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THOMAS MOORE,

BORN 1780; DIED, 1852.

HAS just passed away from among us. He was born in Dublin, and though his larger poems are gorgeous oriental compositions, his name and enduring memory will chiefly depend hereafter on his Irish Melodies; nor will he be forgot as the friend and biographer of his brother poet, Lord Byron.

LORD BYRON,

BORN, 1788; DIED, 1824.

THIS noble poet, who early entered on the enjoyment of such advantages as high birth can secure, partook of few of the more precious privileges of a virtuous and genial domestic education, such as conferred so precious a boon on the Ayrshire peasant, Robert Burns. His mother, a woman of ill-regulated passions and ungovernable temper, had been married by Captain Byron, solely for her fortune, which was soon squandered; and then, deserted by her heartless husband, she retired to Aberdeen, and secured for her son such comforts and education as a moderate annuity enabled her to command. His granduncle, whose estate and title he ultimately inherited, was even more eccentric and extravagant than his parents, so that the wild passions and fits of violence which so marred the brief life of the poet, and made him at length a misanthropist and an exile from home and country, were alike the fruits of early education and hereditary tempera

ment. The most injurious effects on his character and habits may be traced to the training of his mother, a weak and foolish woman, whose alternate fits of violence and fondling appear latterly to have been a source of merriment to her son. During her fits of anger, she was accustomed to throw anything at him that chanced to be within her reach, and his own displays of ungovernable temper, after his marriage, were little less extravagant.

Under such a sad system of training, heightened by all the evils incident to rank, wealth, and the absence of any proper stimulus to exertion, young Byron grew up with the principles of his moral and intellectual nature unregulated by any fixed standard. He abandoned himself to scepticism and the indulgence of vicious passions, which the rejection of religious faith left the freer from any restraint; and when he had become familiar with the dissolute, the vicious, and the profane-had ruined his fortunes and blighted every pure source of domestic affection-the satiated pleasure-seeker turned misanthropist, and cursed his country and mankind, for evils which only followed as the natural harvest of his own conduct.

The peculiar cast of a mind educated under such adverse circumstances, is impressed on all Byron's poems; and their free scope is marred by the constant reproduction of himself under every guise of character which he introduces. Yet, notwithstanding all the great blemishes which are traceable in Byron's works, he occupies a high place among the modern poets of England, and has exercised an important influence, both for good and evil, on the present age. His "Childe Harold" abounds with the most magnificent pictures of nature, combined with grand reflections and imagery, not untinged by the sad and mis

anthropic character of one who had learned, like Solomon, after drinking the cup of pleasure to the full, that "all is vanity and vexation of spirit;" but who had not learned, like him, that "wisdom's ways are pleasantness, and all her paths are peace."

Lord Byron died in Greece, at the early age of thirtysix, when his great genius seemed expanding itself to the display of its utmost powers, and awakening to a juster sense of the noble and worthy ends for which such fine powers of intellect are bestowed. Burns and Byron both died nearly at the same age, both leaving monuments of poetic genius such as the world will not willingly let die, yet both leaving on the minds of their most ardent admirers a far deeper sense of sorrowful reflection on what they might have accomplished under happier circumstances, if each had been truer to his great stewardship, in the use of the talents committed to his charge.

Besides the great poets already named, our age has produced not a few whose works will long be valued for the great genius and beauty which they display. Both Burns and Byron produced many imitators, the great majority of whom have sunk into merited oblivion. But, besides these, there are contemporary writers of the same school, whose independent and original genius demands our notice. Foremost among the latter stands

JAMES HOGG.

BORN, 1773; DIED, 1835.

THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD, as he is commonly called, was born, if possible, to even a humbler lot than Burns. Descended of a race of shepherds, his childhood and youth were passed entirely in the remote rural dale with

which his name is associated, beyond all reach of literary influence, or the knowledge of books. His whole education, until he reached manhood, consisted but of the fruits of six months' attendance at a country school. Though not without generous friends, raised up to him among the admirers of his untaught genius, Hogg experienced the usual share of misfortunes which have awaited the humble followers of the Muse. But he bore his lot bravely and cheerfully, and died at last in his native dale, beloved and mourned by a numerous circle of admirers. His writings are characterized by great natural vigour, and as the productions of genius entirely self-taught, and nurtured under such disadvantageous circumstances, they are altogether remarkable.

JOHN LEYDEN, M.D.,

BORN, 1775; DIED, 1811,

WAS another of the remarkable geniuses born in humble life, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, among the southern dales of Scotland. Leyden was the son of a humble peasant, at Denholm, in Teviotdale, Roxburghshire. He early acquired a large amount of classical and oriental learning, and devoted himself, somewhat abruptly, to the medical profession, in consequence of receiving the promise of an appointment in India, on the condition of his obtaining a medical degree. He died there of fever, during the English expedition against Java in 1811, at the premature age of thirty-six, when the evidences of fine genius he had already produced, and his wonderful stores of learning, had raised the highest expectations of the

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results to be derived from his future labours. His principal poem is "Scenes of Infancy;" but, like all the peasant-born poets of Scotland, he delighted in the productions of songs and ballads; and his poems breathe the warmth of his patriotic attachment to his native land.

ALLAN CUNNINGHAM,

BORN, 1784; DIED, 1842,

Was born in Dumfries-shire, and employed himself in his earliest years as a stone-mason. A chance introduction

to Cromek, the editor of the "Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song," led to his engaging to collect for this work the traditional poetry of his native district. But the ingenious poet, instead of ransacking the country-side for its old songs, sent to the critic his own beautiful compositions as genuine antiques; and to this happy trick we owe the finest of his natural and vigorous songs and ballads. The editor never suspected the ingenious fraud, and the contrast between the letters, in which Cromek enlarges, with gleeful enthusiasm, on the recovery of such ancient relics, and the measured terms of commendation in which he condescends to patronise the acknowledged productions of the rustic stone-mason, is exceedingly amusing. Under Cromek's advice, and with his friendly aid, Cunningham proceeded to London in 1810, and ultimately obtained a confidential appointment, with liberal emolument, in the studio of Chantrey the sculptor, whom he did not long survive. He was esteemed and loved by all who knew him intimately, having retained to the last, in the uncongenial atmosphere of London, the

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