FEW persons, probably, who in 1874 saw a Bath chair drawn slowly round the sheltered paths of Regent's Park, and noticed its occupant's face, worn by time and suffering but kindly and thoughtful, knew that they were looking at one of the last links between themselves and a brilliant group of writers become historical--at the schoolfellow of Byron and Peel, the friend of Campbell and Coleridge, the Barry Cornwall whose songs forty years ago were almost the only popular songs with any pretension to poetry. Shelley, versifying a remark of Byron's, wrote: Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong; London and tempted fortune as a merchant. Probably therefore (though Procter does not say so) his celebrated son so far deserved the title of cockney poet'-freely bestowed at the time of his debut in literature-as to have been born within sound of Bow bells. Becoming in some way independent of trade, Procter's father retired, and occupied himself with his rents, dividends, and children. To his father Procter appears to have owed no intellectual gifts or tastes, but something more valuable—the straightforward integrity so manifest in his life and conversation, that to know him was implicitly to trust him. When five years old, Procter was sent to a boarding-school; and his distinct and They learn in suffering what they teach in touching sketches of his masters, especially song. But all wretched men are not poets, nor, happily, are all poets wretched men. Few, even of the most commonplace mortals, have had a more genial disposition or a more prosperous life than Procter and the poet whose laurels have been twined by brother hands, from Charles Lamb to Algernon Swinburne; to whom Leigh Hunt dedicated his Beaumont and Fletcher,' as one with genius akin to theirs, without one particle of what stained it;' to whom Thackeray affectionately' inscribed Vanity Fair,' and Browning dedicated Colombe's Birthday in token of love and honour '-had no lack of appreciation from those who could make it most valuable. In his very pseudonyman anagram of his name-there is a characteristic pleasantness; and his poems, notwithstanding the occasional melancholy with which a weak constitution and a reflective disposition combined to tinge them, have a healthy sympathy with all that is best in man and brightest in nature, a pure and cheerful music, like that of the birds and brooks, to which he was always happily responsive. เ Procter's life was too serene to be eventful, unless,' says Mr. Coventry Patmore, in his Biographical Notes,' his friendships may be regarded as its events.' And beautiful events these were, recorded in the memoirs and correspondences which make up the literary history of the last half century-and in only one instance accompanied by a word of disparagement or dislike, from a pen which never spared the friend who might become in any degree also the rival. Bryan Waller Procter was born in 1787. His progenitors, he says in the Autobiographical Fragment' whose only fault is its brevity, had been north-country farmers for many generations. His father, more ambitious than the rest of his race, went to that of the gentle gracious émigré, M. Molière, written after a lapse of seventy years, show how early his mind must have become sympathetic and observant. At this early age he fell in love, and thus describes his parting with the pretty delicate girl who, when aware that she was dying, desired to bid her baby-love farewell : Late in September I was told that 'Miss R. was ill, was very ill, and that perhaps I might not see her again. Death I could not, of course, comprehend; but I understood perfectly what was a perpetual absence from my pretty friend. Whether I wept or raved, or visit her. It was a cold day, and the red and how it was, I know not, but I was taken to brown leaves were plentiful on the trees, and it was afternoon when we arrived at an oldfashioned country house at some distance from the high road. The sun was near his setting, but the whole of the wide west was illuminated, and threw crimson and scarlet colours on the windows, over which hung a cloud of vine-stalks and changing leaves, that dropped by scores on every summons of the blast. She was sitting, as I entered, in a large farm-chair covered with white, like a faded Flora, and was looking at the sun; but she turned her bright and gentle looks on me, and the pink bloom dimpled in her cheeks as she smiled and bade me welcome. Mr. Patmore remarks that these infantile passions are almost peculiar to the childhood of poets, who love with the full vehemence of passion, in the innocence and ignorance of early childhood.' This was also Alfieri's theory, and is supported by his own case; by Dante's falling in love with Beatrice when nine years old; and by Byron's passion for Mary Duff when sevena passion so intense and lasting, that he was thrown into convulsions by being told of her marriage nine years afterwards. Procter's health was delicate from infancy, and this constitutional weakness aided the quick ripening of his imagination and sensibility. He describes a wall paper in the bedroom at his uncle's, in the pattern of which he could see many fearful and terrible forms; and Miss Martineau says at twelve years old he was horribly convinced that his father's raven haunted him as a spy. This idea became so unbearable that he once tried to kill the bird, and was overwhelmed with an agony of remorse, only relieved by finding his enemy hopping about and croaking as ominously as ever. When about thirteen Procter was sent to Harrow. He does not record with any great respect either his course of study under Dr. Butler, or the companions who shared it. Too much time, he justly remarks, is given in our public schools to Latin and Greek, which exclude during school hours all modern languages, mathematics, and history, forcing the minds of the boys from studies far more likely to expand and sharpen the general intellect. Boys,' he says, it is not easy to characterize very minutely. They are known mostly by their appetites, by their wants and desires and dislikes, which rise up and show themselves every day, and are expressed in obvious language.' He then distinguishes two only of his schoolfellows: Peel, 'who toiled and struggled upwards till he became a minister of state,' and inaugurated his financial career by writing an imposition of verse for Procter for half-a-crown; and Byron, who blossomed into a poet.' There were no indications of such blossoming in his schooldays. He was loud, even coarse, and very capable of a boy's vulgar enjoyments. He played at hockey and racquet, and was occasionally engaged in pugilistic combats. He wore an iron cramp on one of his feet,' adds Procter, and loose corduroy trousers plentifully relieved by ink, and had fingernails bitten to the quick.' He was then a rough curly-headed boy, and apparently nothing more. Procter is not much more complimentary to himself at the same period : In reference to my intellect, I may say, with my hand on my heart, I had nothing superfluous; nothing either very bad or very good; nothing very stupid or very bright. A little quickness once existed, as it does in most boys, but I never should have been a senior wrangler, nor a Smith's prizeman, nor had I any pretensions to trample on mediocre people. Then I was without ambition-a fatal defect, and one which (as some critics say) argues a corresponding defect of I will not shrink from boasting that when young I attained some excellence at football; that in leaping and running I was distinguished; and, finally, that I intellect. was considered a formidable antagonist in the mild and modest game of marbles. A humbler influence than that of school or schoolfellows directed Procter's studies into the most congenial channel. His holidays were spent at the large old-fashioned house of his mother's uncle, about twelve miles from London. One of the servants was a woman of superior birth and education, whose father had failed, and who in early life had cultivated a taste for reading to such good purpose that she could repeat all Richardson's and Fielding's novels to her fascinated young listener, with much discrimination of the characters. But above all, high above all, she worshipped Shakspere. She it was who first taught me to know him and to love him, and led eventually to my wondering admiration for the greatest genius that the world has ever produced. She used to repeat to me whole scenes, selecting those best adapted to a boy's apprehension. In particular I remember what effect was produced on me by her recitation of passages in Hamlet,' and of the scenes between Hubert and Arthur in King John.' I will buy a Shakspere with the first money I get,' said I. 'And you cannot do better,' replied she. I bought a Shakspere, and entered into a world beyond my own. Accordingly, though on Procter's leaving school fate and his father determined that he should be made a lawyer, nature and his uncle's old servant had already made him a poet. But he had to fulfil his destiny' in both kinds,' and was placed under the care of Mr. Atherton, a solicitor at Calne. The move into the heart of the country was training for the poet as well as the lawyer. The time had arrived when he first began to think. Let no one, he says, despise any means by which the intellect of a boy may be widened and strengthened. We attach too exclusive a value to words and figures. What teacher has ever endeavoured to instil into his pupils the value of weeds or grasses, of animal or vegetable nature; the wonders of space, or of the seasons, of night, of silence? A circulating library, where Procter found Sterne and Le Sage, Inchbald and Radcliffe, assisted to complete his education; and as though all influences converged to strengthen the dawning tendency, he at this time made his first literary friendship. William Lisle Bowles (best remembered now for the remarkable influence of his son nets on Coleridge and Southey, and by Byron's satire in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' where the unlucky poet is mangled as well as mocked) was rector of Bremhill, and Procter, who had read with admi who left it to the poet's younger brother. This story is neither contradicted nor confirmed by Mr. Patmore. Procter himself merely says he had a younger brother, who succeeded to a small landed estate, and who all his life had been an idle man. On his father's death, in 1816, the poet inherited some property; he kept a hunter, which he used at St. Albans in the season; improved his early pugilistic excellence by lessons from Cribb; and took a house in Brunswick Square, where he entertained his guests handsomely. This liberal style of living no doubt gave rise to the gossip retailed by Moore, who writes in his Journal, under date of July 9th, 1819 :— ration at Harrow his famous sonnets, used | heritance from a rich uncle named Waller, to visit the rectory, and accompany the parson's violoncello with his flute. 'I was very ready, perhaps not a little proud,' he says, to join the reverend poet in his harmonious interludes. As far as our acquaintance went he was simply a player on the violoncello, for I never heard him speak of his sonnets, or refer to poetry on any occasion.' In another way the minstrel of blighted hopes disappointed Procter's romantic preconceptions. I had imagined that I should see a melancholy man, pressed down by love disappointed, and solemn with internal trouble. I found a cheerful married man, with no symptoms of weakness or sentiment about him.' The pair of friends,' almost as ill-matched in age as Wordsworth and his Michael, met once in later years at the house of Rogers, when Procter had become famous, and the old poet rejoiced in his success. Went to breakfast with Rogers, and mentioned the poems lately published by Barry Cornwall, which had been sent to me by their author; and that on my calling at the publishers [C. and J. Ollier], to leave my card London of course was the land of promise for him, I was told his real name was Procter, to which Procter's steps were set. He but that being a gentleman of fortune, he went thither when nineteen years old, but did not like to have his name made free with in the reviews.' 'I suppose,' said Luttrell, at this point the autobiographical fragmenthe is of opinion qui non habet in crumena luat ends, and there is scanty record of his first half-dozen years' residence in town, beyond the fact that he had at that time resolved to abandon law for literature. The usual disenchantment followed this resolve. I pens. made the acquaintance of two or three writ- 6 6 Fortunately, Procter was at no time absolutely dependent on literary work (though for a very short period, after dissolving & brief partnership with a solicitor, he is said to have lived by his pen'), and he was thus spared the sharpest struggles, the bitterest humiliations of early authorship. Miss Martineau, in the memoir of Procter contributed by her to the Daily News,' says he was disappointed of an expected in in corpore. These poems, by the way, are full of original talent. Miss Mitford, that wonderful amasser of literary on dits, got hold of another version of this story, and wrote to Sir William Elford, in 1820 :— 6 Everybody is talking about Marcian Colonna,' Barry Cornwall's new poem. Now Barry Cornwall' is an alias. The poet's real it might hurt his practice if he were known name is Proctor, a young attorney, who feared to follow this 'idle trade.' It has, however, become very generally known, and poor Mr. Proctor is terribly embarrassed with his false name. He neither knows how to keep it on nor throw it up. By whatever appeilation he chooses to be called, he is a great poet.* Procter had been writing frequently in the Literary Gazette,' under various initials. Jerdan says in his autobiography that satirical power. some of these contributions exhibited great If it were so, it was very seldom exercised. Genealogists,' has long since passed into His jeu d'esprit, The deserved oblivion. 'Dramatic Scenes and other Poems' appeared in 1819; Marcian Colonna and The Sicilian Story' in 1820. Byron, in 1821, wrote to Murray : I just see by the papers of Galignani that there is a new tragedy of great expectation Of what I have read of by Barry Cornwall. his works, I like the Dramatic Sketches, but *Life of Mary Russell Mitford.' By Rev. A. G. L'Estrange. Second edition. Vol. ii. p. 104. 6 thought his Sicilian Story,' and 'Marcian | upon Mirandola as a work of very great Colonna,' in rhyme, quite spoilt by I know promise and deserved success. It is strange not what affectation of Wordsworth, and that Mr. Murray has not thought it worth his Moore, and myself, all mixed up into a kind while to mention (that is, if you know him) of chaos. I think him very likely to pro- that I expressly wrote to him my regret that duce a good tragedy if he keep to a natural I had not been aware of Mirandola' at the style, and not play tricks to form harlequin- date of the preface to the 'Doge,' &c. ades for an audience. As he (Barry Corn- Had I been aware of your tragedy (although wall is not his true name) was a schoolfellow it is a matter of not the least consequence to of mine, I take more than common interest in you) I should certainly not have omitted to inhis success, and shall be glad to hear of it sert your name with those of the other writers speedily. If I had been aware that he was who still do honour to the drama. in that line, I should have spoken of him in the preface to Marino Faliero.' He will do a world's wonder if he produce a great tragedy. A few months later he wrote to the same correspondent: Barry Cornwall will do better by-and-by, I dare say, if he don't get spoiled by green tea, and the praises of Pentonville and Paradise Row. In that year (1821) Mirandola' was acted at Covent Garden, by Macready, Charles Kemble, and Miss Foote. The cast alone would have commanded a certain success, even without those poetic beauties in which the play abounded. It produced £630 for the author; but he speaks of it very humbly, as hurried and imperfect, and attributes its success to the actors. Had I taken pains (he says) I could have made a much more sterling thing, but I wished for its representation, and there were so many authors struggling for the same object, that I had not firmness to resist the opportunity opened to me through the kindness of Mr. Macready to offer it to the proprietor of Covent Garden Theatre. I allowed the play to appear, whilst I was conscious of its many shortcomings. Either Procter did not think quite so humbly of this play at the time of its appearance, or he was misrepresented. Captain Medwin says:— I told Lord Byron that I had had a letter from Procter, and that he had been jeered on 'Mirandola,' not having been included in his (Lord B.'s) enumeration of the dramatic pieces of the day; and that he added he had been at Harrow with him. 'Ay,' said Lord Byron, I remember the name: he was in the Lower School, in such a class. They stood, Farrer, Procter, Jocelyn.'* In a subsequent letter (March, 1823) Byron says: There Why don't you try the drama again? is your forte, and you should set to work seriously. You would have the field to yourself, and are fully able to keep it. I have prosed thus far in answer to your inquiry. Patience, and shuffle the cards. Leigh Hunt, who is resident in this district, has carried off your' Flood' (By the way, we have had one of our own this winter, which carried away bridges, cattle, and Christians) before I had time to read it. What little I glanced at I liked extremely. All which friendliness and politeness, how- Then there's my gentle Euphues, who, they say The notion of Procter's setting up' to be any sort of Byron is simply ludicrous; and at the time the lines appeared, Procter was too rich in friends to be much disturbed by Byron's flippancy. One, for whom Procter had an affectionate admiration, and who undoubtedly influenced his serious and playful style more than any other contemporary, by his conversation and writings, and by directing him to the old dramatists as models, is thus described by him Garden seven and forty years ago might, by Persons in the habit of traversing Covent extending their walk a few yards into Russell in black, who went out every morning and Street, have noted a small spare man clothed returned every afternoon as regularly as the hands of the clock moved towards certain hours. You could not mistake him. He was somewhat stiff in his manner, and almost clerical in dress, which indicated much wear. He First of the Letters from Literary Friends,' appended to Mr. Patmore's book, stands one from Byron, referring to this in-had a long melancholy face, with keen penterview. It is dated Pisa, 1822: Your friend, Captain Medwin, is at this moment with me. I always thought highly of the dramatic specimens, and look *Conversations of Lord Byron.' Second edition, p. 183. etrating eyes, and he walked with a short resolute step citywards. He looked no one in the face for more than a moment, yet contrived to see everything as he went on. No one who ever studied the human features could pass him by without recollecting his countenance. It was full of sensibility, and it came upon you like a new thought, which you could not help dwelling upon afterwards: it gave rise to meditation, and did you good. This small, half-clerical man was-Charles Lamb. Procter had been introduced to Lamb in 1817 at Leigh Hunt's house, where he says he enjoyed Lamb's company once or twice over agreeable suppers. The acquaintance grew to an intimate friendship, which lasted seventeen years. Both were contributors to the London Magazine; and at the monthly suppers, where Allan Cunningham, Hood, De Quincey, Hazlitt, and poor John Clare were frequent guests, Lamb used when able to sit by Procter, to whom he would whisper, My boy, you will see me home to-night, I know! Procter told Mr. Fields that he had never known Lamb drink immoderately except on one occasion, and that he was a small and delicate eater. Mr. Carew Hazlitt charges Procter with moral falsification' and 'distortion of biographical facts,' because in his memoir of Lamb he did not represent his friend as a person who quaffed porter out of a pewter pot, and interlarded his discourse with profane expressions.' But it must be remembered that as 6 6 Procter knew Lamb intimately, and Mr. Carew Hazlitt did not, he was infinitely more likely of the two to be correct as to Lamb's habits. How strongly Lamb resented the insinuation that he drank immoderately, we know from his Letter to Robert Southey; and if Lamb did occasionally use strong expletives,' we protest against the view that solicitude to exhibit the man in as elegant an aspect as might be induced Procter to suppress the fact. Those who, like the writer, knew Procter personally, know perfectly well that he of all men was singularly free from the half-heartedness, egotism, and effeminate prudery' with which Mr. Carew Hazlitt charges him.* With faltering voice (says Mr. Fields), Procter told me of Lamb's givings away' to impoverished friends whose necessities were greater than his own. His secret charities were constant and unfailing, and no one ever suffered hunger when he was by. He could not endure to see a fellow-creature in want if he had the means to supply him. Thinking, from the depression of spirits which Procter in his young manhood was once labouring under, that perhaps he was in want of money, Lamb looked him earnestly in the face as they were walking one day in the country together, and blurted out, in his stammering way, My dear boy, I have a hundred pound note in my ་ * Mary and Charles Lamb.' By W. C. Hazlitt. Pp. 11, 12. desk, that I don't know what to do with. Oblige me by taking it, and getting the confounded thing out of my keeping.' 'I was in no need of money,' said Procter, and I declined the gift; but it was hard work to make Lamb believe that I was not in an impecunious condition.'. In this secret charity,' as in other qualities, Procter, according to Mr. Patmore, much resembled his old friend. Some of Lamb's most delightful letters were addressed to Procter. They are too well known to need more than a passing reference, yet one cannot resist dwelling on a quaint pungent passage or two, just as we linger in an old-fashioned garden over the familiar aroma of wallflower and sweetbriar. Every lover of Lamb has repeatedly laughed over the letter in which he asks Procter's professional advice as to an imaginary will under which Lamb is executor, and then begs a few lines of verse for a young friend's album: Six lines-make 'em eight-signed Barry C. They need not be very good, as I chiefly want 'em as a foil to mine. Martin Burney will tell you the sort of girl I request the ten lines for-somewhat of a pensive cast, what you admire. The lines may come before the law question, as that cannot be determined before Hilary Term, and I want your deliberate judment on that. The other may be flimsy and superficial. The next letter strikes a startling national balance. 'Ain't you glad about Burke's case? We may set off the Scotch murders against the Scotch novels. Hare, the Great Unhanged.' And in the next Lamb is smitten with compunction as to his inroads upon Procter's purse : The comings-in of an incipient conveyancer are not adequate to the receipt of three twopenny-post non-paids in a week. Therefore, after this I condemn my stub to long and deep silence, or shall awaken it to write to lords, lest those raptures in this honeymoon of our correspondence, which you avow for the gentle person of my Nuncio, after passing through certain natural grades, as love, love and water, love with the chill off, should suddenly plum down to a loathing and blank aversion, to the rendering probable such counter expressions as this, Hang that infernal twopenny postman !' Procter's hitherto unpublished sketches of remarkable people he knew (both those made at the time, which unfortunately are very few, and those in which, when seventy-nine years old, memory struggled painfully to secure the fast-vanishing forms) are full of acute touches, which sometimes place a man bodily before the reader in a few apt words. They are little more than |