a man in some degree for the business of life, which requires for its conduct a certain degree of prejudice. Mr. Vavasour's breakfasts were renowned. Whatever your creed, class, or merit-one might almost add, your character-you were a welcome guest at his matutinal meal, provided you were celebrated. That qualification, however, was rigidly enforced. Individuals met at his hospitable house who had never met before, but who for years had been cherishing in solitude mutual detestation with all the irritable exaggeration of the literary character. He prided himself on figuring as the social medium by which rival reputations became acquainted, and paid each other in his presence the compliments which veiled their ineffable disgust. All this was very well in the Albany, and only funny; but when he collected his menageries at his ancestral hall in a distant county, the sport sometimes became tragic.-DISRAELI, BENJAMIN (LORD BEACONSFIELD), 1847, Tancred.

See him if you have opportunity: a man very easy to see and get into flowing talk with; a man of much sharpness of faculty, well tempered by several inches of "Christian fat" he has upon his ribs for covering. One of the idlest, cheeriest, most gifted of, fat little men.-CARLYLE, THOMAS, 1847, To Emerson, Dec. 30; Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson, ed. Norton, vol. II, p. 188.

Tell Miss Martineau it is said here that Monckton Milnes refused to be sworn in a special constable that he might be free to assume the post of President of the Republic at a moment's notice.-ARNOLD, MATTHEW, 1848, To his Mother, April; Letters ed. Russell, vol. I, p. 8.

He has a beautiful forehead, and most expressive eyes.-LEVERT, OCTAVIA WALTON, 1853, Souvenirs of Travel, vol. I, p. 79.

The most interesting feature of his character, as it stands before the world, is his catholicity of sentiment and manner,-his ability to sympathize with all manner of thinkers and speakers, and his superiority to all appearance of exclusiveness, while, on the one hand, rather enjoying the reputation of having access to all houses, and, on the other, being serious and earnest in the deepest recesses of his character.-MARTINEAU, HARRIET, 1855-77, Autobiography, ed. Chapman, vol. I, p. 259.

Milnes is a good speaker in Parliament, a good writer of poems, which have been praised by critics who have roosted on his mahogany tree, a man of fashion, and altogether a swell of the first class.-MOTLEY, JOHN LOTHROP, 1858, To his Wife, May 28; Correspondence, ed. Curtis, vol. i, p. 228.

He enters from the common air
Into that temple dim;

He learns among those ermined peers
The diplomatic hymn.

His peers? Alas! when will they learn
To grow up peers to him?
-PROCTER, MRS. BRYAN WALLER, 1863, On
Richard Monckton Milnes becoming Baron
Houghton.

He

I have known him ever since I was a girl, but only as a friendly acquaintance that met frequently upon cordial terms. was everywhere in London society at the time when I was living very much in it, and I therefore saw him almost wherever I went. He has always been kind and good-natured to me, but, beyond thinking him so, I never felt any great interest in his society, or special desire for his intercourse. He is clever, liberal-minded, extremely goodnatured, and good-tempered, and with his very considerable abilities and genuine amiable qualities a valuable and agreeable acquaintance. . . . I had no conversation of any particular interest with him, for he is very deaf, and having lost his teeth, speaks so indistinctly that I, who am also very deaf, could hardly understand half he said; so you see his visit was no particular satisfaction or gratification to me, nor could it possibly have been either to him.-KEMBLE, FRANCES ANN, 1875, Letter to H, Nov. 30; Further Records, p. 134.

Monckton Milnes had made his [Carlyle] acquaintance, and invited him to breakfast. He used to say that, if Christ was again on earth, Milnes would ask Him to breakfast, and the Clubs would all be talking of the "good things" that Christ had said. But Milnes, then as always, had open eyes for genius, and reverence for it truer and deeper than most of his contemporaries.-FROUDE, JAMES ANTHONY, 1884, Thomas Carlyle: A History of his Life in London, vol. I, p. 133.

Adieu, dear Yorkshire Milnes! we think not now Of coronet or laurel on thy brow;

The kindest, faithfullest of friends wast thou. -ALLINGHAM, WILLIAM, 1885, Lord Houghton, Aug. 11.

He was famous for the interest he took in notorieties, and especially in notorious sinners, always finding some good reason for taking an indulgent view of their misdeeds. I have heard that, on the occasion of some murderer being hung, his sister, Lady Galway, expressed her satisfaction, saying that if he had been acquitted she would have been sure to have met him next week

at one of her brother's Thursday-morning breakfasts.-TAYLOR, SIR HENRY, 1885, Autobiography, vol. I, p. 273.

I next met Lord Houghton at dinner in Albany in the winter of 1876-7, where he was the guest of Lieutenant Governor Dorsheimer. The ten intervening years had told upon his personal appearance, but more upon his manner. He seemed very fidgety and nervous. He was constantly doing something that did not then need doing; he was either pulling at his wristbands, or at the sleeves of his under-garments, or trying to get some new effect from his shirt collar. His head struck me as too low on the top to answer the purposes of a man of a very high order of character, or to win love and respect in any great degree, but his pure blue eyes were as striking and attractive as ever. No one could look into them a second time and not see that they were the eyes of no ordinary or commonplace man. He laughed frequently and explosively, apparently as a matter of politeness, rather than because he was amused. His talk was agreeable, and his manner that of a man who had no concern about the impression he was producing-the perfection of high breeding.-BIGELOW, JOHN, 1885, Some Recollections of Lord Houghton, Harper's Magazine, vol. 71, p. 955.

His brilliancy and talents in tongue or pen -whether political, social, or literary-were inspired chiefly by goodwill towards man; but he had the same voice and manners for the dirty brat as he had for a duchess, the same desire to give pleasure and good: for both were his wits and his kindness. Once, at Redhill (the Reformatory), where we were with a party, and the chiefs were explaining to us the system in the courtyard, a mean, stunted, villainous-looking little fellow crept across the yard (quite out of order, and by himself), and stole a dirty paw into Mr. Milnes's hand. Not a word passed; the boy stayed quite quiet and quite contented if he could but touch his benefactor who had placed him there. He

was evidently not only his benefactor, but his friend.-NIGHTINGALE, FLORENCE, 1889, Letter to Miss Jane Milnes, Life of Lord Houghton, ed. Reid, vol. II, p. 7.

I knew Lord Houghton for thirty years or more, and had a warm regard for him. He was kind-hearted and affectionate, keen to discover and eager to proclaim the merit of the unrecognized. He had a reverence for genius wherever he met with it, and few people showed a sounder judgment in literary matters when he was seriously called upon to exercise it. Then with his great ability, wide reading, and knowledge of the world, and his air-half romantic, half satiricalhe was very attractive. Lord Houghton was whimsical in his wit, and sometimes more than whimsical in his offhand opinions, which those who understood him received as he intended they should be. He was not unduly taken up with his poetry; he was modest about it.- LOCKER-LAMPSON, FREDERICK, 1889, Letter to T. Wemyss Reid, Life of Lord Houghton, ed. Reid, vol. II, p.

453.

The man who had known Wordsworth and Landor and Sydney Smith; who during the greater part of his life had been the friend, trusted and well-beloved, of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Thackeray, was also one of the first to hail the rising genius of Swinburne, and to lend a helping hand to other great writers of a still younger generation. Nor were his friendships confined to the literary world. The Miss Berrys, who had known Horace Walpole in their youth, knew and loved Monckton Milnes in their old age. Among statesmen he had been the friend of Vassal Holland, Melbourne, Peel and Palmerston, in the heyday of their fame; he had first seen Mr. Gladstone as an undergraduate at Oxford; and been the associate of Mr. Disraeli when he was still only the social aspirant of Gore House; had been the confidant of Louis Napoleon before he was a prisoner at Ham, and had known Louis Philippe, Thiers, Guizot, and Lamartine, alike in their days of triumph and defeat. Lamennais, Wiseman, Edward Irving, Connop Thirlwall, and Frederick Maurice had all influenced his mind in youth; he had "laid the first plank of a kind of pulpit" from which Emerson could preach "throughout all Saxondom," and he had recognised the noble character and brilliant qualities of Miss Nightingale long before the world had heard her name. These were but a

few of the friendships of Monckton Milnes. -REID, T. WEMYSS, 1891, The Life, Letters, and Friendships of Richard Monckton Milnes, First Lord Houghton, Preface, p. xii.

One of the best after-dinner speakers in the kingdom, Milnes's natural ease failed him when he addressed the House of Commons, and he gave his audience an impression of affectation. His parliamentary career, however, was not barren; and, in the passing of his Bill for establishing reformatories for juvenile offenders, he accomplished a reform the importance of which can hardly be exaggerated. Milnes's disappointment at missing the coveted prize of office, even if keen, which may be doubted, can only have been transient. In his large nature there was scant lodgment for any mean regret. His intense delight in life, his joyous spirit and unfailing good humour, were a source of constant happiness alike to himself and to those with whom he came in contact.-ROLPH, JOHN F., 1891, Reid's Houghton, The Academy, vol. 39, p. 6.

His genuine goodness, his devotedness to those whom he called his friends, his love of humanity, won for him a place in many hearts. The very essence of his nature was kindness; and though he had some foibles which were calculated to make the thoughtful smile, he must be forgiven much, because of his sensibility as a man and his staunchness as a friend.—HANNIGAN, D. F., 1891, Lord Houghton, Westminster Review, vol. 135, p. 157.

Were we asked what were the features in Lord Houghton's character which made the deepest impression on ourselves, we should say his extreme tolerance, his great kindliness, and his entire absence of egotism. It was a common subject of remark among his friends that it was almost impossible to induce Lord Houghton to talk on any subject whatever which in any way reflected credit on himself. PEACOCK, EDWARD, 1891, Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton, Dublin Review, vol. 108, p. 34.

For social success .. he had a rare combination of gifts-a quick intelligence, a lively wit, a kindly temper, infinite curiosity, especially about his fellowmen; a great power of making himself pleasant, yet with sarcasm enough to be able to diffuse a slight sense of alarm-the whole coupled with just so much of singularity in his manners as gave a flavor of originality to every

thing he did. For fifty years he was a conspicuous figure in London society, knowing everybody worth knowing, and full of recollections of everybody who had been eminent in the generation next before his own. This social fame not only interfered with his success in politics, but with his literary reputation.-BRYCE, JAMES, 1891, Reid's Life of Lord Houghton, The Nation, vol. 52, p. 119.

He loved and lived for his friends, and was never weary in doing good. To need his help was to have it, whether it was deserved or not. His life was a round of generous acts, performed in secret and out of pure kindness. STODDARD, RICHARD HENRY, 1892, Under the Evening Lamp, p. 275.

It was his delight to assemble around him men of the most varied pursuits, and often those more or less antagonistic to each other, in order to bring about, under the congenial influences of the table, a reconciliation. His sister, Lady Galway, assured me that, opposed as she and her brother were in politics, which occasioned no little good-natured sparring between the two, never a word had affected their close and enduring mutual love from the time they were children till death parted them at a ripe old age, and that never did she hear from his lips a word of unkindness towards a human being.-TUCKERMAN, CHARLES K., 1895, Personal Recollections of Notable People, vol. II, p. 17.

GENERAL

From the midmost fountain of his delightful thoughts, there ever and anon springs up an unpleasant remembrance of other writers, which detracts from the gratification our taste would otherwise experience. Of this the reader will judge for himself; but making all allowance for such defect or drawback, we are sure that he will be surprised and delighted by such specimens of rare and admirable genius in a poet still extremely young, and known to the world at present in an arena usually held to be very uncongenial to similar exercises of the imagination.-LYTTON, SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER, 1838, Present State of Poetry.

His poetry, while possessing unusual merits of a certain kind, is yet defective and ineffectual from the want of the poetic soul. It wants impulse and glow. It is elaborate,

elegant, stately, and sonorous in form and movement, generous, moral, and devout in sentiment, bearing with it an air of philosophical pretension, and shaded by a gentle touch of melancholy. But there is a frequent want of ease, and a straining after what is original and striking both in sentiment and diction, which turn the pleasure of perusal into laborious effort. The reader is not borne on by the current, but is obliged to bend his mind with an effort and make a study of the verses.-WARE, HENRY, JR., 1839, Milnes's Poems, North American Review, vol. 49, p. 349.

His poetry is the poetry of reflection and not of passion, and is a transcript of trains of thought rather than of moods of feeling; nor does it abound with the element of the purely picturesque. It commends itself by a certain thoughtful elegance, a pure and correct tone of feeling, a delicate spirit of observation, and a scholarlike grace of style. To the endowments of a great poet, the lifegiving breath of inspiration, the creative power of genius that soars into the highest heaven of invention, and subdues, melts, and moulds the heart at will, he can hardly lay claim; but he may justly aspire to no mean rank among those poets, whose aim it has been to make men happier and wiser by their thoughts and their affections; who have drawn "that wisdom, which is love," from many-coloured scenes of life, and who have found the seeds of poetry springing in the furrows of the common heart and mind. He is fully as much of a philosopher as of a poet, and the interest and value of his poetry are derived as much from the thoughtful spirit, which breathes through it, as from the more strictly poetical element. Nor does he escape the faults to which poetry of this class is exposed. He is sometimes tame and monotonous, dwelling too much upon particulars and details, and giving to his subject an injudicious expansion; and sometimes he clothes in the form and body of verse what is essentially prosaic, and what, by no change of garb, can be made otherwise. HILLARD, GEORGE STILLMAN, 1842, Recent English Poetry, North American Review, vol. 55, p. 218.

Mr. Milnes does not appear to possess the least dramatic passion, nor does he display much impulse or energy in his poetry. There is no momentum in the progress of his lines; and the want is conspicuously betrayed

in his blank verse. He thinks the . truth out boldly, and feels generously the use of speaking it; but the medium of expression between him and the public, is somewhat conventionally philosophical in its character, and too fine and recondite in its peculiarities, to be appreciated by the people popularly so called.-HORNE, RICHARD HENGIST, 1844, A New Spirit of the Age, pp. 154, 156.

Mr. Monckton Milnes has presented to the world several volumes of poems abounding in such brilliant imagery, and containing such refined sentiments, that they have secured for him a very high place in the estimation of all to whom the beautiful or interesting in art or nature possess any charms. ALISON, SIR ARCHIBALD, 1853, History of Europe, 1815-1852, ch. v.

Music and thought are what he gives us rather than point and dashing description. In his quiet strains we come sometimes upon reflections of considerable depth, and the shadow of the literary devotee always falls athwart his pages. We like his utter freedom from artificiality; his range of poetic powers is not of the highest order, but there is scarcely a poet who could be named who has done so uniformly well in all themes selected for treatment.SMITH, GEORGE BARNETT, 1875, English Fugitive Poets, Poets and Novelists, p. 406.

The poetry of Lord Houghton is of a modern contemplative type, very pure, and often sweetly lyrical. Emotion and intellect blend harmoniously in his delicate, suggestive verse, and a few of his songs-among which "I wandered by the brookside" at once recurs to the memory-have a deserved and lasting place in English anthology. This beloved writer has kept within his limitations. He has the sincere affection of men of letters, who all honor his free thought, his catholic taste, and his generous devotion to authors and the literary life. To the friend and biographer of Keats, the thoughtful patron of David Gray, and the progressive enthusiast in poetry and art, I venture to pay this cordial tribute, knowing that I but feebly repeat the sentiments of a multitude of authors on either side of the Atlantic.-STED

MAN, EDMUND CLARENCE, 1875-87, Victorian Poets, p. 244.

No one can deny an inborn voice of song to Lord Houghton. His poetical activity

began when Wordsworth was first recognized as a great English poet, when there was a growing reaction against the adoration of Byron, and when the most popular lyrist in England was -Mrs. Hemans! Yet in his earliest verse we find but very faint reflections of two of these authors. If, in

his graver and more thoughtful poems, he seems to have caught an occasional tone from Wordsworth, or in his sentiment a softer cadence from Mrs. Hemans, we shall find, on explaining the complete poetical records of his life, that such resemblances are inevitable, because springing from congenital features of his own poetic nature. He seems to stand-if on a lower plane-somewhere between Byron and Wordsworth: that is, in making a specific classification of poets, we must refer him to an intermediate variety. The simple, frank, unambitious character of most of his poetry is a feature which must not be overlooked in these days. TAYLOR, BAYARD, 1877-80, Lord Houghton, Critical Essays and Literary Notes, ed. Taylor, p. 327.

The merit and beauty of Lord Houghton's poetic performances are in an inverse ratio to their length. He is seen at his best, his thought is most felicitous and his diction most polished, in his shorter pieces. He was, as Lord Beaconsfield described him, under the guise of Mr. Vavasour in "Tancred"-a description so admirable that it practically exhausts the man-"a poet and a real poet." . . . Intense sympathy is, perhaps, the key-note of Houghton's poetry as it is of his character. He did not describe so much as interpret. Instead of drawing a mere picture of Oriental personalities, or of the heroes of the old Greek mythology, he identified himself with them, and told the world what they felt.-ESCOTT, T. H. S., 1885, Lord Houghton, Fortnightly Review, vol. 44, pp. 433, 434.

Houghton was a Wordsworthian, and nothing else. He differed from Wordsworth, in that he manifested no marked predilection for description, no individual observation of woods or waters, trees or flowers-no mysterious sympathy with, and no inexplicable worship of, nature, either for what it is or what it symbolizes; but he resembled him in that he reverenced his own personality as an exceptional one, which it was not, and that he magnified. everything that pertained to himself in the shape of an outward event, or the shadow of

an inward experience. We wonder while we read him what it was that induced him to write many of the things that we are reading. They lack the interest which attaches to actions, with which, by the way, he seldom grapples, and they lack the more recondite interest which attaches to speculative trains of thought. We find fault with them, and rightly, but in spite of all our fault-finding there is a charm about them which we are unable to resist, and equally unable to define. It may be in the atmosphere in which they live, move, and have their being, though nothing that is clothed in flesh and blood could exist there for a moment; or it may be in the vibration of some chord in our souls which answers to their music. STODDARD, RICHARD HENRY, 1885, Lord Houghton's Poetry, The Critic, Aug. 22.

Richard Monckton Milnes, whom Carlyle once described as "a pretty little Robin Redbreast of a man," and who certainly could sing, in the days in which that description was applied to him, a very taking little song of his own. . . . It is curious that the poem which has certainly been more popular than any other in all Lord Houghton's works, and which almost every one connects with Monckton Milnes' name, was the little love poem called "The Brookside." That is happily expressed, no doubt, but it is wholly without the brand of Lord Houghton's personal character,-and in a poet who has usually so little of the magic of form as Lord Houghton, one needs the impress of character even more than in a poet who adorns everything that he touches, and transfigures it merely by passing it through the medium of his thought. We should, indeed, find few of Lord Houghton's poems so little characteristic of him as "The Brookside," though it may have been that poem, or a poem of that kind, which suggested to Carlyle the comparison to "a pretty little Robin Redbreast. Robin Redbreast." On the whole, Monckton Milnes' genius was embodied in a certain determination to blend the insight of the man of the world with the sentiment of the poet, and not to allow the sentiment of the poet to run away with the insight of the man of the world.-HUTTON, RICHARD HOLT, 1885, The Late Lord Houghton, Criticisms on Contemporary Thought and Thinkers, vol. II, pp. 190, 194.

"It is twenty years," wrote the late Matthew Browne, "since I heard a bundle of