Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets, Vol. 2 (of 2)

"The church of Santa Croce," says Mr. Hunt, "would disappoint you as much inside as out, if the presence of great men did not always cast a mingled shadow of the awful and beaut...

The advantage and the happiness of this visit to the north, determined her the next summer to pay a visit to the Lakes. Here she took up her abode for a fortnight with Wordswort...

Our next visit was to the valley of the Rivelin, so often named in Elliott's poetry. The Rivelin is one of the five rivers that run from the moorland hills and join near Sheffie...

"In 1801, believing that I was then become a grand poet, I most sapiently determined on publishing a pamphlet, and appealing to the world at once. Having attended the Edinburgh...

"I," says Coleridge, giving us the other side of the case, "was a poor friendless boy; my parents, and those who should have cared for me, were far away. Those few acquaintances...

He returned in 1805, to Muston, to which he was called by the bishop. At the end of five years he had been obliged to quit his beautiful retreat at Glemham. It was sold, the hou...

"The profits of this work," says the able writer we have already quoted, "which ran through four editions in the year, enabled him to make a tour in Germany. Early in 1800, he a...

But the progress of mind and purpose is very conspicuous in the poems of Tennyson. The first volume of his present edition is rich to excess with all the charms of genius; but i...

"A green and silent spot amid the hills, A small and silent dell! O'er stiller place No singing skylark ever poised herself. The hills are heathy, save that swelling slope, Whic...

'Here samphire banks and saltwort bound the flood, There stakes and sea-weeds withering on the mud; And higher up a range of all things base, Which some strong tide has rolled u...

For want of poets and poets' children entertaining these rational ideas, what miseries have from age to age awaited them! In the course of my peregrinations to the birthplaces a...

"Mr. Hogg, although apparently in good health, had been ailing for some years previous to his death, with water in the chest. When this was announced to him by his friend, Dr. W...

On this, Landor applied to a nobleman in high favor with the king, and who was well known to himself. On announcing that he wanted him to do him a service, the nobleman replied,...

But it is not merely in the lyrical productions of his muse that Montgomery has indicated the deep feeling of piety that lives as a higher life in him; in every one of those lar...

Now she read the Arabian Nights, Scott's Metrical Romances, and Robinson Crusoe, beside a book called Silvester Trampe. This last professed to be a narrative of travels in Afric...

The village of Bothwell is, as I have said, a mile farther on the way toward Hamilton. The church and manse lie to the left hand as you enter it, and the latter is buried, as it...

It is a circumstance that redeems the age, that when despotism was making its most hardy attempts in England, when too many of our literary men were disposed to flatter and foll...

The house was originally quite a common cottage. This part forms still the end next to the Devizes road, which road, however, is three quarters of a mile distant; but fresh erec...

Then there is the library, a noble room, with a fine cedar ceiling, with beautiful compartments, and most lovely carved pendants, where you see bunches of grapes, human figures,...

"In 1842, his Pilgrim of Glencoe, and other Poems, appeared, dedicated to his friend and physician. Dr. William Beattie, whom he also named one of his executors; Mr. William Mox...

Dryburgh is a sweet old monastic seclusion. Here, lying deep below the surrounding country, the river sweeps on between high, rocky banks, overhung with that fine growth of tree...

"'Yonder Chronicle of King D. Manoel, by Damiam de Goes, and yonder General History of Spain, by Esteban de Garibay, are signed by their respective authors. The minds of these l...

Felicia Dorothea Browne, the future poetess, bearing the familiar name of Mrs. Hemans, was born in Duke-street, Liverpool, on the 25th of September, 1793. The house is still poi...

From the period of his imprisonment in this place, Mr. Montgomery has continued to reside in Sheffield. For the long period of half-a-century he has been essentially bound up wi...

I shall have occasion to quote a few more verses when speaking of Mr. Landor's life. His Imaginary Conversations is the work on which his fame, a worthy and well earned fame, wi...

The cottage of Scott is still called Lasswade cottage. Every one still knows the house as the one where he lived. A miller near said, "He minded him weel. He was an advocate the...

Here it was that he led his happy boyhood, in the midst of that beautiful family life which he has so attractively described: the grave, careful, but kind father; the sweet, sen...

It is what we could hardly have expected, that Leigh Hunt is descended of a high Church and Tory stock. On his father's side his ancestors were Tories and Cavaliers who fled fro...

"It chanced one night, when I was there, that there was a resplendent arch across the zenith, from the one horizon to the other, of something like the Aurora Borealis, but much...

Whence Wordsworth, however, gathered his philosophy, whether from the books of the Friends, or from his own meditations, it is, nevertheless, a great truth. Jacob Behmen, Emanue...

His Border Minstrelsy came out; his fame spread. His Metrical Romances followed; and he was the most popular man of the day. In matters of business he rapidly advanced. He was m...

Now, if George Fox had written poetry, that is exactly what he would have written. So completely does it embody the grand Quaker doctrine, that Clarkson, in his Portraiture of Q...

"Then with clasped hands, and fervent hearts dismayed, That she might live for him, both mutely prayed. But o'er their silence burst the heavy blast; And, wrapped in darkness, t...

At the left hand, and as you stand in front of the building, looking over the valley, lies the burial-ground, or, as they would call it in Germany, the "Friedhof," or court of p...

"An indissoluble sign of their existence has stamped itself on the abodes of all distinguished men, a sign which places all kindred spirits in communion with them."--_The Citize...

Of the subsequent haunts of Alfred Tennyson we can give no very distinct account. I believe he has spent some years in London, and he may be traced to Hastings, Eastborne, Chelt...

At another time he told them of the invasion of Xerxes, and his crossing the _wide_ Hellespont. "Ah!" said a young recruit, a native of an obscure village in Kent, who had acqui...

"When he became a poet, he became also more and more ashamed of his deficiencies. He actually tried to learn French, and could with ease get his lesson, but could never remember...

"Beside portraits, properly so called, Sir Joshua Reynolds was the happiest in the representation of children, where he was able, in the main, to remain faithful to nature, and...

Such is the poet's cottage at Elleray, in itself unostentatious, but surrounded by the magnificence of nature in the distance, and by its quiet sweetness at hand. Years ago, whe...

Just as I was driven to despair, I fancied that the next building looked like a school; in I went, and a school it was. I had hopes of a Scotch schoolmaster. He is generally a s...

These calumnies, however, must for years have been a source of anguish to her, haunting, but, happily, not disabling her in the midst of her incessant exertions for the holiest...

Now stained with dews, with cobwebs darkly hung, Oft has its roof with peals of rapture rung; When round yon ample board in due degree, We sweetened every meal with social glee....

"But now the gentle dew-fall sends abroad The fruit-like perfume of the golden furz; The light has left the summit of the hill; Though still a sunny gleam lies beautiful Aslant...

But though the wonder of his life is seen in this, the romance of it yet remains. He arose to fill a great and remarkable point of time. A new era was commencing, which was to b...

I am confident that no teacher who studies the success of his pupils will adopt any other text-book than this in the beginning of a course in Latin.--Prof. W. H. GILDER, _Bellev...