letters, but among the social dignitaries of the great city. After his death Amhurst wrote:

"Enough for him that Congreve was his friend,
That Garth and Steele and Addison commend,
That Brunswick with the bays his temples bound."

The friendship with Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, Prior, and others stimulated Rowe's intellectual ardour and widened the range of his knowledge of men and of society, and yet all this knowledge never gave him the skill to write a good comedy; when he attempted it, he failed signally. But he had the good sense to perceive wherein his strength and his weakness lay. His second tragedy was probably the indirect cause of his being appointed laureate. In this play he catered to the popular hatred of France, and he complimented King William in language both enthusiastic and animated. "Tamerlane" became very popular, and was performed on every birthday of the king and on every anniversary of his landing on British soil. The success of "Tamerlane was followed by that of "The Fair Penitent." Its principal character-Lothario-has become a household word, the immortal type of the careless, faithless lover. And we can trace a resemblance in it to Richardson's famous Lovelace. To Rowe's devotion to tragedy alone we owe " Jane Shore" and "Lady Jane Grey." The tenderness, the grace, the pathos of these plays show how thorough and affectionate had been Rowe's study of the great Elizabethan drama. proof of Rowe's power is in the fact that they held the stage so long and were so popular even in the age other than his own. Jane Shore was one of the great Sarah Siddons' favourite characters. Sir James Mackintosh spoke with great feeling of the way she acted it, but he added that even were the play never seen upon the stage, but simply read, it would prove itself to be most thrilling poetry, dealing as it does with some of the most touching phases of remorse and pain. But with all the genuine power of these two great tragedies, Rowe's chief distinction in the history of English literature lies in the fact that he was the first to bring out an edition of Shakespeare, and to inaugurate that revival of the legitimate Shakespearean drama which gave Shakespeare his rightful place in the hearts of the people. His admiration of Shakespeare was honest and sincere, and the effect of that admiration is seen in the excellence of his own work.

The

Rowe had several important offices which brought him both influence and money; he was under-secretary to the Duke of Queensbury, clerk of the Council to the Prince of Wales, etc. It was therefore not surprising that on the death of Tate, the Lord Chamberlain should select this handsome, courtly, and

It

popular poet to be laureate. The odes Rowe wrote have a good deal of poetic vigour and eloquence, and give animation and grace to themes essentially conventional and commonplace. must be remembered that he wrote these odes for only three short years, whereas poor Tate had been obliged to grind them out for three-and-twenty years. Perhaps Rowe's inspiration would have failed him under such pressure. His odes, few as they are, have that glow and passion, and that eloquence of versification which are absent from those of Tate or of any of Rowe's successors in the Laureateship till Thomas Warton appeared. And yet Rowe's poetry would have been called by Macaulay a fair example of the critical poetry of his age, the "poetry to which the memory, the judgment, and the wit contribute far more than the imagination.'

There were few lampoons directed against Rowe. His charm of manner,his magnetism of character, made him a favourite with all the wits who usually write such things. Though not strictly domestic in his habits, his gay and vivacious disposition leading him much into the life of the court and of London society, he lived comparitively free from the vices and extravagances of his time. He was married twice, and this in spite of the fact that Pope thought him heartless, and Addison considered his heart of very light material. A son and daughter made him very happy, and the latter inherited much of her father's beauty of person and brilliancy of mind. She won such a reputation that on her death an inscription to her was put beneath the inscription upon her father's monument in Westminster Abbey.

This poet, so rich in friends and in all that makes life desirable, who was, as Pope said, seldom grave, but would laugh all day long, and do nothing else but laugh, had to bid the world good-night at the early age of forty-five. The funeral service was read by the famous Bishop Atterbury, who had been a schoolfellow of the poet years before. He was buried near Chaucer in the Poet's Corner, and Pope wrote an epitaph beginning:

"Thy relics, Rowe, to this fair urn we trust,
And sacred place by Dryden's awful dust.
Peace to thy gentle shade, and endless rest

Pope subsequently changed the epitaph to one much longer but not so fine.

SELECTIONS FROM ROWE.

ODE FOR THE NEW YEAR, 1717.

WINTER! thou hoary, venerable sire,
All richly in thy furry mantle clad;
What thoughts of mirth can feeble age inspire
To make thy careful wrinkled brow so glad?

Now I see the reason plain;

Now I see the jolly train :

Snowy headed Winter leads;

Spring and Summer next succeeds;

Yellow Autumn brings the rear.

Thou art father of the year.

While from the frosty mellow'd earth
Abounding Plenty takes her birth,
The conscious sire exulting sees
The seasons spread their rich increase;
So dusky night and chaos smil'd
On beauteous form, their lovely child.

Our passions, like the seasons, turn,
And now we laugh, and now we mourn.
Britannia, late oppress'd with dread,
Hung her declining, drooping head:
A better visage now she wears,
And now at once she quits her fears:
Strife and war no more she knows,
Rebel sons, nor foreign foes,