Henry Crabb Robinson (1775-1867), born of middle-class and Dissenting parentage at Bury St Edmunds, was educated there and at Devizes, and then became articled clerk to a Colchester attorney (1790-95). In youth he was an extreme Radical, a disciple of Godwin, and a friend and admirer of martyrs for reform like Hardy and Thelwall. He studied five years at Jena, Weimar, and elsewhere in Germany (1800-5), making friends or acquaintances of nearly all the great German spirits of the day; and during 1807-9 he was engaged for the Times in Holstein and afterwards in Spain, and so is entitled to be regarded as the first war-correspondent. He was at Corunna during the retreat of Sir John Moore, and has described in his Diary the state of things in the town at that anxious time. After his return to England in 1809 his engagement with the Times was ended, and he began to keep terms at the Middle Temple as a student of law. In 1813, at the age of thirty-eight, he was called to the Bar, from which, having risen to be leader of the Norfolk circuit, he retired in 1828 with £500 a year. In looking back on his life, Mr Robinson used to say that two of the wisest acts he had done were going to the Bar and quitting the Bar.' Thenceforth he lived chiefly in London, with frequent tours both at home and abroad till 1863, giving and receiving much hospitality, until at the ripe age of ninety-one he died unmarried. A Dissenter and a Liberal, he was one of the founders of the London University (1828), and an early member of the Athenæum Club (1824). A splendid talker, who 'talked about everything but his own good deeds,' he was also a buoyant companion, an earnest thinker, a prodigious reader, content not to publish but to keep a Diary. 'I early found,' he says, 'that I had not the literary ability to give me such a place among English authors as I should have desired; but I thought that I had an opportunity of gaining a knowledge of many of the most distinguished men of the age, and that I might do some good by keeping a record of my interviews with them. True, I want in an eminent degree the Boswell faculty; still, the names recorded in his great work are not so important as Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Wieland, the Duchesses Amalia and Louisa of Weimar, Tieck; as Madame de Staël, La Fayette, Abbé Grégoire, Benjamin Constant; as Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, Lamb, Rogers, Hazlitt, Mrs Barbauld, Clarkson, &c., &c., &c., for I could add a great number of minor stars. And yet what has come of all this? Nothing. What will come of it? Perhaps nothing.' All this was surely false modesty or something like it; to his Boswellian gift, his opportunities, and his well-directed industry in this department ample witness is borne by his Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence, which, edited in 1869 in three volumes by Dr Thomas Sadler, will last as long as literature itself. With Wordsworth in the Lake Country. September 10th (1816).—After I had taken a cold dinner, Mr Wordsworth came to me, and between three and four we set out for Cockermouth; he on horseback, I on foot. We started in a heavy shower, which thoroughly wetted me. The rain continued with but little intermission during a great part of the afternoon, and therefore the fine scenery in the immediate neighbourhood of Keswick was entirely lost. The road, too, was so very bad that all my attention was requisite to keep my shoes on my feet. I have no recollection of any village or of any scenery, except some pleasing views of the lake of Bassenthwaite, and of Skiddaw, from which we seemed to recede so little that even when we were near Cockermouth the mountain looked near to us. In the close and interesting conversation we kept up, Mr Wordsworth was not quite attentive to the road, and we lost our way. A boy, however, who guided us through some terribly dirty lanes, put us right. By this time it was become dark, and it was late before we reached the 'Globe' at Cockermouth. If this were the place, and if my memory were good, I could enrich my journal by retailing Wordsworth's conversation. He is an eloquent speaker, and he talked upon his own art and his own works very feelingly and very profoundly; but I cannot venture to state more than a few intelligible results, for I own that much of what he said was above my comprehension. He stated, what I had before taken for granted, that most of his lyrical ballads were founded on some incident he had witnessed or heard of. He mentioned the origin of several poems. 'Lucy Gray,' that tender and pathetic narrative of a child mysteriously lost on a common, was occasioned by the death of a child who fell into the lock of a canal. His object was to exhibit poetically entire solitude, and he represents the child as observing the day-moon, which no town or village girl would even notice. near The Leech-gatherer' he did actually meet Grasmere, except that he gave to his poetic character powers of mind which his original did not possess. The fable of The Oak and the Broom' proceeded from his beholding a rose in just such a situation as he described the broom to be in. Perhaps, however, all poets have had their works suggested in like manner. What I wish I could venture to state after Wordsworth, is his conception of the manner in which the mere fact is converted into poetry by the power of imagination. He represented, however, much as, unknown to him, the German philosophers have done, that by the imagination the mere fact is exhibited as connected with that infinity without which there is no poetry. He spoke of his tale of the dog, called 'Fidelity.' He says he purposely made the narrative as prosaic as possible, in order that no discredit might be thrown on the truth of the incident. In the description at the beginning and in the moral at the end he has alone indulged in a poetic vein; and these parts, he thinks, he has peculiarly succeeded in. He quoted some of the latter poem, and also from 'The Kitten and the Falling Leaves,' to show he had connected even the kitten with the great, awful, and mysterious powers of nature. But neither now nor in reading the Preface to Wordsworth's new edition of his poems have I been able to comprehend his ideas concerning poetic imagination. I have not been able to raise my mind to the subject, farther than this, that imagination is the faculty by which the poet conceives and produces-that is, images- individual forms, in which are embodied universal ideas or abstractions. This I do comprehend, and I find the most beautiful and striking illustrations of this faculty in the works of Wordsworth himself. The incomparable twelve lines, 'She dwelt among the untrodden ways,' ending, 'The difference to me!' are finely imagined. They exhibit the powerful effect of the loss of a very obscure object upon one tenderly attached to it. The opposition between the apparent strength of the passion and the insignificance of the object is delightfully conceived, and the object itself well portrayed. September 12th.-This was a day of rest, but of enjoyment also, though the amusement of the day was rather social than arising from the beauties of nature. I wrote some of my journal in bed. After my breakfast I accompanied Mr Wordsworth, Mr Hutton, and a Mr Smith to look at some fields belonging to the late Mr Wordsworth, and which were to be sold by auction this evening. I may here mention a singular illustration of the maxim, 'A prophet is not without honour save in his own country.' Mr Hutton, a very gentlemanly and seemingly intelligent man, asked me, 'Is it trueas I have heard reported—that Mr Wordsworth ever wrote verses?' A Feast of the Poets. April 4th (1823).-Dined at Monkhouse's. Our party consisted of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, Moore, and Rogers. Five poets of very unequal worth and most disproportionate popularity, whom the public probably would arrange in a different order. During this afternoon Coleridge alone displayed any of his peculiar talent. I have not for years seen him in such excellent health and with so fine a flow of spirts. His discourse was addressed chiefly to Wordsworth, on points of metaphysical criticism - Rogers occasionally interposing a remark. The only one of the poets who seemed not to enjoy himself was Moore. He was very attentive to Coleridge, but seemed to relish Lamb, next to whom he was placed. Rem.-Of this dinner an account is given in Moore's Life, which account is quoted in the Athenæum of April 23rd, 1853. Moore writes:—' April 4th, 1823. Dined at Mr Monkhouse's (a gentleman I had never seen before) on Wordsworth's invitation, who lives there whenever he comes to town. A singular party. Coleridge, Rogers, Wordsworth and wife, Charles Lamb (the hero at present of the London Magazine) and his sister (the poor woman who went mad in a diligence on the way to Paris), and a Mr Robinson, one of the minora sidera of this constellation of the Lakes; the host himself, a Mæcenas of the school, contributing nothing but good dinners and silence. Charles Lamb, a clever fellow, certainly, but full of villainous and abortive puns, which he miscarries of every minute. Some excellent things, however, have come from him.' Charles Lamb is indeed praised by a word the most unsuitable imaginable, for he was by no means a clever man; and dear Mary Lamb, a woman of singular good sense, who when really herself, and free from the malady that periodically assailed her, was quiet and judicious in an eminent degree-this admirable person is dryly noticed as 'the poor woman who went mad in a diligence,' &c. Moore is not to be blamed for thisthey were strangers to him. The Athenæum reviewer, who quotes this passage from Moore, remarks: The tone is not to our liking;' and it is added: 'We should like to see Lamb's account. This occasioned my sending to the Athenæum (June 25th, 1853) a letter by Lamb to Bernard Barton:-'DEAR SIR,-I wished for you yesterday. I dined in Parnassus with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Rogers, and Tom Moore: half the poetry of England constellated in Gloucester Place. It was a delightful evening! Coleridge was in his finest vein of talk—had all the talk; and let 'em talk as evilly as they do of the envy of poets, I am sure not one there but was content to be nothing but a listener. The Muses were dumb while Apollo lectured on his and their fine art. It is a lie that poets are envious: I have known the best of them, and can speak to it that they give each other their merits, and are the kindest critics as well as best authors. I am scribbling a muddy epistle with an aching head, for we did not quaff Hippocrene last night, marry! It was hippocrass rather.' Lamb was in a happy frame, and I can still recall to my mind the look and tone with which he addressed Moore when he could not articulate very distinctly: Mister Moore, will you drink a glass of wine with me?'-suiting the action to the word, and hobnobbing. Then he went on: 'Mister Moore, till now I have always felt an antipathy to you, but now that I have seen you I shall like you ever after.' Some years after I mentioned this to Moore. He recollected the fact, but not Lamb's amusing manner. Moore's talent was of another sort; for many years he had been the most brilliant man of his company. In anecdote, small-talk, and especially in singing he was supreme; but he was no match for Coleridge in his vein. As little could he feel Lamb's humour. Besides these five bards were no one but Mrs Wordsworth, Miss Hutchinson, Mary Lamb, and Mrs Gilman. I was at the bottom of the table, where I very ill performed my part. Goethe at Weimar. August 2nd (1829).—A golden day! Voigt and I left Jena before seven, and in three hours were at Weimar. Having left our cards at Goethe's dwelling-house, we proceeded to the garden-house in the park, and were at once admitted to the great man. I was aware, by the present of medals from him, that I was not forgotten, and I had heard from Hall and others that I was expected. Yet I was oppressed by the kindness of his reception. We found the old man in his cottage in the park, to which he retires for solitude from his town house, where are his son, his daughter-in-law, and three grandchildren. He generally eats and drinks alone; and when he invites a stranger, it is to a tête-à-tête. This is a wise sparing of his strength. Twenty-seven years ago I thus described him :-In Goethe I beheld an elderly man of terrific dignity; a penetrating and insupportable eye-"the eye, like Jove, to threaten or command"-a somewhat aquiline nose, and most expressive lips, which when closed seemed to be making an effort to move, as if they could with difficulty keep their hidden treasures from bursting forth. was firm, ennobling an otherwise too corpulent body; there was ease in his gestures, and he had a free and enkindled air.' Now I beheld the same eye, indeed, His step but the eyebrows were become thin, the cheeks were furrowed, the lips no longer curled with fearful compression, and the lofty, erect posture had sunk to a gentle stoop. Then he never honoured me with a look after the first haughty bow, now he was all courtesy. Well, you are come at last,' he said; 'we have waited years for you. How is my old friend Knebel? You have given him youth again, I have no doubt.' In his room, in which there was a French bed without curtains, hung two large engravings: one, the wellknown panoramic view of Rome; the other, the old square engraving, an imaginary restoration of the ancient public buildings. Both of these I then possessed, but I have now given them to University Hall, London. He spoke of the old engraving as what delighted him, as showing what the scholars thought in the fifteenth century. The opinion of scholars is now changed. In like manner he thought favourably of the panoramic view, though it is incorrect, including objects which cannot be seen from the same spot. I had a second chat with him late in the evening. We talked much of Lord Byron, and the subject was renewed afterwards. To refer to detached subjects of conversation, I ascertained that he was unacquainted with Burns's 'Vision.' This is most remarkable, on account of its close resemblance to the Zueignung (dedication) to his own works, because the whole logic of the two poems is the same. Each poet confesses his infirmities; each is consoled by the Muse-the hollyleaf of the Scotch poet being the 'veil of dew and sunbeams' of the German. I pointed out this resemblance to Frau von Goethe, and she acknowledged it. This evening I gave Goethe an account of De Lamennais, and quoted from him a passage importing that all truth comes from God, and is made known to us by the Church. He held at the moment a flower in his hand, and a beautiful butterfly was in the room. He exclaimed, 'No doubt all truth comes from God; but the Church! There's the point. God speaks to us through this flower and that butterfly; and that's a language these Spitzbuben don't understand.' Something led him to speak of Ossian with contempt. I remarked, 'The taste for Ossian is to be ascribed to you in a great measure. It was Werter that set the fashion.' He smiled, and said, 'That's partly true; but it was never perceived by the critics that Werter praised Homer while he retained his senses, and Ossian when he was going mad. But reviewers do not notice such things.' I reminded Goethe that Napoleon loved Ossian. 'It was the contrast with his own nature,' Goethe replied. 'He loved soft and melancholy music. Werter was among his books at St Helena.' We spoke of the emancipation of the Catholics. Goethe said, 'My daughter will be glad to talk about it; I take no interest in such matters.' On my leaving him the first evening, he kissed me three times. (I was always before disgusted with man's kisses.) Voigt never saw him do so much to any other. He pressed me to spend some days at Weimar on my return; and, indeed, afterwards induced me to protract my stay. I was there from the 13th of August till the 19th. The three volumes of the Diary (of which there was a new edition in 1872) contain but gleanings from a plentiful crop, garnered in upwards of a hundred MS. volumes of Diary, Journals of tours, Letters, Reminiscences, and Anecdotes, preserved in Dr Williams's library in Gordon Square, London. John Wilson Croker (1780-1857), the last and most indefatigable of the original corps of the Quarterly Review, was born at Galway, the son of the Surveyor-General of Customs and Excise in Ireland. Educated at Portarlington and Trinity College, Dublin, in 1800 he entered Lincoln's Inn, but in 1802 was called to the Irish Bar. His first literary attempts were satirical-—Familiar Epistles on the Irish Stage (1804) and An Intercepted Letter from Canton (1805), a satire on certain politicians and magnates in Dublin. These trifles were followed by Songs of Trafalgar (1806) and A Sketch of Ireland, Past and Present (1807), a pamphlet advocating Catholic emancipation. Entering Parliament for Downpatrick (1807), he in 1809 warmly defended the Duke of York over the Mary Anne Clarke scandal, and was rewarded with the post of Secretary to the Admiralty, which he held for nearly twenty-two years, until he retired in 1830 with a pension of £1500. In 1809 he published anonymously The Battles of Talavera, a poem in the style of Scott, on which Wellington remarked that he had never thought 'a battle could be turned into anything so entertaining.' In the same style Mr Croker commemorated The Battle of Albuera (1811), apparently the last of his poetic efforts. He was now busy with the Quarterly Review, which he had helped to found in 1809. His articles were mainly personal or historical-attacks on Whigs and Jacobins, or rectifications of dates and facts regarding public characters and events. He it was who, as the reviewer of Keats's Endymion in September 1818, incurred Byron's famous catechetical criticism: Who killed John Keats? I, says the Quarterly, So savage and Tartarly, 'Twas one of my feats. The article in three pages of abuse styles Keats a copyist of Leigh Hunt, 'more unintelligible, almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and absurd than his prototype.' Lady Morgan's Italy was despatched in the same trenchant style. One of Croker's most brilliant ‘feats' in this way was his success in mortifying the vanity of Fanny Burney (Madame D'Arblay), who wished to have it believed that she was only seventeen when her novel of Evelina was published. She is said to have kept up the delusion without exactly giving the date; but the reviewer, knowing that she was born at Lynn in Norfolk, had the parishregister examined, and found that she was baptised in June 1752, and consequently, instead of being a youthful prodigy, was between twenty-five and twenty-six years of age when Evelina appeared. Croker's success in this species of literary statistics led him afterwards to apply it to the case of the Empress Josephine and Napoleon; he had the French registers examined, and from them proved that both Josephine and Napoleon had falsified their ages. This fact, with other disparaging details, the reviewer brought out in a paper carefully arranged to appear on the occasion of the third Napoleon's visit to England, and so mortify the new dynasty. In the same spirit Croker assailed Soult when he visited this country-recounting all his military errors and defeats, and reminding him that the Duke of Wellington (who was seriously annoyed by the mistimed reminiscence) had deprived him of his dinner at Oporto in 1809, and at Waterloo in 1815. Two of the later contributions to the Review by Croker made considerable noise- those on Macaulay's History and Moore's Memoirs. In Macaulay's case, Rogers said Croker 'attempted murder, but only committed suicide.' With Moore the reviewer had been on friendly terms. They were countrymen and college acquaintances; and when Lord John Russell published the poet's journals for the benefit of his widow, a generous friend of the dead man would have abstained from harsh comments. Croker plied the scalpel unsparingly; the editor remarked on the critic's 'safe malignity;' and Croker retaliated by showing that Moore had been recording unfavourable notices of Lord John in his journal at the very time that he was cultivating his acquaintance by letters and soliciting favours at his hands. Lord John's faults as an editor were also unsparingly exposed; and on the whole, in all but good feeling, Croker was triumphant in this passage-at-arms. Disraeli satirised him in Coningsby as 'Rigby,' the jackal of 'Lord Monmouth' (Hertford); and Macaulay, as is well known, 'detested him more than cold boiled veal.' Yet Croker did service to literature by his annotated edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, and his publication of the Suffolk Papers, the Letters of Lady Hervey, and Lord Hervey's Memoirs of the Court of George II. He wrote Stories from the History of England | for Children, which served as a model for Sir Walter Scott's Tales of a Grandfather; and he collected some of his contributions to the Review as Essays on the Early Period of the French Revolution. At his death he was preparing an edition of Pope's works, which passed into the hands of the Rev. Whitworth Elwin. Croker's publications numbered nearly a score, and his Correspondence and Diaries were edited by Louis J. Jennings (3 vols. 1884). George Croly (1780-1860) was a voluminous writer in poetry, history, fiction, exegetical and polemical theology, politics, &c. Born in Dublin, and educated at Trinity College, he took orders in 1804, and coming in 1810 to London, was appointed rector of St Stephen's, Walbrook, in 1835. He wrote industriously for Blackwood's Magazine and the reviews, and showed from the commencement versatility and a decided literary gift. His-somewhat Byronic-poems include Paris in 1815, a description of the works of art in the Louvre (1817): The Angel of the World (1820); Catiline, a tragedy (1822); Poetical Works (2 vols. 1830); and The Modern Orlando, a satirical poem (1846). He edited the works of Jeremy Taylor and the poems of Pope. The most important of his theological works is The Apocalypse of St John, a new Interpretation (1827), but he published also on providence, baptism, the papal aggression, and the deceased wife's sister; while his historical writings include a series of Sketches, a Character of Curran, The Political Life of Burke, and The Personal History of King George the Fourth. There were also books on the Holy Land, a history of the defence of Hamburg against Davoût, and three volumes of Tales of the Great St Bernard-a series of stories supposed to be told to relieve the monotony of imprisonment by bad weather at the hospice, the Englishman, the Italian, and the rest of the storm-stayed travellers each telling his tale. The romances Salathiel (1829) and Marston, Soldier and Statesman (1846), are sharply contrasted in subject as in other things -the latter a tale of modern public life, the former the part of the story of the Wandering Jew and his tragic adventures till after the siege of Jerusalem. Salathiel was greeted on its appearance by the Athenæum (then but two years old) as 'one of the most splendid productions among works of fiction that the age has brought forth,' and was by other reviews compared with the most powerful of Shakespeare's dramas. It is strongly conceived and has many powerful passages, the style in many places being obviously modelled on De Quincey. Byron, whom he was believed to have attacked in a 'Letter of Cato,' sneered at him as the Reverend Rowley Powley,' and spoke, not inaptly, of the 'psalmodic amble' of his Pegasus. A brief memoir by his son was prefixed to Croly's Book of Job (1863). Pericles and Aspasia. This was the ruler of the land, When Athens was the land of fame; This was the light that led the band, When each was like a living flame; The centre of earth's noblest ring, Of more than men, the more than king. Yet not by fetter, nor by spear, His sovereignty was held or won: Feared-but alone as freemen fear; Loved-but as freemen love alone; He waved the sceptre o'er his kind By nature's first great title-mind! Resistless words were on his tongue, Then Eloquence first flashed below; Full armed to life the portent sprung, Minerva from the Thunderer's brow! And his the sole, the sacred hand, That shook her ægis o'er the land. And throned immortal by his side, A woman sits with eye sublime, Aspasia, all his spirit's bride; But, if their solemn love were crime, Pity the beauty and the sage, Yet still she conquered in his name. The French Army in Russia. [name. Of the wild rage of storm, or deadly clime, Seen, with that battle's vengeance to compare? How glorious shone the invaders' pomp afar! Like pampered lions from the spoil they came ; The land before them silence and despair, The land behind them massacre and flame; Blood will have tenfold blood. What are they now? A Homeward by hundred thousands, column-deep, Broad square, loose squadron, rolling like the flood When mighty torrents from their channels leap, Rushed through the land the haughty multitude, Billow on endless billow; on through wood, O'er rugged hill, down sunless, marshy vale, The death-devoted moved, to clangour rude Of drum and horn, and dissonant clash of mail, Glancing disastrous light before that sunbeam pale. Again they reached thee, Borodino ! still Upon the loaded soil the carnage lay, The human harvest, now stark, stiff, and chill, Friend, foe, stretched thick together, clay to clay; In vain the startled legions burst away; The land was all one naked sepulchre ; The shrinking eye still glanced on grim decay, Still did the hoof and wheel their passage tear, [drear. Through cloven helms and arms, and corpses mouldering The field was as they left it; fosse and fort Steaming with slaughter still, but desolate; The cannon flung dismantled by its port; [on. Each knew the mound, the black ravine whose strait Was won and lost, and thronged with dead, till fate Had fixed upon the victor-half undone. There was the hill, from which their eyes elate Had seen the burst of Moscow's golden zone; But death was at their heels; they shuddered and rushed The hour of vengeance strikes. Hark to the gale! As it bursts hollow through the rolling clouds, That from the north in sullen grandeur sail Like floating Alps. Advancing darkness broods Upon the wild horizon, and the woods, Now sinking into brambles, echo shrill, As the gusts sweep them, and those upper floods Shoot on their leafless boughs the sleet-drops chill, That on the hurrying crowds in freezing showers distil. They reach the wilderness! The majesty Of solitude is spread before their gaze, Stern nakedness-dark earth and wrathful sky. If ruins were there, they long had ceased to blaze; If blood was shed, the ground no more betrays, Even by a skeleton, the crime of man; Behind them rolls the deep and drenching haze, Wrapping their rear in night; before their van The struggling daylight shows the unmeasured desert wan. Still on they sweep, as if their hurrying march At once is covered with a livid veil; In mixed and fighting heaps the deep clouds reel ; In sanguine light, an orb of burning steel; The snows wheel down through twilight, thick and dun; Now tremble, men of blood, the judgment has begun! The trumpet of the northern winds has blown, Of armies on that boundless field o'erthrown: Satan; from a Picture by Sir Thomas Lawrence. 'Satan dilated stood.'-MILTON. Prince of the fallen! around thee sweep The billows of the burning deep; And on thy sleepless vision rise On thy curled lip is throned disdain, Yet wan, wild beauty lingers there, Charles Caleb Colton.-A once popular collection of apophthegms and moral reflections was published in 1820-22 under the title of Lacon, or Many Things in Many Things in Few Words; addressed to those who Think; six editions of it appeared within a twelvemonth. The history of its author conveys a moral probably more striking than even the best of his maxims. The Rev. Charles Caleb Colton (c. 1780-1832) passed in 1796 from Eton to King's College, Cambridge, and in 1801 obtained a fellowship and the college living of Prior's Portion near Tiverton, in 1818 that of Kew and Petersham. A great fisherman and sportsman generally, he was eccentric to a degree; for a time he carried a wine-merchant's business; and he would abroad in military dress. About 1823 on go |