And fast and far, before the star

Of day-spring, rush'd we through the glade,
And saw at dawn the lofty bawn
Of Castle-Connor fade.

Sweet was to us the hermitage

Of this unplough'd, untroddden shore;
Like birds all joyous from the cage,
For man's neglect we loved it more,
And well he knew, my huntsman dear,
To search the game with hawk and spear;
While I, his evening food to dress,
Would sing to him in happiness.
But, oh, that midnight of despair!
When I was doom'd to rend my hair :
The night, to me, of shrieking sorrow!
The night, to him, that had no morrow!

When all was hush'd, at even tide,
I heard the baying of their beagle :
Be hush'd! my Connocht Moran cried,
'Tis but the screaming of the eagle.
Alas! 'twas not the eyrie's sound;
Their bloody bands had track'd us out;
Up-listening starts our couchant hound-
And, hark! again, that nearer shout
Brings faster on the murderers.
Spare-spare him-Brazil-Desmond fierce!
In vain-no voice the adder charms;
Their weapons cross'd my sheltering arms:
Another's sword has laid him low-
Another's and another's;

And every hand that dealt the blow-
Ah me! it was a brother's!
Yes, when his moanings died away,
Their iron hands had dug the clay,
And o'er his burial turf they trod,

And I behold!-oh God! oh God!-
His life-blood oozing from the sod!

Warm in his death-wounds sepulchred,
Alas! my warrior's spirit brave
Nor mass nor ulla-lulla heard,
Lamenting, soothe his grave.
Dragg'd to their hated mansion back,
How long in thraldom's grasp I lay
I knew not, for my soul was black,
And knew no change of night or day.
One night of horror round me grew;
Or if I saw, or felt, or knew,
"Twas but when those grim visages,
The angry brothers of my race,
Glared on each eye-ball's aching throb,
And check'd my bosom's power to sob,
Or when my heart with pulses drear
Beat like a death-watch to my ear.
But Heaven, at last, my soul's eclipse
Did with a vision bright inspire;
I woke and felt upon my lips
A prophetess's fire.

Thrice in the east a war-drum beat,
I heard the Saxon's trumpet sound,
And ranged, as to the judgment-seat,
My guilty, trembling brothers round.
Clad in the helm and shield they came;
For now De Bourgo's sword and flame
Had ravaged Ulster's boundaries,
And lighted up the midnight skies.

The standard of O'Connor's sway
Was in the turret where I lay ;
That standard, with so dire a look,
As ghastly shone the moon and pale,
I gave, that every bosom shook
Beneath its iron mail.

And go! (I cried) the combat seek,
Ye hearts that unappalled bore
The anguish of a sister's shriek,
Go!-and return no more!

For sooner guilt the ordeal-brand
Shall grasp unhurt, than ye shall hold
The banner with victorious hand,
Beneath a sister's curse unroll'd.
O stranger! by my country's loss!
And by my love! and by the cross!

I swear I never could have spoke
The curse that sever'd nature's yoke;
But that a spirit o'er me stood,
And fired me with the wrathful mood;
And frenzy to my heart was given
To speak the malison of heaven.

From 'Ode to the Memory of Burns.'
O deem not, 'midst this worldly strife,
An idle art the Poet brings:
Let high Philosophy control,
And sages calm, the stream of life,
'Tis he refines its fountain-springs,
The nobler passions of the soul.

It is the muse that consecrates
The native banner of the brave,
Unfurling, at the trumpet's breath,
Rose, thistle, harp; 'tis she elates
To sweep the field or ride the wave,
A sunburst in the storm of death.

Farewell, high chief of Scottish song!
That could'st alternately impart
Wisdom and rapture in thy page,

And brand each vice with satire strong;
Whose lines are mottoes of the heart,
Whose truths electrify the sage.

Farewell! and ne'er may Envy dare
To wring one baleful poison drop
From the crush'd laurels of thy bust:
But while the lark sings sweet in air,
Still may the grateful pilgrim stop,

To bless the spot that holds thy dust.

The authorities for Campbell's biography are his Life and Letters by W. Beattie (1840), and Cyrus Redding's Literary Reminiscences of him (1859). There is also a monograph on him by Cuthbert Hadden in the Famous Scots' series (1900; unsympathetic). The best popular edition of his poems is the Aldine (1875; new ed. 1890; based on that of his nephew, the Rev. W. A. Hill, 1860), with a Memoir by William Allingham the poet.

Lady Dacre (1768-1854), one of the most accomplished women of her time, was a daughter of Admiral Ogle, and was married first to Mr Wilmot, an officer in the Guards, and in 1819 to the twenty-first Lord Dacre. She wrote poems and four dramas, of which Ina, on an AngloSaxon plot, was produced at Drury Lane by Sheridan; and her translations from Petrarch

were published with Ugo Foscolo's Essays on Petrarch (1823). A separate volume of her Translations from the Italian was privately printed in 1836. Her one daughter, the wife of Mr Sullivan, a Hertfordshire clergyman, wrote The Recollections of a Chaperon and Tales of the Peerage and Peasantry, both of which were edited by Lady Dacre.

Lady Charlotte Bury (1775-1861) wrote nearly a score of books (most of them anonymously), including several fashionable novelsFlirtation, Separation, A Marriage in High Life, The Divorced, Family Records, Love, some poems, two books of devotion, and, as was then believed and still seems probable, the Diary illustrative of the Times of George IV., a scandalous chronicle, published in 1838. Born Lady Charlotte Campbell-a daughter of the Duke of Argyll by his duchess, 'the beautiful Miss Gunning,' widow of the Duke of Hamilton-she had for her first husband Colonel John Campbell. During her widowhood and before her marriage to the Rev. E. J. Bury, while holding an appointment in the household of the Princess of Wales, she seems to have kept this Diary, in which she recorded the foibles and failings of the unfortunate princess and other members of the court. The work was strongly condemned by the leading critical journals, and was received generally with much professed disapprobation, but nevertheless ran swiftly through several editions.

Mary Brunton (1778-1818), novelist, was born in the small, bare, and wind-swept island of Burray in the Orkneys, the daughter of Colonel Balfour of Elwick and a niece of Lord Ligonier. Mary was carefully educated by her mother, and at Edinburgh thoroughly acquired French and Italian; but while she was only sixteen her mother died, and for four years the cares and duties of the household devolved on her. Then she was married to the minister of Bolton in Haddingtonshire; and when in 1803 Mr Brunton was called to one of the churches in Edinburgh, she had opportunity of meeting cultivated society. 'Till I began Self-control, she says in one of her letters, 'I had never in my life written anything but a letter or a recipe, excepting a few hundreds of vile rhymes, from which I desisted by the time I had gained the wisdom of fifteen years; therefore I was so ignorant of the art on which I was entering, that I formed scarcely any plan for my tale. I merely intended to show the power of the religious principle in bestowing self-command, and to bear testimony against a maxim as immoral as indelicate, that a reformed rake makes the best husband.' Of Self-control, published anonymously in 1811, the first edition was sold in a month, and a second and third were called for. In 1814 Discipline was also well received. She began a third work, Emmeline, but did not live to finish it. Next year her husband published (1819) the un

finished tale with a memoir. In Self-control the authoress showed acute observation, and attained individuality in her portraits; but the plot is very unskilfully managed, and the style at times conventional and stilted. Hargrave is obviously based on Lovelace, and Laura is the Clarissa of the tale.

Christian Isobel Johnstone (1781-1857) published anonymously Clan Albin (1815), a tale written before the appearance of Waverley, and like Waverley aiming to cast a romantic glow over Highland character and scenery. A second novel, Elizabeth de Bruce, was published in 1827 by Mrs Johnstone, who wrote some interesting tales for children-The Diversions of Hollycot, The Knights of the Round Table, &c.-and was an extensive contributor to the periodical literature of the day. She was for some years editor of Taif's Magazine. But the most notable and successful of her publications was the unromantic Cook and Housewife's Manual, by Mrs Margaret Dods, familiarly known as 'Meg Dods's Cookery' (the pseudonym being taken from St Ronan's Well, which went through ten editions between 1826 and 1854. Born in Fife, she was the wife of a Dunfermline schoolmaster, who became an editor and publisher, latterly in Edinburgh.

Jane Porter (1776-1850) and Anna Maria Porter (1780-1832) were daughters of an Irish army-surgeon, who died in 1779, leaving a widow and five children with but a small patrimony for their support. Mrs Porter removed from Durham to Edinburgh while Anna Maria was still in her nurse-maid's arms, and there the two girls and their brother, Sir Robert Ker Porter, received the rudiments of their education. Sir Walter Scott, when a student at college, was intimate with the family, and as to Jane we are told he was very fond of either teasing the little female student when very gravely engaged with her book, or more often fondling her on his knees, and telling her stories of witches and warlocks, till both forgot their former playful merriment in the marvellous interest of the tale.' Chiefly with a view to the education of her children, Mrs Porter left Edinburgh in 1790 for London, settling finally at Esher in Surrey. Anna Maria became an authoress at the age of twelve, with Artless Tales (2 vols. 1793-95). In 1797 she published Walsh Colville, and in 1798 a three-volume novel, Octavia. A numerous series of works of fiction followed-The Lake of Killarney (1804), A Sailor's Friendship and a Soldier's Love (1805), The Hungarian Brothers (1807), Don Sebastian, or the House of Braganza (1809), Ballad Romances and other Poems (1811), The Recluse of Norway (1814), Honor O'Hara (1826), &c. Altogether, Miss Porter's works amount to about fifty volumes. She died at Bristol while on a visit to her brother, Dr Porter of that city, in 1832. The most popular and perhaps the best of Anna Maria Porter's novels is her Don Sebastian. In all of them she

portrays with warmth and sympathy the domestic affections, and the charms of benevolence and virtue; but in Don Sebastian we have besides an interesting though melancholy plot and characters vividly sketched. Anna's sister, Jane, was later in developing her literary talent, but had a much greater gift; and her two romances, Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803) and The Scottish Chiefs (1810), were both exceptionally popular in their day. Thaddeus, high-flown and but imperfectly true to Polish character or historical setting, was translated into French

blank failures. Her last considerable enterprise was on a work given out as a record of real experience merely 'edited' by her. Sir Edward Seaward's Shipwreck, as written in his own Diary (1831), although the authorship was long ascribed to her, was probably the work of her eldest brother, Dr William Ogilvie Porter (1774-1850). Another brother, Sir Robert Ker Porter (17771842), battle-painter, travelled much, was consul in Venezuela, and wrote books of travel in Russia, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Georgia, Persia, and Armenia.

Joanna Baillie borrows freely from Jane Porter's Wallace for her equally non-authentic 'William Wallace' in the Metrical Legends, and cites from the Scottish Chiefs this passage as one of 'terrific sublimity :'

The Burning of the Barns of Ayr.

When all was ready, Wallace, with the mighty spirit of retribution nerving every limb, mounted to the roof, and tearing off part of the tiling, with a flaming brand in his hand, shewed himself glittering in arms to the affrighted revellers beneath, and as he threw it blazing amongst them, he cried aloud, 'The blood of the murdered calls for vengeance, and it comes.' At that instant

JANE PORTER.

From the Drawing by George Henry Harlow in the National Portrait Gallery.

and German, delighted Kosciuszko, and brought its authoress an honorary office from the King of Würtemberg. The Chiefs is wonderfully untrue to real history and national manners; it is stilted, conventional, sentimental, and its Wallace is alternately a drawing-room hero and a stagey poseur, not the rough captain of a rougher militia. Yet the story is animated and picturesque, was enormously popular in Scotland, was translated into French, German, and Russian, and had the honour of being proscribed by Napoleon. It used to be credited (contrary to probability) with an even higher honour-that of having suggested to Scott the idea of the Waverley Novels. But Thaddeus and the Chiefs are almost the only historical novels before Scott's time that can be said still to live. The Chiefs was more than a dozen times reprinted before the end of the nineteenth century, and Thaddeus was at least twice reprinted in its last decade. Other novels were The Pastor's Fireside, Duke Christian of Luneburg (the idea of which was suggested by George IV., the materials supplied by Dr Clarke), and The Forty Footsteps. Two or three plays by her were

ANNA MARIA PORTER.

From the Drawing by George Henry Harlow in the National Portrait Gallery.

the matches were put to the faggots which surrounded the building, and the whole party, springing from their seats, hastened towards the doors: all were fastened, and, retreating again in the midst of the room, they fearfully looked up to the tremendous figure above, . which, like a supernatural being, seemed to avenge their crimes and rain down fire on their guilty heads. . . . The rising smoke from within and without the building now obscured his terrific form. The shouts of the Scots as the fire covered its walls, and the streaming flames

licking the windows and pouring into every opening of the building, raised such a terror in the breasts of the wretches within that with the most horrible cries they again and again flew to the doors to escape. Not an avenue appeared; almost suffocated with smoke, and scorched with the blazing rafters that fell from the roof, they at last made a desperate attempt to break a passage through the great portal.

Jane Austen

was born 16th December 1775, at Steventon Rectory, near Basingstoke in Hampshire, the youngest of seven children-one other daughter, Cassandra, and five sons, of whom two rose to be admirals. Her father, the Rev. George Austen, was a competent scholar, who carefully cherished his daughter's talent; her education was better than that which most girls got towards the close of the eighteenth century; she learnt French and Italian, and had a good acquaintance with English literature, her favourite authors being Richardson, Johnson, Cowper, Crabbe, Fanny Burney, and Scott. In 1801 the family settled at Bath, and after the father's death there in 1805, the widow and two daughters removed to Southampton, and in 1809 to the village of Chawton near Alton. Jane had begun to write her novels as early at least as 1796, and four of them were published anonymously in her lifetime-Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield | Park (1814), and Emma (1816). In May 1817 ill-health rendered it necessary that she should remove to some place where constant medical advice could be secured. She went to Winchester, and died there on the 18th July 1817, her fortytwo years of placid existence having, save for a love disappointment about which she said little, been darkened by no sore trials, and undisturbed by any but the gentler emotions. The insidious consumption which carried her off seemed only to increase the powers of her mind; she wrote while she could hold pen or pencil, and the day before her death composed stanzas instinct with fancy and vigour. A few months after her death her friends gave to the world two unpublished novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, the first written as early as 1798, the latter finished only in 1816. By pretty general consent Pride and Prejudice is ranked as her masterpiece. But as Mr Austin Dobson has recorded: 'There are who swear by Persuasion; there are who prefer Emma and Mansfield Park; . . . and there is even a section which advocates the pre-eminence of Northanger Abbey' a proof, surely, of the abounding charm of all of them. Sense and Sensibility has fewest champions, or none for pre-eminency.

Though none of her works was published till the next century, three of her most characteristic ones-Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, and the first draft of Sense and Sensibility—were finished in the eighteenth, and her manner was fully formed. Her work shows the most charac

teristic type of the pure domestic novel. She drew her material from what she actually saw around her; her experience of life was somewhat limited, and even mildly monotonous. This and her own temperament, more than any deliberate critical purpose, determined her to a kind of novelwriting completely opposed to what was then in vogue-the Udolpho, St Leon, and Monk type. Northanger Abbey is, partly at least, a deliberate parody of this style; and it was unquestionably her conscious conviction that a true picture of ordinary life could be made as interesting as the tale of lofty romance and overdrawn sentiment, of daggers and bowls, impossible disguises, incredible conjunctions, monstrous crimes, preternatural agonies and remorse. The charm of her work lies in its truth and simplicity. She gives us plain representations of English society in the middle and higher classes-sets us down in country-house and cottage, and introduces us to an entertaining company whose characters are displayed amid the ordinary incidents of daily life, and in marvellously lifelike dialogues and conversations. No doubt the same characters appear under various names, her brightly drawn groups consist of the same or similar persons. There is no attempt to attain to high things, to startle with scenes of surprising daring or distress, to make us forget that we are among commonplace mortals and humdrum existence. The materials she works on would seem to promise little for the novel-reader; in any but the most skilful hands they would not attract; yet Miss Austen's minute circumstantiality, her multiplicity of almost commonplace details, merely exhibit, as Mr W. H. Pollock has said, 'the triumph of the genius which endues commonplace with rarity, which makes of characters that might be met any day in the present time with a difference only of manners, forms of thought and emotion that may be encountered at any moment, a real possession for ever.' How well Miss Austen estimated her own literary powers may be seen from an amusing correspondence which she had with a Mr Clarke, the librarian of the Prince Regent, as a consequence of her dedication of Emma to the 'first gentleman in Europe.' Mr Clarke suggested that she should write a novel depicting the habits of life and character and enthusiasm of a clergyman who should pass his time between the metropolis and the country,' and tried to fire her ambition with the suggestion that on such a subject she might beat both Goldsmith and La Fontaine. But Miss Austen was not to be tempted. The comic part, she said, she might do, but not the good, the enthusiastic, the literary.' She had not the knowledge to imagine conversations on 'science and philosophy,' or to supply the 'quotations and allusions' that should adorn the talk of a learned divine. Nor was she less decided in her rejection of Mr Clarke's next proposal (in view of the projected marriage of the Princess Charlotte and

Prince Leopold) of 'an historical romance illustrative of the august house of Coburg.' 'I could not,' she answered, 'sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No, I must keep to my own style, and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.'

The details in Jane Austen's works are not, as in Balzac, multiplied overmuch; they all aid in developing and discriminating her characters, who, if they do not throb and thrill with passion, have amazing vitality and lifelikeness; they are presented with extraordinary dramatic truth and effect; every one says the right thing in the right place and in the right way.' 'Of all his successors she is the one who most nearly resembles Richardson in the power of impressing reality upon her characters.' Wherever Miss Austen introduces us, we soon find ourselves amongst friends and neighbours, more familiar to us, in spite of their old-fashioned dresses and old-world phrases, than many of the people amongst whom we actually live. She is amazingly deft in delicate ridicule of womanly foibles and vanity, and is great on mistakes in the education of girls on family differences, obstinacy, and pride-on the distinctions between the different classes of society, and the nicer shades of feeling and conduct as they ripen into love or friendship or subside into indifference or dislike. We do not find, we do not miss that morbid colouring of the stronger and darker passions which so many novelists of her time affected. The clear daylight of nature as reflected in domestic life is her genial and inexhaustible element. Yet as every work of art, every true story, has its ethical value, a more pointed moral lesson can hardly be conveyed than in the distress of the Bertram family in Mansfield Park, brought about by the vanity and callousness of the two daughters, who had been taught nothing but 'accomplishments.' Such criticisms of life dawn on us in the development of the story, not by thesis or disquisition, and they tell with double force because they are inculcated not in didactic style, but by art skilfully imitating nature. And nature teaches the most unwilling pupils.

The novels were well received from the beginning, but found their warmest admirers after they had been many years before the world. Whately, an enthusiastic critic, compared Jane Austen's method to that of the Dutch painters; she herself to miniature work. Her scope is limited, but within it she is wonderfully perfect. G. H. Lewes declared that no author had a truer sense of proportioning means to ends; and in this Charlotte Brontë, a not too sympathetic critic, agreed.

marvellously acute in observing, skilful in portraying what she interested herself in, gifted with true humour and a vein of gentle but effective satire; poetry was not her forte, and she deliberately turned her back on romance. Sir Walter Scott, after reading Pride and Prejudice for the third time, thus summed up Jane Austen in his diary with the authority of a master and with an unforgettable contrast: 'That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements of feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bowwow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted creature died so early!' Macaulay wrote: 'I have now read once again all Miss Austen's novels; charming they are. There are in the world no compositions which approach nearer to perfection;' and even went so far as to declare that she approached nearest to Shakespeare in characterdrawing an appreciation recently defended by Mr Pollock: 'Her place is unique amongst women novelists.' Coleridge, Southey, and Sydney Smith were amongst her admirers, a representative trio. Justin M'Carthy is almost the only nameworthy writer who has of late ventured to speak of her as 'a disappearing author;' the general consensus is that she is as highly thought of as ever both by critics and by the general public. Edward FitzGerald in one of his letters (1860) styles her 'perfect;' in another, eleven years afterwards, he in one point modifies this judgment by complaining that she is capital as far as she goes, but she never goes out of the Parlour; if but Magnus Troil, or Jack Bunce, or even one of Fielding's Brutes, would but dash in upon the Gentility, and swear a round Oath or two!'

Men and Women.