Treasury of Minor British Poetry

to the Church of Rome, and became a distinguished theological writer.

CCXCVII

From Poems and Songs. The verses I have given form the greater part of a poem entitled Bellambi's Maid, but I think they gain by being detached from the context. Henry Clarence Kendall (1841-1882) was a poet of really fine genius; his poems, partly descriptive and partly lyrical, deserve to be better known. He was an Australian, and was engaged in journalism at Melbourne. An English Review, the Athenæum, first welcomed his poetry into the world, and I am glad to have the opportunity of giving him a place in a collection of British poetry. I wish I had space to give more from Kendall.

CCXCVIII

I copied this from a tombstone, not now to be found there, in Old Saint Pancras Churchyard. I presume it is original, I know it is touching, and therefore it is here.

CCXCIX

These verses were found after Crabbe's death on a paper enclosing his wife's wedding ring "nearly worn through before she died." See Life of Crabbe, by his son.

CCC

From Collections from the Greek Anthology and from the Pastoral, Elegiac, and Dramatic Poets, by Rev. Robert Bland. The lines are paraphrased from or rather suggested by the following verses preserved in Stobaeus :

οὐ μὲν γὰρ οὕτως ἄν ποτ ̓ ἐστεφανωμένοι
προὐκείμεθ ̓ ἄνθεσ ̓ οὐδὲ κατακεχρισμένοι,
εἰ μὴ καταβάντας εὐθέως πίνειν ἔδει,

διὰ ταῦτα γάρ τοι καὶ καλοῦνται μακάριοι,
πᾶς γὰρ λέγει τις ὁ μακαρίτης οἴχεται.”

From Ionica.

CCCI

CCCII

Caroline Oliphant (1807-1831) was the niece and namesake of Lady Nairne, the author of The Land o' the Leal. Some selections from her papers were published by the Rev. Charles Rogers, in 1869, in a volume containing the poems of Lady Nairne. From the selection given by Rogers I have taken the extract given; I have omitted the last stanza in the original.

CCCIII

From Whytehead's Poetical Remains and Letters. Thomas Whytehead (born 30th November 1815 at Thormanby in the North Riding of Yorkshire, died in New Zealand 19th March 1843) was a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, who, subsequently entering the Church, went out with Bishop Selwyn to New Zealand. His poems have the note of distinction, and deserve to be known better than they are. I wish I had had space for a poem by him entitled The Second Day, which is a truly magnificent piece.

CCCVII

From Poems published in 1839. Sterling is now chiefly remembered, not from any achievements of his own, but from Carlyle's singularly interesting biography of him.

CCCVIII

The lady to whose memory these lines are dedicated was one of Landor's early loves; she died suddenly and prematurely in India. Her very name is a poem, and it is amazing to learn that instead of its repetition Landor originally wrote in the second stanza "Sweet Aylmer."

CCCIX

"Before finally quitting Leicestershire my father paid a short visit to his sister at Alborough; and one day was given

to a solitary ramble among the scenery of bygone yearsParkham and the woods of Glenham then in the first blossom of May. He did not return until night, and in his note-book I find the following brief record of this mournful visit.” -Crabbe's Life, by his son, chap. viii.

CCCX

These exquisitely pathetic verses were found in the pocketbook of a patient suffering from monomania, who was under the care of Sir Alexander Morrison. They are to be found in Sir Alexander's Lectures on Insanity, p. 137, note.

CCCXIV

These noble lines were written by Emily Brontë very shortly before her death.

CCCXV

This is Lord Derby's exquisite paraphrase of Bishop
Wordsworth's beautiful epitaph on his wife :

I, nimium dilecta, vocat Deus; I, bona nostræ
Pars animæ; mærens altera, disce sequi.

The translation in the text appeared in the Guardian for
1st May 1867. The Latin original will be found in Bishop
Charles Wordsworth's Annals of My Early Life.

CCCXVI

Composed in 1842 when Lady Nairne had reached her seventy-sixth year. Lady Nairne's three well-known Scotch lyrics and her incomparable Land o' the Leal have not been included in this collection for the reasons explained in the preface.

From Ionica.

CCCVII