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published his first volume of verses, entitled Hours of Idleness. The poems therein contained were not absolutely without merit, but they were not worth much. The book was fiercely assailed in the Edinburgh Review, and the sarcasms of that periodical stung Byron into being a poet. His satire, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, was written in reply to the article in the Edinburgh, and a great sensation was caused by a play of wit and a mastery of versification unequalled since the days of Pope. During a babble of praise, Byron withdrew from England, and only returned in 1812, when he brought out the commencement of Childe Harold, as noticed above. After a career in part made glorious by the inspirations of genius, and in part debased by dissipation, Byron died at Missolonghi on the 19th of April 1824.

Sir Walter Scott's remarks on the death of Lord Byron will be read with interest :

'Amidst the general calmness of the political atmosphere,' says Scott, 'we have been stunned from another quarter, by one of those death-blows which are pealed at intervals, as from an archangel's trumpet, to awaken the soul of a whole people at once. Lord Byron, who has so long and so amply filled the highest place in the public eye, has shared the lot of humanity. He died at Missolonghi on the 19th of April 1824. That mighty genius which walked

amongst men as something superior to ordinary mortality, and whose powers were beheld with wonder, and something approaching to terror, as if we knew not whether they were of good or of evil, is laid as soundly to rest as the poor peasant whose ideas never went beyond his daily task.

'We are not Byron's apologists; for now, alas! he needs none. His excellences will now be universally acknowledged, and his faults (let us hope and believe) not remembered in his epitaph. It will be remembered what a part he has sustained in British literature since the appearance of Childe Harold, a space of nearly twelve years. There has been no reposing under the shade of his laurels. no living upon the resource of past reputation-none of that cooling and petty precaution which little authors call "taking care of their fame." Byron let his fame take care of itself. His foot was always in the arena; his shield hung always in the lists; and although his own gigantic renown increased the difficulty of the struggle, since he could produce nothing, however great, which exceeded the public estimate of his genius, yet he advanced to the honourable contest again and again and again, and came always off with distinction, almost always with complete triumph.

'As various in composition as Shakespeare himself (this will be admitted by all who are ac

quainted with his Don Juan), he has embraced every topic of human life, and sounded every string on the divine harp, from its lightest to its most powerful and heart-astounding tones. There is scarcely a passion or a situation which has escaped his pen; and he might be drawn, like Garrick, between the weeping and laughing muse, although his most powerful efforts have certainly been dedicated to MelpoHis genius seemed as

mene.

prolific as various. The most prodigal efforts did not exhaust his powers, nay, seemed rather to increase their vigour. Neither Childe Harold nor any of the most beautiful of Byron's earlier tales contain more exquisite morsels of poetry than are to be found scattered through the cantos of Don Juan, amidst verses which the author appears to have thrown off with an effort as spontaneous as that of a tree resigning a leaf to the wind.'

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SIR PHILIP SIDNEY-THOMAS FULLER-JOHN BUNYAN-JONATHAN SWIFT -SIR RICHARD STEELE-JOSEPH ADDISON-SAMUEL RICHARDSONHENRY FIELDING-SAMUEL JOHNSON-TOBIAS SMOLLETT-OLIVER GOLDSMITH-EDWARD GIBBON-SIR WALTER SCOTT-CHARLES LAMB

-CHARLES DICKENS.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

LITERATURE is an avenue to | palaces, we would have found glory, remarks Isaac Disraeli, that ever open for those ingenious men who are deprived of honours or wealth. Like that illustrious Roman who owed nothing to his ancestors, these seem self-born; and in the baptism of fame, they have given themselves their name. Bruyère has finely said of men of genius: These men have neither ancestors nor posterity: they alone compose their whole race.'

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Our first name is that of one who signalized himself in many fields besides that of literature we have already met with him on the tented field of war; and had we gone visiting in queens'

was one of the brightest ornaments of Queen Elizabeth's court. In early youth he discovered the strongest marks of genius and understanding. Sir Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, who was his intimate friend, says of him: Though I lived with him, and knew him from a child, yet I never knew him other than a man with such steadiness of mind and lovely and familiar gravity, as carried grace and reverence above greater years. His talk was ever of knowledge,

and his very play tended to enrich his mind.'

We have already looked at this famous character as a warrior: we have now to consider him as a man of letters. Sir Philip Sidney's literary reputation rests on his two prose works-the Arcadia and the Defence of Poesy.

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'What innocent lover of books,' says Isaac Disraeli, does not imagine that the Arcadia of Sidney is a volume deserted by every reader, and only to be classed among the folio romances of the Scuderies, or the unmeaning pastorals whose scenes are passed in the golden age? But such is not the fact. "Nobody," it is said, "reads the Arcadia:" "we have known very many persons who read it, many women and children, and never knew one who read it without deep interest and admiration," exclaims an animated critic, probably the poet Southey. More recent votaries have approached the altar of this creation of romance.

'It may be well to remind the reader, that although this volume, in the revolutions of times and tastes, has had the fate to be depreciated by modern critics, it has passed through fourteen editions, suffered translations in every European language, and is not yet sunk among the refuse of the bibliopolists. The Arcadia was long, and it may still remain, the haunt of the poetic tribe. Sidney was one of those writers

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whom Shakespeare not only studied, but imitated in his scenes, copied his language, and transferred his ideas. Shirley, Beaumont and Fletcher, and our early dramatists, turned to the Arcadia as their text-book. Sidney enchanted two later brothers in Waller and Cowley; and the dispassionate Sir William Temple was so struck by the Arcadia, that he found "the true spirit of the vein of ancient poetry in Sidney." The world of fashion in Sidney's age culled their phrases out of the Arcadia, which served them as a complete "academy of compliments."

'The reader who concludes that the Arcadia of Sidney is a pedantic pastoral, has received a very erroneous conception of the work.'

Sir Philip Sidney is described by the writers of his age as the most perfect model of an accomplished gentleman that could be found even by the wanton imagination of poetry or fiction. Virtuous conduct, polite conversation, heroic valour, and elegant erudition, all concurred to render him the ornament and delight of the English court; and as the credit which he possessed with Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester was wholly employed in the encouragement of genius and literature, his praises have been transmitted with advantage to posterity.

'He was,' says an Edinburgh Reviewer, a refinement upon nobility. He was like the ab

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