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"... for shewing truth to flattered state

Kind Hunt was shut in prison."

For an article in the Examiner of the 12th of March, 1812, commenting on the conduct of the Prince Regent, and referring to him as an Adonis of fifty, Hunt was sentenced, with his brother John to a fine of £500 and two years' imprisonment. A promise to refrain from further concern with the Prince might have spared them both their money and their liberty, but no such word was given by either of them. They had the courage of their opinions; they were both young and enthusiastic; and, besides, prisons were not what they had been. This is what Leigh Hunt proceeded to do with his quarters in the Surrey gaol

"I papered the walls with a trellis of roses; I had the ceiling colored with clouds and sky; the barred windows I screened with Venetian blinds; and when my bookcases were set up with my busts, and flowers and a pianoforte made their appearance, perhaps there was not a handsomer room on that side the water. I took a pleasure, when a stranger knocked at the door, to see him come in and stare about him. The surprise on issuing from the Borough and passing through the avenues of a jail was dramatic. Charles Lamb declared there was no other such room except in a fairy tale."

The little yard outside he transformed into a garden planted with flowers and young trees. His visitors all allowed his flowers to be perfect, and Tom Moore, who called on the caged bard with Lord Byron, declared that he had never seen such heartsease. This was playing at prisons with a vengeance! What has a prisoner to do with heartsease?

Hunt must often have placed a thoughtful hand upon his neck and thanked his stars that it was the first gentleman in Europe he had called names, and not a Tudor or a Stuart. Shelley, in his beautiful scorn of tyranny wanted to get up a subscription for Hunt, and, ignorant of the actual facts, pictured him pining in a dungeon "far from all that can make life desired," but Keats was nearer the truth when he spoke of the consolations that made captivity almost sweet

"Think you he nought but prison walls did see,
Till, so unwilling, thou unturned'st the key?
Ah, no! far happier, nobler was his fate!
In Spenser's halls he strayed, and bowers fair,
Culling enchanted flowers; and he flew

With daring Milton through the fields of air:
To regions of his own his genius true
Took happy flights."

In his garden in fine weather, in his room at other times, Hunt wrote assiduously. He continued to edit the Examiner. In more original and important composition some of his best work was done in the prison. Here was written the greater part of the "Story of Rimini," and here, too, appropriately enough, "The Descent of Liberty," partly, as the author said, "to indulge the imagination of one who

could realize no sights for himself." Some of the verses given to liberty in this poem have, according to Mr. Monkhouse, more of the true lyrical note, and are of a higher strain of fancy than Hunt ever attained again. This brings us back to the question we started with, and the evidence in Hunt's case goes to prove that the opportunity of mental concentration and the absence of all distracting influence more than balance the lack of freedom. "Sir Fretful" Cumberland wrote "The West Indian" in a bare room which commanded no better prospect than an Irish peat-stack. Goldsmith, when more than usually pressed for time and money, used to write in a room practically unfurnished, and so avoided distraction. On the other hand, we have had it stated that a large part of the "Life and Death of Jason" was written while William Morris was journeying backwards and forwards in the chastened Inferno of the Underground Railway; but this is balanced by the cell that Demosthenes had built underground, wherein the philosopher used sometimes to continue for two or three months at a time immersed in study. This was a good deal worse than Hunt's easy martrydom, and to tell the truth, that comfortable patriot seems to have seen the ludicrous side of his situation, for we are told that when he went into the large prison yard for exercise he would dress himself as if for a long walk, put on his gloves, select a book, and tell his wife (who shared his captivity) not to wait dinner if he should be late in returning!

Silvio Pellico-another poet patriot-had no such pleasant tale to tell in "My Prisons," nor were Bunyan's works-those crowning examples of prison literature, "The Pilgrim's Progress," "The Holy War," and "Grace Abounding"-composed in these surroundings of playful luxury. His twelve years in Bedford Gaol may have given him hints for the Valley of the Shadow of Death, but few for the House Beautiful. Here in the intervals of his occupation of tagging laces, amid the gloom and squalor of a provincial prison, and with a reference library consisting of the Bible and the "Book of Martyrs," Bunyan wove the unfading allegories which have entered into the very spirit and nature of Christian England.

The Marshalsea Prison is, perhaps, generally associated in our minds with visions of the airy and genial Micawber, of Mr. Dorrit, the Father of the Marshalsea, of John Dickens, too, coming to actual personages, and the little Charles. But writers other than the embryo novelist have experienced the repose of the old prison. There, probably, was written that pathetically curious letter of Massinger, Field and Daborne, begging for an advance of five pounds from old Henslowe. The old dramatists were, as a rule, tolerably familiar with the inside of a prison, either, as with Johnson, Chapman, Marston and Nash, for allusions unpalatable to thinskinned Jacks-in-office, or for the more ordinary

reason of debt. The literary reputation in this respect was long maintained. Poor Kit Smart was in the King's Bench for debt, and died insane within its rules. William Crome there wrote the "Adventures of Dr. Syntax," and Smollett the "Adventures of Sir Lancelot Greaves." It was not debt that brought Smollett into the King's Bench, but outspoken criticism on the professional conduct of an admiral. Smollett had just translated "Don Quixote," and his enforced retirement for three months no doubt suggested to him that he, also in confinement, should produce a kind of English eighteenth century Quixote, but the result goes to show that a prison study did not suit his genius. Selden spent some time in the Marshalsea (as well as in the Tower), and steadily pursued his studies and research. It did not make much difference to him where he wrote, for the imperturable jurist went on as though nothing unusual had happened, and in prison wrote a treatise on succession to property among the Jews!

George Wither seems to have been at home in several of the Metropolitan gaols. He tried the Tower, the Marshalsea and Newgate, which is certainly a liberal allowance, even for a seventeenth century poet. He began with the Marshalsea, to which he was consigned, when only twenty-five, for his "Abuses Stript and Whipt," a satire, whose objectionable application cannot now be traced, but which evidently found a weak spot in some one's armor. Wither improved the occasion by writing in prison, "The Shepherd's Hunting" (1615), and probably also "Fidelia." For a satire imprisoned by a satire his "Satire to the King"-he is said to have procured his freedom. His acquaintance with Newgate was like to prove more serious. During the Civil War he had made himself busy on the side of the Parliament in spite of his Royalist up-bringing, and naturally at the Restoration he was an object of displeasure to the party then upper

most.

His pamphlet, "Vox Vulgi," was an excuse for lodging him in custody, and things would have gone hard with him had it not been for the action of Sir John Denham, another instance of poet saving poet's life, deserving to be put to the credit of a race generally regarded as given up to jealousy and spleen. Yet, if history lies not, Denham's plea did not exclude an attempt to score off the other poet, for he begged Charles not to hang him, because so long as Wither lived, he (Denham) could not be called the worst poet in England.

Not many years later Newgate had a still more remarkable visitant in the person of unabashed Defoe, who, first in 1703, found that the way of the politician under Good Queen Anne was hard. He lost his liberty through the abuse of a figure of speech, "that dangerous figure, irony." In a pamphlet entitled "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters," he had adopted the tone of a violent High Church

man, bluntly advocating the extermination of Dissent in the language of bigotry run mad. At first the High Church party were inclined to welcome the anonymous pamphleteer as an ally, and the Dissenters felt nervous; but it soon became apparent that the whole thing was a caricature, and had been written solely to throw ridicule on the High-Fliers. Naturally they failed to see the humor of the incident, and being in power they offered a reward for the arrest of the foe, who had modestly retired before his sudden prominence. His printer and publisher being taken, to prevent injustice to others the author surrendered, and was duly found guilty of a seditious libel, and sentenced to a fine of two hundred marks, three exposures in the pillory, and imprisonment during her Majesty's pleasure. Between surrender and conviction there issued from his prison another tract on Toleration, and a little later he composed a "Hymn to the Pillory," which was printed and eagerly purchased by the crowds that watched him during his penance. His audacity might easily have drawn upon him the brutality of the street ruffians instigated by his enemies, but his friends in the populace formed guard round him, and the worst missiles that reached him were bunches of flowers.

After his public appearances Defoe returned to Newgate and set his pen in motion, finding plenty to do in the turn that affairs were taking. "A Challenge of Peace addressed to the whole Nation," attacking the Church party, and several other pamphlets on kindred subjects, were the offspring of this leisure gained by involuntary absence from the brick and pantile business. He also wrote, while still in Newgate, an account of the great storm of November, 1703, full of circumstantial and thrilling details, probably an early instance of imaginative journalism. But in addition to these triffling undertakings, he boldly set about the establishment of a newspaper, to be issued twice a week, written entirely by himself. He called it A Review of the Affairs of France, a title less restrictive than appears at first sight, for, as he insisted subsequently, "the affairs of France are the affairs of Europe." The first number of the Review was dated from Newgate, 19th February, 1704; the author was released about six months later, and the Review went on its way with a vigorous circulation, surely one of the most extraordinary, if not most valuable or durable, examples in the whole realm of prison-born literature. Besides the works that Defoe actually penned in prison, is it too much to suspect that the opportunities he had of conversing and mixing with the varied crew to whom Newgate then gave shelter, provided him with infinite studies of the rascality and villainy that loom so largely in his novels? Defoe was not hyper-sensitive. His imprisonment was not likely to make him melancholy. He had no reason to be ashamed of his offense, and he was

not the one to let slip the choice lessons in human nature that Newgate was capable of teaching.

Recent political prisoners have few of the discomforts of their forerunners. The period of their incarceration is rendered comparatively painless, and perhaps more evenly monotonous. And they, too, have seized the solace of writing as a refuge from ennui. Mr. Stead declares that the time he spent in prison was the only time he ever had for quiet undisturbed work. In the same seclusion Edmund Yates found time to write his "Reminiscences," and more recently still, Mr. William O'Brien his first novel, "When We Were Boys." In the life of a busy journalist an interval of absolute rest and quiet must be an experience anything but unpleasant. He measures time no longer by minutes, but by days, a far more natural method. If he writes, he writes not in competition with time, but upon reflection. His thoughts have leisure for orderly arrangement; and better still, he is not obliged to write at all. He can say with the drunken doctor in "Little Dorrit." "We are quiet here; we do not get badgered here; there is no knocker here, sir. It's freedom, sir-its freedom!" This beatific existence appealed to the soul of Mark Twain when he visited the Raiders in their Pretorian gaol. He regarded their life with green envy. "Healthy, undisturbed, plenty of repose, no fatigue, no distraction," he could conceive (says Dr. Hillier, one of the prisoners, in "Raid and Reform ") he could conceive of nothing better than such a life. "He would willingly change places with any of us, and with such an opportunity as had never yet been offered him, would write a book, the book of his life." It may seem ungrateful to take Mark Twain seriously, but if he is in earnest such scruples are out of place. It would be a pity if the world should lose a good book, and Mark Twain a grand opportunity, merely because that writer has the misfortune to be free. Imprisonment, if desired, is surely not so difficult to obtain, and there are still one or two countries in Europe where a man may lose his liberty without forfeiting his self-respect. -HERBERT M. SANDERS, in Temple Bar.

*

THE OLDEST BOOK IN THE WORLD. Tardy justice is at length to be done to another of the many martyrs of science in another person of Prisse d'Avennes, the discoverer of the famous maxims of Ptah Hotep, which has been claimed as the oldest book in the world. Prisse d'Avennes was a munificent donor in his time to the museums of Paris, and most patriotically refused all offers from other nations to work for them as an archaeologist when the trade of exploring was more highly paid and less crowded than it is to-day. He died in poverty at the age of seventy-two, and his grateful country has now named a street in Paris after him, and proposes to place his bust in the Egyptian Museum of the Louvre.-Pall Mall Gazette.

AN HOUR AMONG THE BOOK-WORMS.

It was a rainy day and the book-worms felt they had more than their usual excuse for loitering among the volumes new or musty that lined the walls and aisles of the store.

What store? Why, the bookworms' store.

The place where literature is traded in-a commercial library where one may delve and purchase or delve without thought of the cost; where rare old books can be picked up for a song and new ones at a discount; where the professor absorbs some of the miscellaneous facts with which he mystifies his students and the street corner orator attempts to digest food for his arguments.

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A rare old place is this bookstore, dim within and constraining one by its atmosphere to make purchases in whispers and move about on tiptoe. The proprietor is small, with a predominant forehead and more of the literary man than of the merchant in his composition. He seems to have read all things and can give an opinion on any book from Henry George on economics to L. T. Meade's "Stories for Girls."

And he rides his hobby just as do the regular customers who attend his place. Occult science has just a trifle the firmest hold on his mind of any of the studies, and he has assaulted it and all of its intrenchments and barbets and ambushed outworks with the vim of one who means victory. All this has given him some ideas that one does not encounter every day and that might be considered by the average mind startling.

On this particular rainy day he stood at the rear of his store, and, as he sized up the people scattered about, there was what might be called an occult gleam in his eye.

"A dime day," he muttered, and then, turning to a lady customer: "Yes'm that is the 10-cent edition. One? Very well." And there was a sound of 5 cents' worth of wrapping paper enveloping a 10cent book.

*

The curious bystander, who had come to spend an hour among the book-worms, was moved to a query: "Why do you say 'a dime day?'"'

"Well, it's strange," answered the book-man, with a faraway expression on his face, "but it seems to run that way. One day the sales are all 10 cents and at night the drawer shows nothing but dimes. Another time all the money comes in dollars. No one seems to have any small change. Another day quarters, and so on. Funny, isn't it? "Now, it's also true that some days everybody seems to come here with the idea of buying, but again will come a day when, no matter how well the merits of a book are presented, it is impossible to make a sale. Something in the air I suppose. There seems to be a dominant influence that affects great

catch the gist of it more quickly even than Amer

numbers of people. Can you explain it?"
"You'll have to show me," answered the curious icans."
bystander.

A moderately young woman came up and hesitatingly interrupted the conversation.

"Have you-have you-the "Troubles of thethe Devil?" she asked, blushing consciously.

"Isn't it the 'Sorrows of Satan' you wish?" said the bookman.

The blush deepened and there was a moment of confusion. Then she rallied. That was it, and did he have it in a 10-cent edition?

The bookman turned to the bystander with a look of triumph, as though to say: "Dime day."

He told her 40 cents was the lowest. She handed out four dimes and walked out with her book.

A scurry at the front door attracted the bystander's attention. A dignified-looking elderly gentleman had just made a rush to look after a swiftly passing car.

"He's a professor at the State University," volunteered the bookman. "Has a terrible time every day to get his car. He'll get to browsing on a book in a minute and forget there is such a thing as a car."

"Do

The bystander had noted for some minutes a rustling of papers behind a counter at one side. rats trouble you much?" he asked.

The bookman looked puzzled. "Oh," he said, brightening, "you mean that noise." He dropped his voice to a whisper. "It's a woman. She's looking over the music stock. I handle it like cordwood-buy everything that comes along and toss it in a heap. It's pretty dusty and pretty dark back there, but an enthusiastic woman would rather dig around in that bunch of cheap music than play with jewels."

As he finished speaking a high, thin walking hat came slowly into view over the edge of the desk, followed by a high, thin woman. She tripped up to the bookman.

"How much?" she interrogated, in a penetrating whisper, and held out a dust-laden bundle of wide, flat books. The bystander furtively glanced at the titles, "Sentimental Songs," "Laws of Harmony," and "Studies of Music." A few more dimes passed under control of the bookman.

A small stampede of 10-cent purchasers followed and under the observant eye of the bystander passed in review a young woman with "The Fatal Marriage"; a stern-featured boy with "Foul Play"; a sweet-faced old lady with "Alice in Wonderland"; a wise-looking old man with Macaulay's "Essays." "Do you know, my best customers are Japanese," declared the bookman. "They buy the very best books and seem able to pick out what they wish with the greatest readiness. Their minds are wonderfully analytical. In looking over a book they

The number of people in the store had thinned out. The rain was coming down heavier, deepening the dusk.

"Now, of all cranks," proceeded the bookman, with an air of one who at last approaches a congenial topic, “those who study the occult sciences—” The rumble of an approaching car was heard. The university professor rushed hurriedly back to the bookman and thrust a dime upon him.

"I take this," he shouted, waving aloft a paperbacked novel and dashed out the front door after his car.

As he

"Another dime," chorused the bookman. The bystander himself started to leave. passed a stand near the entrance he paused to pick up a tattered volume.

"I can't help it-just like the rest of 'em"-he said, half to himself. He pocketed the book and handed the dealer-a dime.-Seattle, Wash., Intelligencer.

*

POEMS

WRITTEN IN A COPY OF "SARTOR RESARTUS."

The book of one our century crowned
A mighty seer.

Deeper than e'er did plummet sound,
He sounded here.

O but the splendor of those heights
His footsteps trod;

The glory of whose days and nights
Were near to God!

This was the temple wherein grew
His spirit vast ;

The temple of our spirit too,
As of his past.

Enter within it, kneel awhile

Before its shrine;

And find, as found the great Carlyle,
Its God divine!

WRITTEN IN A COPY OF EPICTETUS.
These are the maxims which a slave
To all mankind forever gave.
A slave? Nay, where was mind more free
And greater in humanity?

The might of Greece has passed away
Like splendid pageants of a day;
And vanished has the power of Rome
Where all of grandeur had its home;
But Epictetus still survives
Teaching the wisdom of our lives;
That fortitude is more than fate
And man is nobler than the State.
For you, dear friend, whose heart keeps chime
With that vast harmony sublime
Of universal Brotherhood.

Each toiling for the common good,
Some echo of that song may cheer
Your heart within these pages here.

-LORENZO Sosso.

TENNYSON AND THE OLD ANNUALS.

our

own.

Sitting beneath an apple-tree at the bottom of an old English garden on a certain sunny August afternoon, with nothing to disturb the quiet flow of thought, save the sway of branches, the rustling of leaves, and now and then with curiously pleasant effect the dull thud upon the grass of a golden windfall, it was hard not to regret that the age of sentiment had passed. The days of Jane Austen-the days of "sense and sensibility"-the days when confession books were on every drawing-room table, seemed preferable in many ways to Turning over the pages of a number of old annuals which had been carried out from the library to be read in that delightful, wall-flower-scented spot, those days seemed especially preferable. And reading, one wondered whether the people of fifty, a hundred years hence would linger with pleasant regret over our modern periodicals as we were lingering over the leaves of these silk and leather bound volumes of the first half of the nineteenth century; or-unenviable alternative!-whether they would look back on old things and former times with neither admiration nor regret.

The "Friendship's Offerings," the "Keepsakes," and the “Gems" of the days of our grandmothers were the product of an age which, however lacking in "go" it may have been, at least did most things

thoroughly. The beautiful steel engravings from pictures by Turner, Landseer, Sir Thomas Lawrence, and Stothard, which "embelished" the pages of the annuals, were not meant to be ephemeral produc

tions-works of art to be cast away with their accompanying text as soon as glanced at. Other times, other manners! The ideal of the editors of those days was to give their readers, as one of them said in a preface, something which would not be “a mere fleeting production, to die with the season of its birth, but live, a reputed and standard work in every well-selected library." Such was the editorial liberality of former years that no less a sum than eleven thousand guineas was spent on the production of the "Keepsake" for 1829.

The measure of success with which these publications met at the hands of a cultured and tasteful generation was much in proportion to the efforts of their editors. Many of the volumes, it is true, have fallen into neglect; but there are a large number which, if not actually "reputed and standard works," have found their way into the libraries of students of literature and bibliophiles. Besides containing the work of Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Moore, Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Barry Cornwall, and others who had already made their names, they often contained the poetry and prose of writers who had their reputations still to make. Indeed, it is greatly on account of these unknown ones—afterward famous-that

some of these old annuals possess such an interest nowadays to the book lover and student. And this interest is increased in some cases by the fact that much of this early literary work was not afterward republished in the collected works of the writers, or, if so, republished in a somewhat altered form. Tennyson is a case in point. Quite a number of the old annuals are rich mines of Tennysoniana to the searcher after this kind of treasure.

The rare "Death's Doings" of 1826 was of the nature of an annual. Its full title is "Death's Doings; consisting of numerous original Compositions in Prose and Verse, the friendly contribution of various writers; principally intended as illustrations of Twenty-four Plates, designed and etched by R. Dagley, author of 'Select Gems from the Anand it contains tique,' two poems, signed "Alfred," entitled "The Poet" and "The Captive -To Death." These poems-never reprinted— were two of Tennyson's earliest compositions. The first, which is better than the lines supposed to be addressed by a prisoner to Death, is a poem to Byron. The plate by Dagley accompanying it represents Byron seated at a table, writing an ode to immortality. Upon the table at his side is a lighted candle, a book, and pen and ink; to the left of the picture is an open chest, from which appear a numbearing the word "Greece" and the date 1824. ber of rolls of MS.; and upon the floor is a scroll

Death-his head crowned with laurels-is appearing from behind curtains in the background, hold

ing in his hand an extinguisher which he is going to place over the poet's candle. The poem is not long, so one may be excused quoting it in its entirety:

"Thou art vanish'd! Like the blast

Bursting from the midnight cloud;
Like the lightning thou art past—

Earth has seen no nobler shroud!
"Now is quench'd the flashing eye,

Now is chill'd the burning brow,
All the poet that can die;

Homer's self is but as thou.
"Thou hast drunk life's richest draught,
Glory, tempter of the soul!
Wild and deep thy spirit quaff'd,
There was poison in the bowl.
"Then the haunting visions rose,

Specters round thy bosom's throne.
Poet! What shall paint thy woes,
But a pencil like thy own?
"Thou art vanish'd! Earthly Fame,

See of what thy pomps are made!
Genius! Stoop thine eye of flame!
Byron's self is but a shade."

Few will doubt that these lines were written by Tennyson. There is an unmistakable ring about them, and as Dagley was an undergraduate at Cambridge, and in all likelihood a member of the same college at the same time as the poet, what more

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