom Philip portrait painter he had a slender wardHenry Gosse was married, and who both robe with two books, his Bible and his proved in their differing ways true helpers Greek Theocritus, "which never quitted in his work. The sketch of her husband him, but formed, at the darkest moments supplied by the second Mrs. Gosse as an of his career, a gate of instant exit from appendix to this biography presents in its the hard facts of life into an idyllic world hero-worship a somewhat striking contrast of glowing pastoral antiquity." to the severe candor of her stepson, but is not the less a touching tribute to his memory, written by one who filled the difficult post of stepmother with such "tact and gentleness and devotion through no less than thirty years" that she is called in these pages "that good genius of our house." The Gosse family are said to have come over from France at the time of the Restoration. They settled at Ringwood, Hampshire, where the naturalist's grandfather, William Gosse, was a wealthy cloth manufacturer. The Gosses had carried on this business from the reign of Charles II. William Gosse had Welsh estates, which led to his being chosen high sheriff of Radnorshire, and he was in his day a local magnate at Ringwood. The introduction of machinery, which changed all the conditions of woollen manufacturing, much reduced his fortune. When he died there was little left for the naturalist's father, the eleventh of William Gosse's twelve children. Thomas Gosse was "ready to despair of life," as he entered the old cathedral city. But a change was coming over his lonely bachelor existence. At the house of his particular friend and patron, Mr. Green, Gosse met a girl of twenty-six, who had recently entered the family as "half lady's maid, half companion." Hannah Best come from Titton Brook, near Stourport, where her father was a small yeoman. Mrs. Best's tongue and temper were the scourge of that household. She would sometimes whip off her high-heeled shoe, and administer personal chastisement to her grown-up daughters. Smarting under such an outrage, Hannah had fled to Worcester. To the student of Theocritus, the girl's beauty, strength, and rusticity made her appear like a Sici lian shepherdess who had stepped out of the old poet's pages. Gosse fell hopelessly in love. The girl shrank from the addresses of one so much older than herself. But she soon learned to appreciate his character, and to see what a door of escape the marriage opened to her in her present anomalous position. The oddly assorted couple were therefore married at St. Nicholas Church, Worcester, on July Thomas Gosse was then nineteen. He They at once set out together on pilgrimage. The omens were sadly discour aging, for at Gloucester their first halting place no one could be found to sit for a portrait. They fled in panic to Bristol, where affairs proved more favor- | names," he said long afterwards, "I viv 66 able. Here their first son, William, was born in the following April. Two years later, on April 6, 1810, when they had returned to Worcester, the future naturalist was born in lodgings over the shop of Mr. Garner, the shoemaker, in High Street." After two or three years' experience of this migratory life, the young wife opened a grocer's shop on. her own account at Leicester. Here she remained whilst her husband set out on a tour through the west of England. Before he returned she had, however, discovered her own unfitness for the life of a shopkeeper, and was ready to accompany her husband to Poole, where three of his married sisters were living, and where it seemed as though there would be some chance of success for the struggling artist. In June, 1812, the family had taken furnished lodgings in the Old Orchard, at Poole. idly recollect, and the whole scene." This was the first instance of the powers of memory and observation, which were afterwards so conspicuous in Gosse's work as a naturalist. Another reminiscence may be referred to because it describes an experience which Gosse's father had known as a child, and which in turn tormented his son also: "I suffered when I was about five years old from some strange, indescribable dreams, which were repeated quite frequently. It was as if space was occupied with a multitude of concentric circles, the outer ones immeasurably vast, I myself being the common centre. They seemed to revolve and converge upon me, causing a most painful sensation of dread. I do not know that I had heard, and I was too young to have read, the description of Ezekiel's dreadful wheels.' The prosperous little seaport, with its The boy's love of nature awoke early. red brick houses, had then a population of He had formed a friendship with a nephew six thousand people. Its busy quay, with of a lodger who had taken the place of the merchants, sailors, and fishermen bustling Poonah painters. This was John Hamabout, and piles of salt cod, barrels of mond Brown, who, like Philip Gosse, train oil, and stores of fresh fish, was full found greater pleasure in a book than in a of never flagging interest for the observ-game with other boys. They eagerly ant boy, who grew up in the midst of this studied the plates of animals in the "Enever-changing life. "Pilots, fishermen, cyclopædia Perthensis," and after a time boatmen of various grades, a loose-trousered, guernsey-frocked, sou'westered race, were always lounging about the quay.” The father soon had to start again on his rounds, but not before his family had been safely housed at No. I Skinner Street. His prosperous sisters helped with the furnishing, but did not conceal their feeling that their artist brother had married sadly beneath him. All this made things harder for the young and lonely wife. She was both superstitious and timid, so that she was glad to have her sleeping children in a crib in her parlor until it was time to go to bed. She afterwards secured some company by letting lodgings to two ladies who taught "Poonah painting," an art which they kept a profound secret from all save the young ladies whom they initiated into the mysteries of "the Indian formulas." Philip Gosse was two years and a month old when the family moved to Poole. In travelling across country from Leicester, a visit had been paid to Mrs. Gosse's parents at Titton Brook. Philip was in his mother's arms, when he saw a team of oxen or horses pass along the main road, guided by the driver's cry: "Gee, Captain ! Wo, Merryman!" "These two began to copy them. Ar Aunt Bell, the wife of a Poole surgeon, who had a taste for natural history, was his first guide. When he found any interesting specimen the boy took it off to her for information. Gosse thus began to study the transformation of insects, and learned something about the sea anemones which he found around the quay at neap tides. Mrs. Bell also taught him to keep the anemones in a jug of sea-water, little thinking that her young pupil was by and by to make the aquarium a popular scientific toy in England. Gosse's mother looked somewhat askance on these boyish hobbies, and was terribly frightened when some green lizards were brought home as a treasure in her elder son's handkerchief. She regarded them as venomous, and ordered them, to the great grief of the young naturalist, to be instantly despatched. Mrs. Gosse had a struggling life. Her husband was not at home more than a month or two in the year. His scanty earnings were largely spent on himself, yet the mother managed to keep her four children clean and neat, "sufficiently fed and decently educated." She had a horror of debt, and her rent was, with the rarest exception, paid on the very day it later, the elder brother, then fourteen years old, sailed for Carbonear, in Newfoundland, where he was to be a clerk in his uncle's office. The younger brother's cleverness was already noticed at Poole. It is pleasant to find that his mother, with all her limitations, saw that the boy must have the best education she could afford. She therefore managed to procure admission for him into the school at Blandford. His chief friend, John Brown, accompanied him. The two boys now began to make colored drawings of animals, and greatly enjoyed a visit to the town paid by Wombwell's menagerie, where they saw the South African hyena, then a great curiosity in England. was due. She was a striking contrast to her painter spouse, and the widening alienation between them in thought and feeling, though much to be regretted, was almost unavoidable. His ambition for authorship she looked upon as a craze which interfered with his legitimate work. She waged incessant and ruthless war against it, scrupled not to style it 'cursed writin', and scolded him whenever she found him at it." In later years the old man used to point to his son: "But there's Philip, he writes books; you don't find fault with him!" 66 Philip! no," said the wife; "his books bring in bread and cheese for you and me! When did your writings ever bring in anything?" The would-be author could only close the discussion with his One year at Blandford gave the boy favorite exclamation: "Pooh! my dear!" some knowledge of Latin and a smatterWhen finishing a miniature in the backing of Greek, which proved of great serparlor Gosse would sometimes lay down his brush and take up a poem, but if his wife's step was heard, "he would hastily whip it under his little green baize desk and set to work on the ivory," much to the amusement of his children, who watched the scene from some quiet corner. The boys eagerly awaited the Salisbury coach when it was to bring back their roving father. Speculation as to the costume in which he would appear was rife on these occasions. "Once he arrived in yellowtopped boots and nankeen small clothes; another time in a cut-away, snuff-colored coat; and once in leather breeches." It was no wonder that his hardworking, practical wife grew sarcastic as she looked at him. The artist's unvarying answer was: "Pooh! the tailor told me it was proper for me to have! His wig drove her to extremities. He had been growing grey when they married; before he was fifty his hair was pure silver. His wife had long suspected that he wore a wig, but it had always been prudently concealed on his return to Poole. On one occasion, however, he ventured to appear in a "lovely snuff-colored peruke. My grandmother," says the biographer, "was no palterer. Her first salute was to snatch it off his head, and to whip it into the fire, where the possessor was fain ruefully to watch it frizzle and consume." When Philip was nine he stayed for awhile near Wimborne while his mother visited her parents at Titton Brook. Here the young naturalist found his first kingfisher's nest, and watched with eager delight" the brilliant little gem "flit above the river Stour. Next year at Swanage they found a conger eel in the hay-field, half a mile from the shore. Two years vice in later years. When the straitened The office closed at five, so that when his friend Brown returned from Blandford and entered a neighboring counting-house, the boys spent many a pleasant evening together, over science, music, and chemical experiments. They gave, however, their chief attention to natural history, gleaning all the information they could obtain about the size, color, and habits of birds. and beasts. Gosse also made his first appearance in print with a contribution inserted in the Youth's Magazine, entitled, "The Mouse a Lover of Music." When the Garlands found no further use for a junior clerk, young Gosse was of fered a post in the counting-house of a firm at Carbonear, in Newfoundland. He sailed on April 22, 1827. The voyage lasted forty-six days. This gave him time to finish a volume on Quadrupeds," begun at Poole, and to prepare a journal, illustrated by colored plates, of whales spouting, porpoises leaping and plunging, icebergs, and sea-birds of various kinds. 66 He never forgot the daily Bible readings | papist Irish no better than the rest of you." which his mother had enjoined upon him. It was a lesson which Philip Gosse did No ridicule had the slightest influence not forget. over one of whom his biographer could write that then, as always, "his conscience was a law to him, and a law that he was prepared to obey in face of an army of ridicule drawn up in line of battle." Office work was comparatively light from the middle of June, when the fleet sailed for Labrador, until the end of October, so that the young clerk was able to enjoy the brief summer. Jane Elson, his master's younger daughter, inspired the boy with his first love a few months after his arrival; but he kept his secret locked up in his own breast. She was present at the only ball Gosse attended, and he ob He found Carbonear a more important town than he had expected. The Labrador fishing fleet, consisting of seventy schooners, was just about to start on its usual expedition. After it sailed, the new clerk took his place in the counting-tained the honor of escorting her home. house. Here is his own description of himself: "I was thoroughly a greenhorn; fresh from my Puritan home and companionships; utterly ignorant of the world; raw, awkward, and unsophisticated; simple in countenance as unsuspicious in mind; the very quaintness of the costume in which I had been sent forth from the paternal nest told what a yokel I was. A surtout coat of snuff-brown hue, reaching to my ankles, and made out of a worn great-coat of my uncle Gosse's, which had been given to mother, enveloped my somewhat sturdy body; for I was Totus, teres, atque rotundus; while my intellectual region rejoiced in the protection of a white hat (forsooth !) somewhat battered in sides and crown, and manifestly the worse for wear." His elder brother, then rejoicing in the matured wisdom of nineteen, was still at Carbonear. He presented Philip with a code of regulations for his behavior in his new surroundings, which the boy scrupulously set himself to observe. One of his fellow clerks was a William Charles St. John, who belonged to a Protestant Tipperary family, which claimed relationship both with Lord Bolingbroke and Cromwell. This bright youth, full of fun and sparkling wit, became the bosom friend of the new clerk. The state of affairs at Carbonear was not congenial. The Protestant population lived in habitual dread of the papist Irish, who were intensely jealous of the Saxon colony. It was necessary to guard your words in such a place. The new-comer made a pert reply to a captain's question about his impressions of Newfoundland: "I see little in it, except dogs and Irishmen. An ominous silence followed. At last, his brother, who was in the company, asked: "Do you not know that Mr. Moore is an Irishman?" Fortunately the captain came to his rescue. "There's no offence; I am an Ulsterman, and love the "She took my arm; and there, under the moon, we walked for full half a mile, and not a word-literally, not a single wordbroke the awful silence! I felt the awkwardness most painfully; but the more I sought something to say, the more my tongue seemed tied to the roof of my mouth." His boyish passion gradually wore off, and the young lady married a merchant at St. John's. After twelve months at Carbonear, Gosse was sent to a new office at St. Mary's. This seemed like exile. St. Mary's had only three or four hundred residents, mostly Irish laborers or fishermen. The managing clerk was a consequential fellow, who once told Gosse in the presence of the laborers, "You shan't be called Mr. Gosse any more; you shall be called plain Philip." Fortunately his clerk had an answer ready, "Very well; and I'll call you plain John." The laborers grinned approval of this well-merited snub. After a few months in this dispiriting place Gosse returned to Carbonear. He travelled across the pathless snow with an old trapper and furrier, who regaled him with beaver's meat. "He declared to the end of his life that no flesh was so exquisite as the hind quarters of beaver roasted." The young clerk saw the otter-slides on the steep banks of a lake. Each of the otters in succession lay on its belly and slipped swiftly down the steep bank till it plunged into the water. Whilst the first was crawling up the bank again the other otters were on the slide. By the time they had enjoyed their fun the first otter was ready for another turn. The wet which dripped from their bodies froze as it fell, making a perfect gutter of ice. The old trapper had frequently seen this sport "continued with the utmost eagerness, and with every demonstration of delight for hours together." My father used to say," adds Mr. Edmund Gosse, "that he knew no other example of adult quadru 66 |