of life. On the mystical doctrines of 'open breathing' and the 'two-in-one' which entered largely into Oliphant's beliefs it is not necessary to enlarge. He associated himself also with certain phases of spiritualism, disclaiming the authorship of some of his later books on the ground that he was simply the writing medium.' From the time he abandoned London society he lived a cheerful and even joyous life in the service of others. By many of his friends his career, thus diverted at the hour of its brightest promise, was counted a failure ; but Oliphant himself thought otherwise, and, considering what he gained by the renunciation, he counted the world well lost. Oliphant's mother, Lady Oliphant, became a member of the Brotherhood of the New Life a year later than himself. In 1872 he was married to Alice le Strange, of Hunstanston, Norfolk, who also joined the community. Lady Oliphant died in 1881, and in the same year Oliphant and his wife severed their connection with Mr Harris. The following year they established a settlement at Haifa in Palestine, where, in 1886, Mrs Oliphant died. In August 1888 Oliphant was married to Rosamond, daughter of Robert Dale Owen, and granddaughter of the famous Robert Owen. Two days later he was seized with a severe illness, and before the close of the year he died. Oliphant's contributions to literature were numerous; they included books of travel, graphically written, some clever satires on society, and two novels scarcely so successful. His chief works are The Russian Shores of the Black Sea (1853); The Transcaucasian Campaign of the Turkish Army under Omer Pasha (1856); Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's Mission to China and Japan (1859); Patriots and Filibusters (1860); Piccadilly (1866); The Land of Gilead (1880); Traits and Travesties (1882); Altiora Peto, a novel (1883); Sympneumata (1885); Haifa, or Life in Modern Palestine (1885); Masollam, a novel (1886); Scientific Religion (1888). The authorised biography is the Memoir (2 vols. 1891) by Mrs Oliphant the novelist, who justly acknowledges her inability to understand the mystical philosophy which had so important a bearing on Oliphant's character and career. A Filibustering Expedition. It It was on the last day of the year [1857] that the good ship Texas cleared out of New Orleans with three hundred emigrants on board. At least we called ourselves emigrants a misnomer which did not prevent the civic authorities, with the city marshal at their head, trying to stop us; but we had the sympathies of the populace with us, and under their ægis laughed the law to scorn. would have been quite clear to the most simple-minded observer what kind of emigrants we were the day after we got out to sea and the men were put through their squad-drill on deck. There were Englishmen who had been private soldiers in the Crimea, Poles who had fought in the last Polish insurrection, Hungarians who had fought under Kossuth, Italians who had struggled through the revolutions of '48, Western 'boys' who had were. just had six months' fighting in Kansas, while of the 'balance' the majority had been in one or other of the Lopez expeditions to Cuba. Many could exhibit bulletwounds and sword-cuts, and scars from manacles, which they considered no less honourable-notwithstanding all which, the strictest order prevailed. No arms were allowed to be carried. There were always two officers of the day who walked about with swords buckled over their shooting-jackets, and sixteen men told off as a guar to maintain discipline. Alas! the good behaviour an⠀ fine fighting qualities of these amiable emigrants were destined to be of no avail; for on our arrival at the mouth of the San Juan River we found a British squadron lying at anchor to keep the peace, and the steamer by which we hoped to ascend the river in the hands of our enemies, the Costa Ricans. . . . Just before sunset we observed, to our dismay, a British man-of-war's boat pulling towards us; and a moment later Captain Cockburn, of H.M.S. Cossack, was in the captain's cabin, making most indiscreet inquiries as to the kind of emigrants we It did not require long to satisfy him; and as I incautiously hazarded a remark which betrayed my nationality, I was incontinently ordered into his boat as a British subject, being where a British subject had no right to be. As he further announced that he was about to moor his ship in such a position as would enable him, should fighting occur in the course of the night, to fire into both combatants with entire impartiality, I the less regretted this abrupt parting from my late companions, the more especially as, on asking him who commanded the squadron, I found it was a distant cousin. This announcement on my part was received with some incredulity, and I was taken on board the Orion, an 80-gun ship, carrying the flag of Admiral Erskine, to test its veracity, while Captain Cockburn made his report of the Texas and her passengers. As soon as the Admiral recovered from his amazement at my appearance, he most kindly made me his guest, and I spent a very agreeable time for some days, watching the 'emigrants' disconsolately pacing the deck, for the Costa Ricans gave them the slip in the night and went up the river, and their opponents found their occupation gone. Poor Walker! he owed all his misfortunes, and finally his own untimely end, to British interference; for on his return to Central America, where he intended to make Honduras the base of his operations, he was captured at Truxillo by Captain (now Sir Nowell) Salmon, and handed over to the Honduras Government, who incontinently hanged him. This was the usual fate which followed failure in this country; and those who fought in it knew they were doing so with a rope round their necks-which doubtless improved their fighting qualities. I did not know, however, until my return to England, that rumour had accredited me with so tragic an end, when, at the first party I went to, my partner, a very charming young person, whom I was very glad to see again after my various adventures, put out two fingers by way of greeting, raised her eyebrows with an air of mild surprise, and said in the most silvery and unmoved voice, 'Oh, how d'ye do? I thought you were hung!' I think it was rather a disappointment to her that I There is a novelty in the sensation of an old and esteemed dancing partner being hanged, and it forms a pleasing topic of conversation with the other (From Episodes in a Life of Adventure.) WALTER LEWIN ... was not. ones. Thomas William Robertson (1829-71) was born at Newark-on-Trent of a family that had for generations produced actors and actresses, and was himself brought up almost on the boards. In 1848 the Lincoln circuit, with which his father was connected, ceased to pay; the company was broken up, and Tom came to London. There and elsewhere he struggled for a living, acting as prompter and stage manager, writing unsuccessful plays, acting himself, writing for newspapers and magazines (Fun amongst them), translating French plays, and so forth; but he never became an actor of mark. His first success as a dramatist—when he was seriously thinking of becoming a tobacconist -was with David Garrick in 1864, the title-rôle of which was one of Sothern's great things. Spite of its name, this was substantially an adaptation from the French; and it was followed by a more original study of English Bohemianism, his comedy Society, first produced at Liverpool (1865), and received there and in London with the warmest approval. Ours (1866), produced by the Bancrofts at the Prince of Wales's Theatre in London, thoroughly established Robertson's fame; and from that time his pen was kept incessantly busy. Caste (1867), Play (1868), School (1869), M.P. (1870)—all brought out by the Kendals at the Prince of Wales's; and Home (1869) and Dreams (1869), the former at the Haymarket, the latter at the Gaiety, were all equally successful. But in the midst of his triumphs the author died. His best comedies-notably Caste and School-still retain their popularity, which rests on the excellence of their construction and stagecraft, their merry humour, their healthy tone, their happy contrasts, and the sunny spirit that shines through them. His Principal Dramatic Works were published with a Memoir by his son in two volumes in 1880; and a more formal biography, his Life and Writings, by Pemberton in 1893. Henry James Byron (1834-84), the son of a British consul in the West Indies, was born in Manchester, and entered the Middle Temple in 1858, but became famous as a prolific and popular writer of burlesques and extravaganzas. He wrote extensively for periodicals, was the first editor of Fun, and leased several theatres, where he produced more ambitious plays, in which he himself occasionally appeared-comedies or domestic dramas of a sort, enlivened by the smart dialogue and brisk incidents of farce. The best was Cyril's Success (1868); the most successful, Our Boys, which had an unprecedented run in London for more than four years (from the beginning of 1875). The Upper Crust suited Toole admirably. Byron excelled in depicting Cockney vulgarity; his dialogue is usually clever and amusing, but overladen with repartee and puns, for which he readily sacrificed probability and appropriateness. His plots have a considerable measure of originality and ingenuity, and even of human interest, but are always artificial and often inane. His verse was uniformly poor; and his work showed altogether a serious falling off from the standard even of Robertson. John Nichol (1833-94), son of a Glasgow professor of astronomy, was educated at Glasgow and Balliol College, Oxford, and from 1862 to 1889, when he resigned, was Professor of English Literature in Glasgow University. Hannibal (1873), a drama, was his first notable achievement; The Death of Themistocles, and other Poems (1881), his next. But, a pithy and accomplished writer both in verse and prose, he was known also as author of little books on Byron ('Men of Letters,' 1889), on Burns, and on Carlyle, and of a history of American literature (1882), originally contributed to the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Professor Knight published a Life of him in 1896. Roden Noel (1834-94)—in full the Hon. RODEN BERKELEY WRIOTHESLEY NOEL-was a son of the Lord Barham made Earl of Gainsborough in 1841, and graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge. Behind the Veil (1863) was the first of a series of more than half a-dozen poems or books of poems (including Songs of the Heights and Deeps and A Little Child's Monument); besides a drama in verse. There was also from the same pen a volume of Essays on various poets from Chatterton to Whitman, and a short Life of Shelley; and Mr Roden Noel edited selections from Spenser and from Otway's plays. Joseph Henry Shorthouse (1834-1903) was born at Birmingham, and became a chemical manufacturer there. He was profoundly interested in religious questions; bred a Quaker, he was as a grown man baptised into the Church of England. The greater part of his working life he devoted to business, though to literature he gave of his best. It was not till 1881, when he was within measurable distance of fifty, that his romance John Inglesant, on which he had been engaged for many years, and which had been privately printed the year before, carried his name over England; and people asked in surprise, 'Can such a thing come out of Birmingham, and be by a Birmingham manufacturer?' For the work was a protest in a modern and materialistic age and country in favour of old-world High Church religious fervour, chivalrous devotion to a sovereign, and holy reverence for woman. It awakened echoes in unlikely quarters, and stirred all readers who realise the eternal conflict between flesh and spirit. The mystical romance would never have been printed but for the urgency of Mr Shorthouse's friends; when submitted to James Payn it was rejected as defective in structure and lacking in the elements of popularity. It never was popular in the ordinary sense; yet a sale of over 80,000 copies had by 1901 testified to a grip on contemporary thought that was more than a succès d'estime. The Little Schoolmaster Mark (1883-84) met with no such acceptance; nor can Sir Percival (1886) be pronounced an artistic triumph, spite of its restrained power and the delicate, over-refined style which marked it and all the author's works. The Countess Eve (1888) showed more of the author's characteristically tender spiritual suggestion. A Teacher of the Violin (1888), Blanche, Lady Falaise (1891), prefaces or introductions to Herbert's Temple (1882), an essay on The Platonism of Wordsworth (1882), a translation from Molinos (1883), and one or two other republications practically exhaust the list of his published works. The Earl of Lytton (EDWARD ROBERT BULWER LYTTON, 1831-91), son of the first Lord Lytton (page 332), was educated at Harrow and at Bonn, and in 1849 went to Washington as attaché THE EARL OF LYTTON, G. C. B. From the Portrait by G. F. Watts, R.A., in the National Portrait and private secretary to his uncle, Sir Henry Bulwer; subsequently he was attaché, secretary of legation, consul or chargé d'affaires at Florence, Paris, the Hague, St Petersburg and Constantinople, Vienna, Belgrade, Athens, Lisbon, Madrid, and Paris. In 1873 he succeeded his father as second Lord Lytton, and in 1876 became Viceroy of India. Made Earl of Lytton on his resignation in 1880, he was in 1887 sent as ambassador to Paris, and there he died. With more of the poetic equipment than his father possessed-imaginative vigour, facility of expression, metrical skill and gracehe yet never seemed to put his best strength into his poems, which were to the last the work of a brilliant amateur. His works, published mostly under the pseudonym of 'Owen Meredith,' include Clytemnestra (1855), a dramatic poem; The Wanderer; Lucile (1860), a novel in verse, probably his most successful work; a volume of what were called 'translations from the Servian;' The Ring of Amasis, a prose romance; Orval, or the Fool of Time; Fables in Song; Glenaveril (1885), an epic of modern life, in which, perhaps, he most nearly succeeded in imprinting character and individuality on his work; After Paradise (1887); Marah (1892); and King Poppy (1892). A selection from his poems by Miss M. Betham-Edwards appeared in 1890. He left his biography of his father incomplete-but only too complete on the unhappy relations between his father and mother. Charles Stuart Calverley (1831-84), prince of parodists, was the son of the Rev. Henry Blayds, who in 1852 took the name of Calverley. Born at Martley in Worcestershire, from Harrow he passed to Balliol College, Oxford, whence in 1852 (the over-exuberance of his boyish spirits having come into conflict with academic discipline-he would jump over the college walls) he migrated to Christ's College, Cambridge. He won the Craven and other distinctions, graduated as second classic in 1856, and in 1858 was elected a Fellow of his college. At the university he was famous less for his scholarship, brilliant though it was (for he was not so industrious as he might have been), than for his gifts as a writer of clever verse, as a musician, as a caricaturist, as a talker, and as an athlete. The famous Pickwick paper (in answering which Professor Skeat was first and Sir Walter Besant second) was one of his happiest jeux d'esprit in prose, and was set in 1857, when he was a don. In 1865 he was called to the Bar, and settled in London, but a neglected fall on the ice at Oulton Hall, Leeds (his father-in-law's place, in the winter of 1866-67 put an end to what might have been an exceptionally brilliant career; for the remaining seventeen years of his life he was a confirmed invalid, the original concussion of the brain being followed by other maladies. One of the most gifted men of his time, and unrivalled as a humourist, Calverley will be remembered by his two little volumes, Verses and Translations (1862) and Fly-Leaves (1872). His serious verse is much of it very admirable; but it is for his humorous verses in various kinds that C. S. C. is best known to the world. His parodies, particularly that of Jean Ingelow, were obviously the best that had appeared since the Rejected Addresses, and in their own line are unequalled in modern English literature, innumerable as his imitators have been. Calverley's parodies have the highest qualities parodies can have: they depend not on a burlesque reproduction of the words or rhythms parodied, on the exaggeration of mannerisms, the caricaturing of mere externals, but get wonderfully near the whole spirit of the originals. His work exhibits a singular combination of delicate insight, creative imagination, genial but trenchant satire, lightness of touch, and mastery of rhythms. Some of his parodies are poems themselves. His ripe scholarship found admirable expression in his numerous renderings from and into Latin and Greek; and his Theocritus (1869) displays also his facile mastery of English verse. His Literary Remains were published in 1885, with a Memoir by his brother-in-law, Sir W. J. Sendall, and reminiscences of Calverley by friends such as Dr Buller, Sir John Seeley, and Sir Walter Besant. An edition of the Complete Works appeared in 1901. The first of the examples quoted below, in which Rossetti's ballad manner is playfully 'taken off,' appeared in Chambers's Journal in 1869; the other is one of those in which some of Miss Ingelow's weaknesses were made fun of. Ballad. The auld wife sat at her ivied door, (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) A thing she had frequently done before; And her spectacles lay on her apron'd knees. The piper he piped on the hill-top high, (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) Till the cow said I die,' and the goose ask'd 'Why?' And the dog said nothing, but search'd for fleas. The farmer he strode through the square farmyard; (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) His last brew of ale was a trifle hard The connexion of which with the plot one sees. The farmer's daughter hath frank blue eyes; The farmer's daughter hath ripe red lips; Which wholly consisted of lines like these. She sat with her hands 'neath her dimpled cheeks, She sat, with her hands 'neath her crimson cheeks; She gave up mending her father's breeks, She sat, with her hands 'neath her burning cheeks, Lovers, and a Reflection. In moss-prankt dells which the sunbeams flatter (And heaven it knoweth what that may mean; Meaning, however, is no great matter) Where woods are a-tremble, with rifts atween ; Thro' God's own heather we wonn'd together, I need hardly remark it was glorious weather, (Boats in that climate are so polite), And sands were a ribbon of green endowing, And O the sun-dazzle on bark and bight! Thro' the rare red heather we danced together, (O love my Willie !) and smelt for flowers: I must mention again it was gorgeous weather, Rhymes are so scarce in this world of ours : By rises that flush'd with their purple favours, Or marjoram, kept making peacock eyes: As coal, some snowy (I ween) as curds; Or rosy as pinks, or as roses pinky They reck of no eerie To-come, those birds! But they skim over bents which the mill-stream washes, Or hang in the lift 'neath a white cloud's hem; They need no parasols, no goloshes; And good Mrs Trimmer she feedeth them. Then we thrid God's cowslips (as erst His heather) That endowed the wan grass with their golden blooms; And snapt-(it was perfectly charming weather)Our fingers at Fate and her goddess-glooms: And Willie 'gan sing (O, his notes were fluty; Wafts fluttered them out to the white-wing'd sea)Something made up of rhymes that have done much duty, Rhymes (better to put it) of ancientry :' Bowers of flowers encounter'd showers In William's carol-(O love my Willie !) A nest in a hollow, with buds to follow,' O if billows and pillows and hours and flowers, How much fewer volumes of verse there'd be! John Addington Symonds (1840-93), the son of a Bristol physician, was educated at Harrow and Balliol, won the Newdigate, and was elected a Fellow of Magdalen in 1862. Warned by chest weakness to give up the study of law, he after his marriage (1865) cheerfully chose literature as a profession, and by 1874 had collected in book form a series of sketches in Italy and Greece first published in the magazines. His Introduction to the Study of Dante (1872) was followed by Studies of the Greek Poets (1873-76), and his opus magnum on the Renaissance in Italy (6 vols. 1875-86), suggestive and brilliant in many parts, but not a complete, systematic, or entirely satisfactory presentation of so vast a subject. Shakespeare's Predecessors in the English Drama (1884) was a real contribution to the history of dramatic literature in England. Symonds wrote books on Shelley, Sidney, and Ben Jonson, on Walt Whitman and Boccaccio; masterly translations of the Sonnets of Michelangelo and Campanella (1878), of Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography, and of students' Latin songs of the twelfth century (1884); a Life of Michelangelo (1892); some volumes of verse and of essays and criticisms; and an account of his residence (for health's sake) at Davos Platz (1892). A Life was compiled from his letters by H. F. Brown (1895). Richard Jefferies (1848-87)-in full, JOHN RICHARD JEFFERIES-was born at the farmhouse of Coate, two and a half miles from Swindon in Wiltshire. He started life as a journalist on the staff of the North Wilts Herald about 1866, and for twelve years was busy with this kind of work and with writing crude novels. His name first became known by a long letter to the Times, in November 1872, on the labourers of Wiltshire, which procured him an opening to the magazines as a writer on agricultural and rural topics. In 1877 he abandoned country journalism, and moved nearer to London, hoping to make a living by his pen. In the following year he won his first real success with The Gamekeeper at Home, printed in the Pall Mall Gazette; its sub-title, 'Sketches of Natural History and Rural Life,' indicates the kind of work by which his future fame was won. Other books written in the same vein, or on similar subjects, are Wild Life in a Southern County (1879), The Amateur Poacher (1880), Wood Magic (1881), Round about a Great Estate (1881), Nature near London (1883), Life of the Fields (1884), Red Deer (on Exmoor; 1884), and The Open Air (1885). Bevis (1882) glorifies his own memories of childhood; The Story of My Heart (1883) is a strange, idealised autobiography of inner life. Besides these he wrote some later novels less characteristic of his natural vein; After London, or Wild England (1885), is a curious romance of the future -England sunk into a primitive wilderness, and not even the ruins of Westminster Abbey visible for New Zealanders or others. He died at Goring in Sussex, after a long and painful illness of six years. Within his own province, although it was not a wide one, Jefferies was admirable. He possessed a wonderful insight into the habits and ways of animals and birds and creeping things, and a great love of them. No English writer has shown a more minute and accurate acquaintance with the life of the hedgerows and woodlands and fields of southern England; the joy of life in him rises to a passion. He had a reverent feeling for nature, not only of her outward phases and aspects, but also of what may be termed her inner life, though hardly possessing Wordsworth's depth of vision. Nor were human beings excluded from the range of his observation and sympathy: he has left admirable sketches of country-folk--farmers, gamekeepers, labourers, and village-loafers; he had not a little in common with Borrow, and something with Thoreau. But as a writer he stands alone, though he has had many imitators, in the cult of nature. For many critics his method of cataloguing natural phenomena and experiences is too photographic, or like an infinity of shorthand notes written out at length. For others it is wholly delightful; Sir Walter Besant said he knew 'nothing in the English language finer, whether for the sustained style or the elevation that fills it, than The Pageant of Summer, from which this is a characteristic paragraph: Green rushes, long and thick, standing up above the edge of the ditch, told the hour of the year as distinctly as the shadows on the dial the hour of the day. Green and thick and sappy to the touch, they felt like summer, soft and elastic, as if full of life, mere rushes though they were. On the fingers they left a green scent; rushes have a separate scent of green, so, too, have ferns, very different to that of grass and leaves. Rising from brown sheaths, the tall stems enlarged a little in the middle, like classical columns, and heavy with sap and freshness, leaned against the hawthorn sprays. From the earth they had drawn its moisture. See Sir Walter Besant's Eulogy (1888) and the Life by H. S. Salt (1893). |