that ever was written; and then the name of Sir Thomas Munro came uppermost. Lady Holland did not know why Sir Thomas Munro was so distinguished; when Macaulay explained all that he had ever said, done, written, or thought, and vindicated his claim to the title of a great man, till Lady Holland got bored with Sir Thomas, told Macaulay she had had enough of him, and would have no more. This would have dashed and silenced an ordinary talker, but to Macaulay it was no more than replacing a book on its shelf, and he was as ready as ever to open on any other topic. It would be impossible to follow and describe the various mazes of conversation, all of which he threaded with an ease that was always astonishing and instructive, and generally interesting and amusing. When we went upstairs we got upon the Fathers of the Church. Allen asked Macaulay if he had read much of the Fathers. He said, not a great deal. He had read Chrysostom when he was in India; that is, he had turned over the leaves and for a few months had read him for two or three hours every morning before breakfast; and he had read some of Athanasius. I remember a sermon,' he said, 'of Chrysostom's in praise of the Bishop of Antioch;' and then he proceeded to give us the substance of this sermon till Lady Holland got tired of the Fathers, again put her extinguisher on Chrysostom as she had done on Munro, and with a sort of derision, and as if to have the pleasure of puzzling Macaulay, she turned to him and said, 'Pray, Macaulay, what was the origin of a doll? When were dolls first mentioned in history?' Macaulay was, however, just as much up to the dolls as he was to the Fathers, and instantly replied that the Roman children had their dolls, which they offered up to Venus when they grew older; and quoted Persius for 'Veneri donatæ a virgine puppæ ;' and I have not the least doubt, if he had been allowed to proceed, he would have told us who was the Chenevix of ancient Rome, and the name of the first baby that ever handled a doll. The conversation then ran upon Milman's History of Christianity, which Melbourne praised; the religious opinions of Locke, of Milman himself; the opinion of the world thereupon; and so on to Strauss's book and his mythical system, and what he meant by mythical. Macaulay began illustrating and explaining the meaning of a myth by examples from remote antiquity, when I observed that in order to explain the meaning of 'mythical' it was not necessary to go so far back; that, for instance, we might take the case of Wm. Huntington, S.S.: that the account of his life was historical, but the story of his praying to God for a new pair of leather breeches and finding them under a hedge was mythical. Now, I had just a general superficial recollection of this story in Huntington's Life, but my farthing rushlight was instantly extinguished by the blaze of Macaulay's all-grasping and all-retaining memory, for he at once came in with the whole minute account of this transaction: how Huntington had prayed, what he had found, and where, and all he had said to the tailor by whom this miraculous nether garment was made. Sir Thomas Munro, soldier and K. C.B., was Governor of Madras from 1819 to his death in 1827. William Huntington, S.S. (i.e. 'Sinner Saved '), from tramp and coalheaver became an eccentric preacher and prophet of rather dubious ways, who published some twenty volumes of sermons, epistles, and controversial tracts, often largely autobiographical and recording many divine interpositions on his own behalf. Sir John Gardner Wilkinson (1797-1875) took a prominent part in the study of Egyptian antiquities. Son of the rector of Hardendale in Westmorland, he studied at Exeter College, Oxford. In 1821 he went to Egypt, practically made (1821-33) a survey of the country, and brought back large collections of inscriptions and objects of great archæological value. In 1828 he published Materia Hieroglyphica, and in 1830-35 two works on the topography of Thebes. But his great work is his Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (6 vols. 1837-41; new ed. by Birch, 1879; abridged ed. 1854). About nine hundred woodcuts illustrate this history, taken chiefly from the paintings in the Egyptian tombs, the earliest elaborate illustrations of the manners and customs of any nation. Wilkinson gathered together and systematised a vast mass of information drawn from ancient writers and the researches of the new school of Egyptologists; he corrected and expanded the work of his predecessors, and brought to light many new facts. And the literary gift with which he expounded the whole subject and made it accessible and attractive to a wide circle of readers gives him an eminent and permanent place in an international series which includes Erman, Brugsch, Maspero, and Flinders Petrie. He insisted, as was natural, that the influence which Egypt had in early times on Greece gives to every inquiry respecting it an additional interest; and the frequent mention of the Egyptians in the Bible connects them with the Hebrew records, of which many satisfactory illustrations occur in the sculptures of Pharaonic times.' Knighted in 1839, he made four subsequent visits to Egypt; travelled in Dalmatia, Sicily, Turkey, and Syria; wrote books on Dalmatia and Egyptian architecture and a guide-book to Egypt; and helped Rawlinson with the Egyptian part of his Herodotus. An Ancient Egyptian Repast. While the guests were entertained with music and the dance, dinner was prepared; but as it consisted of a considerable number of dishes, and the meat was killed for the occasion, as at the present day in Eastern and tropical climates, some time elapsed before it was put upon the table. An ox, kid, wild goat, gazelle, or an oryx, and a quantity of geese, ducks, teal, quails, and other birds, were generally selected; but mutton was excluded from a Theban table. Sheep were not killed for the altar or the table, but they abounded in Egypt, and even at Thebes; and large flocks were kept for their wool, particularly in the neighbourhood of Memphis. Sometimes a flock consisted of more than two thousand; and in a tomb below the Pyramids, dating upwards of four thousand years ago, nine hundred and seventy-four rams are brought to be registered by his scribes, as part of the stock of the deceased; implying an equal number of ewes, independent of lambs. Beef and goose constituted the principal part of the animal food throughout Egypt; and by a prudent foresight in a country possessing neither extensive pasturelands nor great abundance of cattle, the cow was held sacred, and consequently forbidden to be eaten. Thus the risk of exhausting the stock was prevented, and a constant supply of oxen was kept for the table, and for agricultural purposes. A similar fear of diminishing the number of sheep, so valuable for their wool, led to a preference for such meats as beef and goose; though they were much less light and wholesome than mutton. A considerable quantity of meat was served up at those repasts, to which strangers were invited, as among people of the East at the present day. An endless succession of vegetables was also required on all occasions, and when dining in private, dishes composed chiefly of them were in greater request than joints even at the tables of the rich; and consequently the Israelites, who, by their long residence there, had acquired similar habits, regretted them equally with the meat and fish of Egypt (Num. xi. 4, 5). Their mode of dining was very similar to that now adopted in Cairo and throughout the East; each person sitting round a table, and dipping his bread into a dish placed in the centre, removed on a sign made by the host, and succeeded by others, whose rotation depends on established rule, and whose number is predetermined according to the size of the party or the quality of the guests. As is the custom in Egypt and other hot climates at the present day, they cooked the meat as soon as killed, with the same view of having it tender which makes Northern people keep it until decomposition is beginning; and this explains the order of Joseph to 'slay and make ready' for his brethren to dine with him the same day at noon. As soon, therefore, as this had been done and the joints were all ready, the kitchen presented an animated scene, and the cooks were busy in their dif ferent departments. Other servants took charge of the pastry which the bakers or confectioners had made for the dinner-table; and this department appears even more varied than that of the cook. That dinner was served up at midday may be inferred from the invitation given by Joseph to his brethren; but it is probable that, like the Romans, they also ate supper in the evening, as is still the custom in the East. The table was much the same as that of the present day in Egypt-a small stool supporting a round tray, on which the dishes are placed; but it differed from this in having its circular summit fixed on a pillar, or leg, which was often in the form of a man, generally a captive, who supported the slab upon his head, the whole being of stone or some hard wood. On this the dishes were placed, together with loaves of bread. It was not generally covered with any linen, but, like the Greek table, was washed with a sponge or napkin after the dishes were removed. One or two guests generally sat at a table; though, from the mention of persons seated in rows according to rank, it has been supposed the tables were occasionally of a long shape, as may have been the case when the brethren of Joseph'sat before him, the firstborn according to his youth'-Joseph eating alone at another table where they set on for him by himself.' But even if round, they might still sit according to rank, one place being always the post of honour, even at the present day, at the round table of Egypt. The guests sat on the ground, or on stools and chairs, and, having neither knives and forks nor any substitute for them answering to the chopsticks of the Chinese, they ate with their fingers, like the modern Asiatics, and invariably with the right hand; nor did the Jews (1 Sam. ii. 14) and Etruscans, though they had forks for other purposes, use any at table. Spoons were introduced when required for soup or other liquids. The Egyptian spoons were of various forms and sizes. They were principally of ivory, bone, wood, or bronze, and other metals; many were ornamented with the lotus flower. The Egyptians washed after as well as before dinner, an invariable custom throughout the East, as among the Greeks, Romans, Hebrews, and others. It was also a custom of the Egyptians, during or after their repasts, to introduce a wooden image of Osiris, from one foot and a half to three feet in height, in the form of a human mummy, standing erect or lying on a bier, and to show it to each of the guests, warning him of his mortality and the transitory nature of human pleasures. He was reminded that some day he would be like that figure; that men ought to 'love one another, and avoid those evils which tend to make them consider life long, when in reality it is too short;' and while enjoying the blessings of this world, to bear in mind that their existence was precarious, and that death, which all ought to be prepared to meet, must eventually close their earthly career. Thus, while the guests were permitted, and even encouraged, to indulge in conviviality, the pleasures of the table, and the mirth so congenial to their lively disposition, they were exhorted to put a certain degree of restraint upon their conduct; and though this sentiment was perverted by other people, and used as an incentive to present excesses, it was perfectly consistent with the ideas of the Egyptians to be reminded that this life was only a lodging or inn on their way, and that their existence here was a preparation for a future state. After dinner music and singing were resumed; hired men and women displayed feats of agility. The most usual games within-doors were odd and even, mora, and draughts. The game of mora was common in ancient as well as modern times, and was played by two persons, who each simultaneously threw out the fingers of one hand, while one party guessed the sum of both. They were said in Latin micare digitis, and this game, still so common among the lower order of Italians, existed about four thousand years ago in the reigns of the Osirtasens. Richard Ford (1796-1858), who has the credit of making a practical guide-book as lively and literary as a book of travels, was the son of a Sussex M.P.; he passed from Winchester to Trinity College, Oxford, and was called to the Bar, but never practised. He spent 1830-34 in riding tours in Spain; and in 1845 appeared his delightful Handbook for Travellers in Spain. His Gatherings from Spain (1846) is mainly made up of matter crowded out of the second edition of the Handbook, the first having been found rather too encyclopædic. But the two divisions were again combined in 1855, not without abridgment. Ford wrote largely for the Quarterly, the Edinburgh, and the other reviews. His famous article on Velazquez in the Penny Encyclopædia did more than any other thing to make the great Spanish artist known to Englishmen ; and he followed up this by many articles on other Spanish artists and on Spanish art and architecture. He was himself an accomplished artist and picture-lover. Baden Powell (1796-1860), born in London, studied at Oriel College, Oxford, and in 1821 became vicar of Plumstead, in 1824 F.R.S., and in 1827 Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford. He published a history of natural philosophy, treatises on the calculus, optics, and the undulatory theory of light, but was best known by his 'Evidences of Christianity' in Essays and Reviews, and by other theological works then thought dangerously liberal'-On the Plurality of Worlds (1856), Christianity without Judaism (1857), Natural and Divine Truth (1857), and The Order of Nature (1859). The famous soldier, the defender of Mafeking, was one of his sons. George Robert Gleig (1796-1888) was the son of the Bishop of Brechin, but was born at Stirling. Having entered the army, he served in Spain and in America. He took orders in 1820, and became chaplain-general of the army (1844) and inspector-general of military schools (1846). The Subaltern (1825), founded on incidents of the Peninsular war, is the best-known of his many novels; besides, he wrote several volumes of military history and biography, including narratives of the campaigns of New Orleans and Waterloo, a Life of Wellington, and a Life of Warren Hastings, which Macaulay pronounced in superlatives; see above on page 320) 'the worst book that ever was written.' Alaric Alexander Watts (1797-1864), a Londoner born, was an usher at Fulham and elsewhere, and a conspicuous editor at Leeds and Manchester; he contributed to many periodicals, and founded the United Service Gazette (1833); and made a hit by his annual, the Literary Souvenir (1824-37), the prototype of innumerable annuals and pocket-books, which collapsed finally owing to witty but libellous critiques by Maginn. Later he (unsuccessfully) tried to float various Conservative newspapers, and was ruined financially; whereupon he accepted a small post in the inland revenue office, and ultimately enjoyed a civil list pension. One piece alone in his several volumes of poetry (collected as Lyrics of the Heart in 1850) is universally remembered-the alliterative jeu d'esprit, 'An Austrian army awfully arrayed,' &c. He wrote some miscellaneous prose also. In 1856 he edited the first issue of Men of the Time. There is a Life by his son (1844). John Moultrie (1799-1874), a minor poet in youth associated with Praed, Macaulay, and others in the Etonian and Knight's Quarterly Magazine, was born in London of Scoto-American ancestry, from Eton passed to Trinity College, Cambridge, and was rector of Rugby from 1828. An amiable and accomplished man, a writer of graceful and meditative verse, he published My Brother's Grave, and other Poems (1837; the principal poems written long before); The Dream of Life, and other Poems (1843); and a volume of sermons preached in his church at Rugby. 'Godiva,' one of his earliest things, was praised by Croker and Wordsworth and admired by Praed and Tennyson. Many of his later poems-some of them included in Altars, Hearths, and Graves (1854)—were admittedly tedious. He wrote 'lays' against the errors of Popery, and many hymns. To his intimate friend Dr Arnold, and to Macaulay, he dedicated some of his best sonnets. An edition of his poems appeared in 1876, with a Memoir by Derwent Coleridge. His son Gerald (1829-85), for some time master of Shrewsbury School, wrote also several collections of hymns and devotional poems. My Brother's Grave. In simplest phrase recorded there : The place is silent-rarely sound The living eye hath never known.' Those windows on the Sabbath-day; Of prayer, and thanks, and bended knees; And lips and hearts to God are given, Of earthly ills, in thought of heaven; That sire, who thy existence gave, Those scenes the heart can ne'er forget! My soul was then, as thine is now, Unstained by sin, unstung by pain; Peace smiled on each unclouded browMine ne'er will be so calm again. How blithely then we hailed the ray Which ushered in the Sabbath-day! How lightly then our footsteps trod Yon pathway to the house of God! For souls, in which no dark offence Hath sullied childhood's innocence, Best meet the pure and hallowed shrine, Which guiltier bosoms own divine. . . . have passed, and thou art now Forgotten in thy silent tomb; And cheerful is my mother's brow, And years My father's eye has lost its gloom; With thee he roams, an infant shade; But not more pure than thou he died. Alexander Dyce (1798-1869), critic, born at Edinburgh, was educated at the High School there, graduated from Exeter College, Oxford, and took orders, but in 1825 settled in London as a man of letters. With rare learning and sagacity he edited Peele (1828-39), Webster (1830; new ed. 1857), Greene (1831), Shirley (1833), Middleton (1840), Beaumont and Fletcher (1843-46), Marlowe (1850; new ed. 1861), Shakespeare (1857; new ed. 1864-67), &c., besides writing Recollections of the Table-talk of Samuel Rogers (1856). (1775-1851), Mary Martha Sherwood daughter of Dr Butt, chaplain to George III., was born at Stanford, Worcestershire; was carefully trained at the Abbey School in Reading; and before she was twenty-three had got fifty pounds for two stories (published 1798). In 1803 she married her cousin, Captain Henry Sherwood, and sailed for India, where they spent some twenty years, keenly interested in mission work and charities. And there she wrote Little Henry and his Bearer, like all her work strongly didactic and earnestly evangelical, which nevertheless had a success comparable to Uncle Tom's Cabin, passed through a hundred editions, and was translated into all manner of tongues, European and Asiatic. Their last years husband and wife spent in England, studying Hebrew with a view to writing concordances and Bible dictionaries. The Nun and The Lady of the Manor were amongst Mrs Sherwood's longer tales-professedly religious and moral novels, but at times closely resembling sermons. Better remembered is The Little Woodman; The Fairchild Family (Part I. 1818), described on its title-page as 'The Child's Manual, being a collection of stories calculated to show the importance and effects of a religious education,' had a second part added in 1842, a third in 1847, and, spite of its somewhat formidable sub-title, was frequently reprinted down to the end of the century, and again in 1902. The Indian Pilgrim, reprinted in the twentieth century, like several of Mrs Sherwood's works (in all, including tracts, nearly a hundred in number), was a sort of Indian adaptation of the Pilgrim's Progress. There is a Life of her by her daughter, Mrs Kelly (1854). Louisa Stuart Costello (1799-1877), daughter of an Irish army captain born in the barony of Costello, County Mayo, went with her widowed mother to Paris in 1814, and there and subsequently in London defrayed the family expenses by her skilful work as a miniature-painter. From time to time she published collections of poems, the first, in 1815, being The Maid of the Cyprus Isle, and other Poems. In 1835, with the help of her brother Dudley (1803-65), a journalist, she published Speci mens of the Early Poetry of France. But it was her bright descriptions of travel in Auvergne, Béarn and the Pyrenees, North Wales, Venice, and the Tyrol that made her really popular. Her half-dozen semi-historical novels on Catherine de' Medici, Mary of Burgundy, and Anne of Brittany were much read in their day. In 1852 she had a civil list pension bestowed on her. Sir Henry Taylor (1800-86) was the son of a gentleman-farmer of unusual culture at BishopMiddleham in Durham. At fourteen he went to sea as midshipman, rejoiced to obtain his discharge after nine miserable months, and two years later obtained a clerkship in the Storekeeper-General's Department. After four years' service, including a few months in Barbadoes, he lost his post in consequence of some official rearrangements, and returned to his father's house, Witton Hall, to spend two years of uninterrupted quiet and study. He began to write for the Quarterly, and in 1823 settled in London, having been appointed through Sir Henry Holland's influence to a clerkship in the Colonial Office. Here he laboured for fortyeight years under as many as twenty-six Secretaries of State, retiring only in 1872. He declined in 1847 the post of permanent under-secretary in succession to Sir James Stephen, and in 1869 was made K.C.M.G. His services to the republic of letters Oxford had in 1862 recognised by giving him a D.C.L. His last days were spent at Bournemouth, and there he ended a long and happy life. Taylor wrote four tragedies in 'the Shakespearian manner :' Isaac Comnenus (1827), Philip van Artevelde (1834-an immediate success), Edwin the Fair (1842), and St Clement's Eve (1862); and one romantic comedy, The Virgin Widow, afterwards renamed A Sicilian Summer. In 1845 he published a small volume of lyrical poetry, and in 1847 The Eve of the Conquest, and other Poems. His work in prose embraced The Statesman (1836), a collection of Baconian discourses on official life and the methods of managing men, for which, as he himself said, 'Pragmatic Precepts' would have been a better title; Notes from Life (1847)-one of its essays, 'The Life Poetic,' mainly a eulogy of Southey; and Notes from Books (1849), half made up of two articles on Wordsworth. Last came, in 1885, his interesting Autobiography, admirably written, full of genial observation, and not marred by the pardonable egotism of age, experience, and universal popularity. Southey said Taylor was the only one of a generation younger than his own that he had taken into his heart of hearts. He was a magnificentlooking man, a most perfect and kindly gentleman, and every way a man of distinction, said Lord Coleridge, who, however, lamented that if Taylor gave you a thought or a memory worth having, it was in a prodigious number of words, not poured out but dropped down deliberately one by one.' This has some relevance also to a good deal of his literary work. Professor Palgrave, commenting on the plays, said: "There is so much in them that one wonders all the time what one thing is wanting.' A comparison with Joanna Baillie's plays was more than once suggested. Of the Statesman, dealing, as Taylor put it, with such topics as experience rather than inventive meditation had suggested to him, Maginn profanely (and unfairly) said it was 'the art of official humbug systematically digested and familiarly explained.' Taylor's name is most closely associated with his Philip van Artevelde, a play in two parts, which he himself spoke of as a historical romance cast in a dramatic and rhythmical form. The subject -the story of the two Van Arteveldes, father and son, 'citizens of revolted Ghent, each of whom swayed for a season almost the whole power of Flanders against their legitimate prince, and each of whom paid the penalty of ambition by an untimely and violent death'-was suggested by Southey. The first extract deals with the death of one of the captains of Ghent. The Death of Launoy. Second Dean. Beside Nivelle the Earl and Launoy met, Six thousand voices shouted with the last : [Blancs!' 'Ghent, the good town! Ghent and the Chaperons But from that force thrice-told there came the cry Of 'Flanders, with the Lion of the Bastard!' So then the battle joined, and they of Ghent Gave back and opened after three hours' fight; And hardly flying had they gained Nivelle, When the earl's vanguard came upon their rear Ere they could close the gate, and entered with them. Then all were slain save Launoy and his guard, Who, barricaded in the minster tower, Made desperate resistance; whereupon The earl waxed wrothful, and bade fire the church. Second Dean. 'Twas done-and presently was heard [long. Van Artevelde. I never looked that he should live so He was a man of that unsleeping spirit, He seemed to live by miracle: his food Was glory, which was poison to his mind And peril to his body. He was one Of many thousand such that die betimes, Whose story is a fragment, known to few. Then comes the man who has the luck to live, And he's a prodigy. Compute the chances, And deem there 's ne'er a one in dangerous times, Who wins the race of glory, but than him A thousand men more gloriously endowed |