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In their lust for caruage blind.
And he said: Alas! that ever I made,

Or that skil. of nine should pan,

The spear and the sword for men whose joy
Is to slay their fellow-man!'

And for many a day old Tubal Cain

Sat brooding o'er his woe;

And his hand lorebore to smite the ore,
And his furnace smouldered low,

But he rose at last with a cheerful face,
And a bright courageous eye,

And bared his strong right arm for work,
While the quick flames mounted high."
And he sang Hurra for my bandiwork!'

And the red sparks lit the air;

'Not alone for the blade was the bright steel made;'
And he fashioned the first ploughshare.

And men, taught wisdom from the past,

In friendship joined their hands,

Hung the sword in the hall, the spear on the wall,

And ploughed the willing lands;

And sang: Hurrah for Tubal Cain!

Our staunch good friend is he;

And for the ploughshare and the plough

To him our praise shall be.

But while oppression lifts its head,

Or a tyrant would be lord,

Though we may thank him for the plough,

We'll not forget the sword!'

PHILIP JAMES BAILEY-RICHARD HENRY HORNE.

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PHILIP JAMES BAILEY was born at Basford, county of Nottingham, in 1816. He was educated in his native town and at Glasgow University, after which he studied for the bar. In 1849 he produced his first and greatest poem, Festus,' subsequently enlarged, and now in its fifth edition. The next work of the poet was 'The Angel World,' 1850, which was followed in 1855 by the Mystic,' and in 1858 Mr. Bailey published The Age, a Colloquial Satire.' All of these works, excepting the last, are in blank verse, and have one tendency and object-to describe the history of a divinely instructed mind or soul, soaring upwards to communion with the universal life.' With the boldness of Milton, Mr. Bailey passes the flaming bounds of space and time,' and carries his Mystic' even into the presence of the 'fontal Deity.' His spiritualism and symbolical meanings are frequently incomprehensible, and his language crude and harsh, with affected archaisms. Yet there are fragments of beautiful and splendid imagery in the poems, and a spirit of devotional rapture that has recommended them to many who rarely read poetry. The Colloquial Satire' is a failure-mere garrulity and slipshod criticism. Thus of war:

Of all conceits misgrafted on God's Word,
A Christian soldier seems the most absurd.
That Word commands us so to act in all things,
As not to hurt another e'en in small things.
To flee from anger, hatred, bloodshed, strife;

BAILEY.]

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

To pray for, and to care for others' life.

A Christian soldier's duty is to slay,

Wound, harass, slaughter, hack in every way

Those meu whose souls he prays for night and day;
With what consistency let prelates say.

He's told to love his enemies; don't scoff;
He does so; and with rifles picks them off.
He's told to do to all as he'd be done

By, and be therefore blows them from a gun,

To bless his foes, he hangs them up like fun.'

We may contrast this doggerel with a specimen of Mr. Lailey's ambitious blank verse, descriptive of the solitary, mystic ecluse, dweling 'lion-like within the desert:'

Lofty and passionless as date-palm's bride,
High on the upmost summits of his soul-
Wrought of the elemental light of heaven,
And pure and plastic flame that soul could shew,
Whose nature, like the perfume of a flower
Enriched w th aromatic un-dust, charms
All, and with all ingratiates itself,
Sat dazzling Purity; for loftiest things,
Snow-like, are purest. As in mountain morns
Expectant air the sun-birth, so his soul
Her God into its supernatural depths
Accepted brightly and sublimely. Vowed
To mystic visions of supernal things;
Daily endowed with spheres and astral thrones,
His, by pre-emptive right, through all time;
Immerged in his own essence, clarified
From all those rude propensities which rule
Man's heart, a tyrant mob, and, venal, sell
All virtues-ay, the crown of life-to what
Passion soe'er preponent, worst deludes
Or deftliest flatters, he, death-calm, beheld,
As though through glass of some far-sighting tube,
The restful future; and, consumed in bliss,
In vital and ethereal thought abstract,

The depth of Deity and heights of heaven.

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Or the following fine lines from Festus:'

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives,
Who thinks most, feels the noblest. acts the best.
And he whose heart beats quickest lives the longest:

Lives in one hour more than in years do some

Whose fat blood sleeps as it slips along the veins.
Life is but a means unto an end; that end.

Beginning, mean, and end to all things-God.
The dead have all the glory of the world.

And on universal love:

Love is the happy privilege of the mind
Love is the reason of all living things.
A Trinity there seems of principles,
Which represent and rule created life-
The love of self, our fellows, and our God.

In all throughout one common feeling reigns:

Each doth maintain, and is maintained by the other;

All are compatible-all needful; one

To life-to virtue oue-and one to bliss:

Which thus together make the power, the end,
And the perfection of created Being.

From these three principles doth every deed,

Desire, and will, and reasoning, good or bad, come;
To these they all determine-sum and scheme:
The three are one in centre and in round:
Wrapping the world of life as do the skies

Our world. Hail! air of love, by which we live!
How sweet, how fragrant! Spirit, though unseen-
Void of gross sign-Is scarce a simple essence,
Immortal, immaterial, though it be.

One only simple essence liveth-God-
Creator, uncreate The brutes beneath,
The angels high above us, with ourselves,

Are but compounded things of mind and form.
In all things animate is therefore cored

An elemental sameness of existence;
For God, being Love, in love created all,
As he contains the whole and penetrates.

Seraphs love God, and angels love the good:

We love each other; and these lower lives,

Which walk the earth in thousand diverse shapes,
According to their reason, love us too:

The most intelligent affect us most.

Nay, man's chief wisdom's love-the love of God.
The new religion-final, perfect, pure-

Was that of Christ and love. His great command-
His all-sufficing precept-was 't not love?

Truly to love ourselves we must love God

To love God we must all his creatures love

To love his creatures, both ourselves and Him.

Thus love is all that's wise. fair, good, and happy!

In 1867 Mr. Bailey added to his poetical works a production in the style of his early Muse, entitled The Universal Hymn.'

RICHARD HENRY HORNE, born in London in 1803, commenced active life as a midshipman in the Mexican navy. When the war between Mexico and Spain had ceased, Mr. Horne returned to England and devoted himself to literature. He is the author of several dramatic pieces-'Cosmo de Medici,' 1837; 'The Death of Marlowe,' 1838; and Gregory the Seventh,' 1840. In 1841 he produced a 'Life of Napoleon; and in 1843, Orion, an Epic Poem,' the most successful of his works, of which the ninth edition is now (1874) before us. In 1844 Mr. Horne published two volumes of prose sketches entitled A New Spirit of the Age,' being short biographies, with criticism, of the most distinguished living authors. In 1846 appeared Ballad Romances;' in 1848, Judas Iscariot, a Mystery Play; and in 1851, 'The Dreamer and the Worker,' two vols. In 1852 Mr. Horne went to Australia, and for some time held the office of Gold Commissioner.

We may note that 'Orion' was originally published at the price of one farthing, being an experiment upon the mind of a nation,' and as there was scarcely any instance of an epic poem attaining any reasonable circulation during its author's lifetime.' This nomi

HORNE.]

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

nal price saved the author the trouble and greatly additional ex. pense of forwarding presentation copies,' which, he adds, are not always particularly desired by those who receive them.' Three of these farthing editions were published, after which there were several at a price which amply remunerated the publisher, and left the author no great loser.' Orion, the hero of the poem, was meant to present a type of the struggle of man with himself—that is, the contest between the intellect and the senses, when powerful energies are equally balanced.' The allegorical portion of the poem is defective and obscure, but it contains striking and noble passages.

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The Progress of Mankind.-From 'Orion.'

The wisdom of mankind creeps slowly on,
Subject to every doubt that can retard,
Or fling it back upon an earlier time;
So timid are man's footsteps in the dark.
But blindest those who have no inward light.
One mind perchance in every age contains
The sum of all before, and much to come;
Much that's far distant still; but that full mind,
Companioned oft by others of like scope,
Belief, and tendency, and anxious will,
A circle small transpierces and illumes:
Expanding, soon its subtle radiance

Falls blunted from the mass of flesh and bone.
The man who for his race might supersede
The work of ages, dies worn out-not used,
And in his track disciples onward strive,

Some hair-breadths only from his starting-point:

Yet lives he not in vain; for if his soul

Hath entered others, though imperfectly,

The circle widens as the world spins round

His soul works on while he sleeps 'neath the grass.

So let the firm Philosopher renew

His wasted lamp-the lamp wastes not in vain,
Though he no mirrors for its rays may see,

Nor trace them through the darkness; let the Hand

Which feels primeval impulses, direct

A forthright plough, and make his furrow broad,
With heart untiring while one field remains;

So let the herald poet shed his thoughts,

Like seeds that seem but lost upon the wind.

Work in the night, thou sage. while Mammon's brain
Teems with low visions on his couch of down;

Break thou the clods while high-throned Vanity,

Midst glaring lights and trumpets, holds its court;
Sing thou thy song amidst the stoning crowd,
Then stand apart, obscure to man, with God.
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM.

This poet is a native of Ballyshannon, county of Donegal, Ire land:

The kindly spot, the friendly town, where every one is known,
And not a face in all the place but partly seems my own.

He was born in 1828, and from an early age contributed to periodical
literature; removing to England he obtained an appointment in the
Customs. His publications are Poems,' 1950; Day and Night

Songs,' 1854; 'Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland' (a poem in twelve chapters), 1864; and Fifty Modern Poems,' 1865. Mr. Allingham says his works' ciaim to be genuine in their way.' They are free from all obscurity and mysticism, and evince a fine feeling for nature, as well as graceful fancy and poetic diction. Mr. Allingham is editor of Fraser's Magazine.'

To the Nightingales.

You sweet fastidious nightingales!
The myrtle blooms in Irish vales,
By Avondhu and rich Lough Lene,
Through many a grove and bowerlet

green,

Fair-mirrored round the loitering skiff.
The purple peak, the tinted cliff.
The glen where mountain-torrents rave,
And foliage blinds their leaping wave.
Broad emerald meadows filled with
flowers,

Embosomed ocean-bays are ours

With all their isles; and mystic towers
Lonely and gray, deserted long,
Less sad if they might hear that perfect
song!

What scared ye? (ours, I think, of
old)

The sombre fowl hatched in the cold?
King Henry's Normans, mailed and

stern.

Smiters of galloglas and kern ? (1)
Or, most and worst, fraternal fend,
Which sad Ierne long hath rued?
Forsook ye, when the Geraldine,
Great chieftain of a glorious line,

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Come back. O birds, or come at last!
For Ireland's furious days are past;
And, purged,of enmity and wrong,
Her eye, her step, grow calm and
strong.

Why should we miss that pure delight?
Brief is the journey, swift the flight;
And Hesper finds no fairer maids
In Spanish bowers or English glades,
No loves more true on any shore,
No lovers loving music more.
Melodious Erin. warm of heart,
Entreats you; stay not then apart,
But bid the merles and throstles know
(And ere another May-time go)

Their place is in the second row.
Come to the west, dear nightingales!
The rose and myrtle bloom in Irish vales.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

MR. TENNYSON, the most popular poet of his times, is the young est of a poetical brotherhood of three-Frederick, Charles, and Alfred-sons of the late Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, a Lincolnshire clergyman,* who is described as having been a man remarkable for strength and stature, and for the energetic force of his character. This gentleman had a family of eleven or twelve children, seven of whom were sons. The eldest three we have mentioned were all educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, pupils of Dr. Whewell.

1 Galloglas-kern-Irish foot-soldier; the first heavy-armed, the second light. The mother of the laureate was also of a clerical family, daughter of the Rev. Stephen Frtche. His paternal grandfather was a Lincolnshire squire, owner of Bayons Manor and Usselby Hall--properties afterwards held by the poet's uncle, the Right Hon Charles Tennyson D Eyncourt, who assumed the name of D'Eyncourt to commemorate his descent from that ancient Norman family and in compliance with a condition attached to the nof certain manors and estates. The eldest of the laureate brothers, Frederick, phor of a volume of poems-graceful. but without any original distinctive character

-entitled Dans and Hours, 1854. Charles, the second brother. who joined with Alfred. as stated above, in the composition of a volume of verse. became vicar of Grassby. Lin. colnshire In 1835. He took the name of Turner, on succeeding to a property in Lincoln shire. In 1861, he published a volume of Sonnets.

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