to this the woman-writer of novels has held her place among the best.

Mrs. Anne Radcliffe was famous as a writer of high

Born 1764. Wrought fictions. Chief among these are the Died 1823. Romance of the Forest, and The Mysteries of Udolpho. White-robed figures walking by moonlight, black-robed men, ruined castles, midnight groans, all these were part of the machinery of her stories. They were no doubt very thrilling and sensational in their day, but beside more modern successes in that line, they appear quite tame and harmless.

Born 1769.

Mrs. Amelia Opie was a writer of different character from Mrs. Radcliffe. Her stories, Father and Died 1853. Daughter, Tales of the Heart, Temper, etc., as their titles show, were tales of real life, written with a rather too obvious moral, and hardly vigor enough to keep them alive.

Miss Maria Edgeworth, who was a native of Ireland, laid Born 1767. most of the scenes of her books in that country. Died 1849. Her stories for children in The Parents' Assistants, of Lazy Lawrence, Simple Susan, and her tale of Rosamund, Frank, Harry and Lucy, pleased the children of a generation ago, but are now very little read.

Then came the Porter sisters, Jane and Anna Maria, the first of whom wrote those stately, old-fashioned novels, Thaddeus of Warsaw and The Scottish Chiefs, over which our grandmothers hung enraptured. And at the beginning Born 1775. of our century came Miss Jane Austin, the author Died 1817. of Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility, who wrote with a naturalness and good sense which has made her a favorite with readers even to our time. These, with many others, kept the circulating libraries of the time supplied with new books, till early in this century the fame of all others was clouded by the great splendor of Walter Scott's success as the Novelist of History.

TALK XLIX,

THE WORK OF THOMAS PERCY AND JAMES MACPHERSON, AND THE SAD STORY OF THOMAS CHATTERTON,

THE BOY-POET.

IN 1765, about the time that Goldsmith published the artless story of dear old Dr. Primrose, Bishop Thomas Percy, who was a friend of both Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson, published a collection of old English Ballads, which he called The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. I can fancy that the readers of the time were growing tired of the exact and didactic sort of verses which had been fashionable for so many years, and welcomed a draught from the real springs of English poetry, which lay hidden in those old songs.

Bishop Percy, a scholar of elegant tastes, was already known as a writer of some merit, when the design Born 1728. of publishing a collection of English Ballad poetry Died 1811. occurred to him. He had in his library an old MSS. containing songs and ballads, some of them dating earlier than Chaucer, others written as late as the seventeenth century. This MSS. had been marred by time and mold and other causes, until in some places words or whole lines were illegible; in others, half a leaf was wanting. To many it would have seemed a hopeless task to decipher the tattered and time-stained pages, but Dr. Percy had just the taste and skill for the work he undertook; he seems to have had a knack at renovation which certain menders of old pictures have shown, and to have been able to supply missing words. and lines, to create an old ballad out of detached fragments with such skill that one could not detect his handiwork from the original. Adding to his own manuscript old ballads from many other sources, he at last produced the three vol

umes of Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, for which every lover of ballads has been grateful to him from that time to this. Here are to be found the old rhymes of Chevy Chase, the Battle of Otterbourne, Sir Patrick Spence, the Babes in the Wood, some of the ballads of Robin Hood, and many more dear old rhymes, which in our childhood we learned by heart. The interest which this work excited was as great as it deserved to be, and Percy won by it a place in literature which none of his other works could have gained for him.

While Bishop Percy was making his collection of antique English poetry, James Macpherson was working in a similiar field. A native of Scotland, he had become very interested in the old Gaelic* speech of his forefathers. He claimed that he had discovered some remains in manuscript of the ancient Gaelic bard, Ossian, and gave them to the world

1762. in a poetical-prose translation of his own. This poetry, which was wild and picturesque, like the early bardic poetry, was at once read and admired. A very few lines will give an idea of the style of Ossian. I select these from the longest poem, Fingal, which celebrates the deeds of the famous Gaelic warrior, Fingal.

‘Fingal, like a beam from heaven, shone in the midst of his people. His heroes gather round him. He sends forth the voice of his power. 'Raise my standards on high; spread them on Lena's wind like the flames of an hundred hills. Let them sound on the winds of Erin and remind us of the fight. Ye sons of the roaring streams that pour from a thousand hills, hear ye the king of Morven; attend to the words of his power. Gaul, strongest arm of death; Oscar, of the future fights; Connal, son of the blue shields of Sora; Dermid of the dark brown hair; Ossian, king of many songs, be near your father's arm.' We reach the sunbeam of battle, the standard of the king. Each hero exulted with joy, as waving it flew in the wind. It was studded with gold above as the blue wide shell of the mighty sky. Each hero had his standard, too, and each his gloomy men. Now, like an hundred different winds that pour through many vales, divided, dark the sons of Selma advanced. Gaelic was that branch of the Keltic language spoken by the early Irish and Scotch. The other Keltic speech (the Kymric) was the native tongue of the Britons.

** *

Cromla echoed around. How can I relate the deaths when we closed in the strife of arms. O daughter of Toscar! bloody were our hands. The gloomy ranks of Lochlin fell like the banks of the roaring Cona! Our arms were victorious on Lena. Each chief fulfilled his promise, * * Thou hast seen the sun retire red and slow behind his cloud, night gathering round on the mountain, while the unfrequent blast roars in the narrow vale. At length the rain beats hard; thunder roars in peals; lightning glares on the rocks; spirits ride on beams of fire. The strength of the mountain streams comes roaring down the hills. Such was the noise of battle, maid of the arm of snow! Why, daughter of Toscar, why that tear? The maids of Lochlin have cause to weep. The people of their country wail. Bloody are the blue swords of our race of heroes."

The work of Percy and Macpherson both caused hot discussion in literary circles. Bishop Percy's collection had aroused a dispute among other scholars of ancient poetry, concerning his right to amend the old ballads by adding or supplying his own words or lines where the originals were missing; although Percy had done his work in the best of faith, and in all honesty, telling just what part of the work was his own, yet the criticism upon him for these interpolations into the old text was so sharp that the poor bishop must have felt as if he had unexpectedly put his head into a hive of stinging bees.

In the case of Macpherson and his Ossianic poems, the dispute ran higher. One party believed that these poems were really translations from the Gaelic; another party declared Macpherson had composed them himself, and the two factions belabored each other with arguments and abuse. During most of the discussion, Macpherson maintained a silence which seems rather obstinate; and there never was any absolute settlement of the inquiry as to the originality of the poetry. It seems probable, however, that, although they were, in the main, written by Macpherson, they really were founded on fragments of old songs of the Keltic bards, which had been preserved by tradition in the highlands of Scotland.

But the dispute about the works of Percy and Macpher

son was slight, compared with that which arose concerning the writings of Thomas Chatter:on, the boy-poet, one of the greatest prodigies in the whole history of our literature.

Thomas Chatterton was born in the interesting old town of Bristol. His mother, left a widow just before the Born 1752 birth of this son, started a milliner's shop, and Died 1770. bravely took upon herself the burden of supporting and educating her family. At five years old her boy Chatterton was sent to school, but as the manner of imparting instruction does not seem to have taken hold of his infant mind, he stayed there a year without learning his letters, and at six, the teacher reported him to his mother as a hopeless dunce. Just before this time he saw an old French book with illuminated letters, and so fell in love with it, that his mother conceived the idea of teaching him his letters from another ancient book which she owned, an old copy of the Bible in the black-letter* text, in which the early English books were printed. From this old text he learned to read, and when once he had mastered the alphabet, books became his delight. By the time he was eight, this hopeless dunce had devoured every book he could lay hands upon. He went to a free school in his town, and had for a tutor a man named Phillips, who sometimes wrote verses for the current newspapers. For him Chatterton felt a warm friendship, and Phillips seems to have been the only person about him, able in the least to sympathize with his genius.

The old church of St. Mary's, at Bristol, in which one of Chatterton's uncles had been a sexton, was an ancient and interesting old building. In the fifteenth century it had been repaired and partly rebuilt by worthy Mr. William Cannynge, a rich citizen of Bristol. In the time of Chatterton's father, a chest in a room over the church porch had been opened, and a quantity of old papers, among them the deeds of the church and other papers relative to William Cannynge's bequest, had been taken out and removed for *Black-letter was the old German text, which when printed looks very black, first brought by Caxton to England from the Netherlands.