... The charge of Addison's "insidious enmity to Pope" is fully discussed. For this (if it ever existed, except in Pope's imagination) Pope took his revenge in the description he wrote of the "character of Mr. Addison," in the lines "Peace to all such, etc. "... Who would not weep if Atticus [Addison] were he?" first printed in Pope's Miscellanies, and afterwards inserted in the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, which now forms the Prologue to the Satires. The first published Edition (see p. 143), with Addison's name and the revise in the Prologue (see British Poets, Pope, Vol. III. p. 9), are worth comparing to see how deep-seated and permanent was the anger of the Twickenham poet.

The "classic English" of Addison receives one curious illustration in his Cato, where he writes:

"So the pure limpid stream, when foul with stains,
"Of rushing torrents and descending rains," etc.

2. BACON, FRANCIS, VISCOUNT ST. ALBAN's, commonly called LORD (1561-1626). By Dean R. W. Church. 1884.

... The Life of the "Father of Experimental Philosophy" is, as Dean Church remarks," one that it is a pain to write or to read." He entered into conflict with Sir Edward Coke in legal Courts, in politics, and also in matrimony. Coke was removed from his Judgeship, driven thence by Bacon "for his bad law," but he married the rich widow, Lady Hatton, to whom Bacon was paying Court, and in 163 Coke reaped a full revenge on Bacon, who in four months after celebrating his 60th birthday in great state was dismissed from the Chancellorship-fined £40,000-sentenced to be imprisoned during the King's pleasure-and forbidden to reside in London. Although, as a matter of fact, he went to the Tower only for two days—his fine was practically remitted—

and later he was recalled to Parliament-yet he was in every sense a ruined man. The three instances of the Falls of the Chancellors Wolsey, Bacon, and Westbury are remarkable historical studies.

3. BENTLEY, RICHARD (1662–1742). By Rev. R. C. Jebb. 1882.

Bunsen says that Bentley "was the founder of historical philology," and was a great critic alike in Latin and in Greek. His Dissertation on the Letters of Phalaris is the best known of his writings. The Letters are 148 in number, " many of them only "a few lines long, written in 'Attic' Greek of that artificial kind which begins to appear "about the time of Augustus." Bentley declared them spurious. Charles Boyle (afterwards Earl of Orrery), having edited the Letters, whilst he had not himself "asserted "their genuineness" but shown some reasons for doubting them, resented this denial of their authenticity as an insult, and alleged in reply that if the Letters were not genuine Bentley had not proved them spurious. The reply was "a tissue of superficial learn❝ing, ingenious sophistry, dexterous malice, and happy raillery," which invited Bentley's rejoinder in "that immortal dissertation" to which Boyle (who was only about eighteen or nineteen years of age at the time) prudently attempted no answer.

Pope attacked Bentley in the Dunciad (Book IV. line 201), ridiculing his preference for Port to Claret and his portentous big hat. When Bentley was questioned why Pope disliked him, he answered: "I talked against his Homer and the portentous cub never "forgives." The reference to the hat is said to have been made because, when overplagued by a botanist, after dinner, with classical questions, Bentley, after trying in vain to turn the tide of talk to some general subjects, cried to his constant friend in college, "Walker-my hat," and left the Hall.

He tried to improve Milton's Paradise Lost, and published an Edition with 800 emendations.

4. BUNYAN, JOHN (1628-1688). Eleventh Thousand. By James

... Mr. Froude says that Bunyan was "born to be the Poet-apostle of the English "middle classes," and perhaps everybody (with the Author) regrets that no letters or diaries have been preserved or found to tell us more of this extraordinary man. Macaulay goes so far as to conclude his "Essay on Southey's Edition of Pilgrim's "Progress" (Collected Essays, Vol. I. p. 367) with the remark: "We are not afraid to "say that though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of the "seventeenth century there were only two great creative minds. One of those minds "produced the Paradise Lost, the other the Pilgrim's Progress." All would have liked some authentic accounts of Bunyan's youthful "half-madness," when he tried to work miracles to show he had faith—tried to prove himself a Jew because he believed all Israelites would be saved-and was harassed to know "whether the Turks had not as "good a Scripture to prove their Mahomet the Saviour as we to prove our Jesus is ?”— and tortured himself with illusions till he was pursued by a desire to commit" the "unpardonable sin."

5. BURKE, EDMUND (1729 (?) –1797). Twelfth Thousand. By John Morley. 1882.

"Burke's is one of the most abiding names in English history." His impeachment of Warren Hastings, his love of liberty and support of the American refusal to

be taxed by the mother country, his stern denial that liberty meant or included the principles of the French Revolution, will make his writings and speeches ever memorable. It is worth notice that he purchased a large Estate at Beaconsfield and would have taken the title of Beaconsfield from that purchase, but that, overwhelmed by the death of his son in 1794, he refused the proffered dignity. The earnestness of the man who would sacrifice a lifelong friendship for political principle is well related in the account given of the Fox and Burke quarrel, in the House of Commons, in 1791.

So particular was this writer that he had all his principal works printed once and often twice at a private press before submitting them to his publisher.

6. BURNS, ROBERT (1759-1796). By Principal Shairp (Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford). 1879.

... The Author sets out by remarking that "in all but his poetry Burns's was a de“feated life, sad and heart-depressing to contemplate beyond the lives even of most "poets."

Carlyle's Essay on Burns (Collected Works, Vol. VII. pp. 3–71), published in the Edinburgh Review in 1828, is a commentary on his character, judging him "at once, "wisely and tenderly." Burns's passionate youth never became clear manhood, his whole life was "only youth" (p. 40)—but his failure lies chiefly in his own heart," not "chiefly with the world" (p. 62). In Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero Worship" he declares Burns to be "the most gifted British soul we had in all that century of his" (see Collected Works, Vol. XII. p. 224).

An ever present consciousness (says a Critic) that his "thoughtless follies" had "laid "him low" and spoilt the whole purpose of his life-these make up the history of his later days.

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7. BYRON, GEORGE GORDON NOEL BYRON LORD (1788-1824). Ninth Thousand. By John Nichol. 1883.

"Alternately the idol and the horror of his contemporaries," he has been treated almost as an outcast, but now seems on the tide of an increasing popularity. As to “his "matter," Mr. Nichol makes a clever remark: “We cannot claim for Byron any abso"lute originality. His sources have been found in Rousseau, Voltaire, Chateaubriand, "Beaumarchais, Lauzun, Gibbon, Bayle, St. Pierre, Alfieri, Casti, Cuvier, La Bruyère, Wieland, Swift, Sterne, Le Sage, Goethe, scraps of the classics, and the Book of Job. "Absolute originality in a late age is only possible to the hermit, the lunatic, or the "sensation novelist. Byron, like the rovers before Minos, was not ashamed of his "piracy." The Author's summary is: “We may learn much from him still, when we "have ceased to disparage, as our fathers ceased to idolize, a name in which there is "so much warning and so much example."

8. CHAUCER, GEOFFREY (circa 1340-1400). Eighth Thousand. By Adolphus William Ward. 1881.

... Born the Son and Grandson of well-to-do Vintners, the old Poet and his family made good way in the world. He was 17th on a list of 37 Valetti or Yeomen of the King. He was appointed poet laureate and was paid by a butt of wine every year, which was commuted in 1378 into an annuity of 20 marks. He married Philippa

Roet, a sister-in-law of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and one of the demoiselles of Queen Philippa-his son Sir Thomas became Speaker of the House of Commonsand his daughter married the Duke of Suffolk.

The general notion till recently was that he was born in 1328, but neither from his professing in the Poem that Philogenet (the name he assumes in the Court of Love) was 18, nor by the fact that, in 1386, he declared himself to be forty years and upwards, in giving evidence in a case tried at Westminster, is the case made clear. It is thought 1340 better agrees with the known facts.

He is styled by Wordsworth "The morning star of English Poetry," and Sir Philip Sidney wrote that his Canterbury Tales were the first of English poems that ever "could hold children from their play or keep old men near the chimney corner." According to the "Plan" of the Tales we should have 62 Tales (two from each Pilgrim and two from the Host); we have only 24, and of these three are incomplete. It has been written of Chaucer: "Superior to any that preceded him and unsur"passed by any, even the most gifted, of his successors, he must ever be regarded the "great classic of English poesy, as Dante is of Italian or Homer of Greek."

9. COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR (1772-1834). By H. D. Traill. 1884.

... The life of Coleridge is as "romantic as it was sad." A man of great beginnings, yet he has left much, like his proposed magnum opus on Christianity, and his "Christabel," unbegun or unfinished. He says that he composed Kubla Khan in a dream immediately after reading a description of the Kubla's Palace in Purchas's Pilgrims, and that on awaking he wrote it down in its present fragmentary state.

Messrs. Longmans, his publishers, told him that the greater part of the first Edition of the "Lyrical Ballads" was sold to seafaring men, who, having heard of the "An"cient Mariner," took the volume for a naval song-book.

His critical remarks on Shakespeare and the great poets of England and Italy are extremely valuable.

He, Southey, and Wordsworth are known as The Lake Poets, from their residing amidst the Cumberland Lakes.

10. COWPER, WILLIAM (1731-1800). Ninth Thousand. By Goldwin Smith. 1881.

. He was emphatically a Christian poet, and his poetry is remarkable for its naturalness and originality. It is strange that John Gilpin should have been written by so gloomy and desponding a victim to fits of temporary insanity as poor Cowper, and that this," an inexhaustible source of merriment and laughter," should, as he himself tells us, have been "written whilst he was in his saddest mood."

II. DEFOE, DANIEL (1661-1731). By William Minto. Ninth Thousand.

1885.

... He added the "De" to his family name, which was Foe. He was a prolific writer, and his works are variously reckoned at from 210 to 250, according as their authenticity is admitted or denied. They are mostly political-for some he got reward-for others he was " fined, pilloried, and imprisoned." His Robinson Crusoe

and some of his fictitious narratives are immortal. Among the latter the best are "The "Memoirs of a Cavalier" and "The History of the Great Plague of London." "To

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no work," it has been aptly remarked, "can we with greater justice apply Fielding's 'boast, than we can to Robinson Crusoe, that in Fiction, as distinguished from his"tory where only the names and dates are authentic, everything is true but the names "and dates."

There is a venerable story that the " Apparition of Mrs. Veal" is probably unique in its origin and result. Defoe's publisher had a large Edition of an unsaleable divinity book by one Drelincourt on his shelves, on “The Consolations of Death." In despair the Publisher appealed to Defoe, who wrote a Preface consisting of an elaborate narrative of "a true relation of the apparition of one Mrs. Veal the next day after her death to "one Mrs. Bargrave the 8th of September, 1705, which apparition recommends the "perusal of Drelincourt's Book of Consolations against death." The narrative was complete in its deceptive character, and it would have been next to impossible to guess its intent had not Defoe, towards the end of his story, quietly added: "Drelincourt's "Book of Death is, since this happened, bought up strangely."

The story is now ruthlessly remitted to the limbo of myths. "Mrs. Veal's Apparition "was not published," we are now asked to believe, with Drelincourt's Book till the fourth Edition of "that work," which (we are further told) "was already popular." Evidently all history as to Authors and Literature will be rewritten in this nineteenth century.

The "great pit in Finsbury" spoken of in Defoe's narrative was first used for interment at the time of the Great Plague in 1665. The old burial-ground popularly known as "Bunhill Fields" contains the graves of many notabilities. There lie Defoe himself, John Bunyan, Isaac Watts, General Fleetwood, George Fox the first of the Quakers, and Stothard the great painter.

12. DE QUINCEY, THOMAS (1785-1859).—Sixth Thousand. By David Masson.

1881.

... David Masson had the advantage “ of having met and conversed with De Quincey "so as to retain a perfect recollection of his appearance, voice, and manner, and of 'being familiar with the scenes [Edinburgh] amid which De Quincey spent the last "nine-and-twenty years of his life."

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With the two exceptions of De Quincey's "Logic of Political Economy" and his novel, Klosterheim," all the products of his pen during the forty years of his literary life ap"peared originally in the pages of magazines or other serials."

13. DICKENS, CHARLES (1812-1870). By Adolphus William Ward.

1882.

*. It is often discussed whether Dickens or Thackeray will "live" the longer. Mr. Minto, in the Article on Dickens written for the Encyclopædia Britannica (Ninth Edition), maintains that "the novels of Dickens will live longer because they take hold "of the permanent and universal sentiments of the race, sentiments which pervade all "classes, and which no culture can ever eradicate; and, unless culture, in

"the future, works a miracle, and carries its changes beneath the surface, we may be "certain that Dickens will keep his hold."