impression is pretty sure to be weakened, and we don't want it to be weakened.) Let us remember it always as we do now, vaguely; but tenderly; for, "the author of 'John Halifax' " is dead. (And yet curiosity overmasters tenderness. With irresist

ible impulse we seek out the little dustyold-fashioned volume, and turn its pages reverently but curiously. Yes, it suffers necessarily a little from the lapse of time: it is not quite realistic enough to satisfy us now; the excellent John has too few faults, the admirable Ursula, seems, alas! a little of a prig; the disputed governess, Miss Silver, does not live or move or have any being at all, certainly she fails to charm; and one need only compare the brothers' quarrel with that described by Mrs. Oliphant, and now raging in the pages of The Atlantic, to feel that the more modern style, in becoming more realistic, has only gained in strength and flavor, and is actually less tame than the more imaginative efforts of thirty years ago. There is a falsetto tone in the book, of sentiment not exactly morbid, and yet to the more modern taste not exactly healthful. But still it remains what ladies call "a beautiful story."-ROLLINS, -ALICE WELLINGTON, 1887, The Author of "John Halifax," The Critic, vol. 11, p. 214.

She did not, however, assume her true place in fiction until the publication of "John Halifax, Gentleman," a work which attained instant and great popularity, and which has had many imitators, the sincerest flattery according to the proverb, which can be bestowed. This work, which relates the history of a good man's life and love, has but little incident, and no meretricious attractions, but attained the higher triumph of securing the public attention and sympathy by its pure and elevated feeling, fine perception of character, and subdued but admirable literary power. Miss Mulock has placed herself at the head of one division of the army of novelists. She has also added attraction to more than one landscape, throwing an interest to many readers over the little town of Tewkesbury for instance, with which the scene of John Halifax was identified, which has brought many pilgrims, we believe, to that place, not only from other parts of England, but from the other great continent across the seas where fiction has even more importance and its scenes more interest than among ourselves.-OLIPHANT, MARGARET

O. W., 1892, The Victorian Age of English Literature, p. 485.

The enormous hold which, ever since its first appearance in 1857, "John Halifax" has had on a great portion of the Englishspeaking public, is due to the lofty elevation of its tone, its unsullied purity and goodness, combined with a great freshness, which appeals to the young and seems to put them and the book in touch with each other.-PARR, LOUISA, 1897, Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's Reign, p. 229.

It is one of the most agreeable specimens of improved puritanism in modern England, and holds its ground as one of the productions of a more refined and entertaining literature. The sincere piety that it breathed is not obtrusive, and some of the characers give evidence of real literary talent. In the distant future her name will perhaps be mentioned by the side of George Eliot.ENGLE, EDWARD, 1902, A History of English Literature, rev. Hamley Bent, p. 464.

GENERAL

A young Irish authoress of great promise. She has already given to the world several novels that have obtained decided success. The best of these is "Olive," a very charming work. . . . The author of "Olive" holds a warm place in the heart of young lady novel-readers, and she has an opportunity of holding a very high rank among popular writers.-HALE, SARAH JOSEPHA, 1852, Woman's Record, p. 896.

Her traits as a writer are intensely feminine; the scenes and characters she describes are minutely, faithfully depicted, Her poems have but in a diffuse style.

genuine religious feeling, and are graceful and refined in expression.-UNDERWOOD, FRANCIS H., 1871, A Hand-Book of English Literature, British Authors, p. 577.

Faith in God and faith in man were the secret of her influence. She made no parade of this, but the reader will easily discover that she holds him by all that is good in himself and by her own faith in goodness. She has left many pictures of the struggle against poverty, error, and misconception, of truth that is great and must prevail, of goodness that stands fast for ever and ever. Then, again, she wrote plain, simple English. She never used a long word if a short one would do as well, and she never took a foreign word that has an equivalent in her

own language. Clearness, directness, simplicity, counted for much in her success as an author. It would be a fruitless task to say what she has not, and what she is not. Deficiencies, easily detected, are all atoned for by direct insight, which some would not hesitate to call genius. The books upon which Mrs. Craik's fame will rest were written many years ago, but she has always been able and willing to say an influential word in a good cause, and to write for a large circle of readers.-MARTIN, FRANCES, 1887, Mrs. Craik, Athenæum, No. 3130, p. 539.

Though lacking in the higher qualities of true poetry, imagination, passion, breadth of experience, and depth of emotion, there is enough true feeling and human interest in many of her poems to entitle them to recognition in these pages, and give her a true if not a very exalted place in any representative anthology of the verse of her countrywomen. "Philip, My King," the first high poem in either volume, ranked among her own favourites, and has, perhaps, been the most often quoted of her verses. "A Silly Song," too, and "A Christmas Carol" are given in an anthology for which her own selection of her own work was asked.

The ballad "In Swanage Bay," which is not included in her last volume, has none the less been very popular as a recitation, and shows ability to write a simple and touching story in verse.-MILES, ALFRED H., 1892, The Poets and the Poetry of the Century, Joanna Baillie to Mathilde Blind, p. 377.

She never posed as a brilliant, impassioned writer of stories which tell of wrongs, or crimes, or great mental conflicts. In her novels there is no dissection of character, no probing into the moral struggles of the human creature. Her teaching holds high the standard of duty, patience, and the unquestioning belief that all that God wills is well. . . . She was by no means what is termed a literary woman. She was not a great reader; and although much praise is due to the efforts she made to improve herself, judged by the present standard, her education remained very defective. That she lacked the fire of genius is true, but it is no less true that she was gifted with great imaginative ability and the power of depicting ordinary men and women leading upright, often noble lives.PARR, LOUISA, 1897, Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's Reign, pp. 228, 247.

PERSONAL

A wreath, not of gold, but palm. One day,
Philip, my King,

Thou too must tread, as we trod, a way
Thorny, and cruel, and cold, and gray:
Rebels within thee, and foes without

Will snatch at thy crown. But go on glorious, Martyr, yet monarch! till angels shout,

As thou sittest at the feet of God victorious. "Philip, the King!"

-CRAIK, DINAH M., 1852, Philip, My King.

Have ye no singers in your courts of gold,
Ye gods, that ye must take his voice away
From us poor dwellers in these realms of clay?
Most like (for gods were seldom pitiful)

The chastened vision of his darkened eyes Had too clear gaze of your deep mysteries, And death the seal of that dread knowledge is. -LE GALLIENNE, RICHARD, 1887, Philip Bourke Marston.

Thy song may soothe full many a soul hereafter, As tears, if tears will come, dissolve despair; As here but late, with smile more bright than laughter,

Thy sweet strange yearning eyes would seem to bear

Witness that joy might cleave the clouds of

care.

-SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1887, Light: An Epicede, Fortnightly Review.

I, myself, first met him in 1876, on the first day of July-just six weeks before his twenty-sixth birthday. He was tall, slight, and in spite of his blindness, graceful. He seemed to me young-looking even for his twenty-six years. He had a noble and beautiful forehead. His brown eyes were perfect in shape, and even in colour, save for a dimness like a white mist that obscured the pupil, but which you perceived only when you were quite near to him. His hair and beard were dark brown, with warm glints of chestnut; and the colour came and went in his cheeks as in those of a sensitive girl. His face was singularly refined, but his lips were full and pleasure-loving, and suggested dumbly how cruel must be the limitations of blindness to a nature hungry for love and for beauty. I had been greatly interested, before seeing him, in his poems, and to meet him was a memorable delight. -MOULTON, LOUISE CHANDLER, 1891, A Last Harvest by Philip Bourke Marston, Biographical Sketch, p. 12.

GENERAL

Philip Bourke Marston's verse is chiefly of a subjective nature, the outcome of his own emotions and experiences. He, too, resides in London, where he was born in 1850. To few poets so young have the extreme tests of life been applied more directly; he has borne the loss of his nearest and dearest, and is debarred from the sweet comfort of the light of day, in which the artist soul finds most relief. But no poet ever received more sympathy and care from those attached to him. .

Mr. Marston has the poetic temperament, with extreme impressibility of feeling, and the imagination and wonderful memory often noted in the blind. These traits are seen in his poetry, of which the sentiment and insight are genuine, and they affect his essays and tales. - STEDMAN, EDMUND CLARENCE, 1882, Some London Poets, Harper's Magazins, vol. 64, pp. 881, 882.

Mr. Marston's chief drawback-from the point of view of the general reader-is mo

notony of theme, though in his latest volume he has done much to obviate this objection. This, and his undoubted over-shadowing by the genius of the greatest sonnet-writer of our day, are probably the reasons for his comparatively restricted reputation. Curiously enough, Mr. Marston is much better known and more widely read in America than here; indeed he is undoubtedly the most popular of all our younger men overThroughout all his poetry-for the most part very beautiful-there is exquisite sensitiveness to the delicate hues and gradations of colour in sky and on earth, all the more noteworthy from the fact of the author's misfortune of blindness. -SHARP, WILLIAM, 1886, ed. Sonnets of this Century, p. 306, note.

sea.

The world will not let his work die out of remembrance, or cease to be grateful for the rich gifts his too short life bequeathed.MOULTON, LOUISE CHANDLER, 1887, Philip Bourke Marston, Critic, March 26; p. 149.

O thou who seeing not with thy mortal eyes Yet hast the sacred spirit of sight to see The soul of beauty in Nature more than we; Yea, thou who seest indeed the sunset skies And all the blue wild billows as they rise And summer sweetness of each bower and tree,

Who seest the pink glad thyme-tuft kiss the bee

The silver wing that o'er the grey wave flies:
We hail thee, singer who hast sight indeed
If to see Beauty and Truth and Love be sight;
For whom the soul of the white rose is white,
And fiery-red the fierce-souled red sea-weed;
We hail thee, thee whom all things love and
heed,

Pouring through thee their music and their

might.

-BARLOW, GEORGE, 1890, To Philip Bourke Marston, From Dawn to Sunset, p. 187.

Ah! memory to him

Grew all-in-all,—

His noblest songs contain

The heart's rainfall.

-HAYNE, WILLIAM HAMILTON, 1893, To the Memory of Philip Bourke Marston, Sylvan Lyrics and Other Verses.