BOOKS.

THE LIFE OF MR. P. H. GOSSE.'

APART from the good work done by him as a naturalist, Philip Gosse's Life deserved to be written, and his son's attractive narrative will interest many readers. The story is a remarkable one throughout. Philip's father was a miniature-painter, who gained his bread, and little more, by wandering from town to town in search of customers. The poor man was blessed with good intentions and some ability, but, according to his grandson, "had no push in him, no ambition, and no energy." Yet it must have been some feeling of ambition that prompted the portrait-painter to write verses that nobody would read; and we are told that his latest words referred to an epic poem that he thought he had left with • The Life of Philip Henry Gosse. By his Eon, Edmund Gosse. London: Kogan Paul. 1890.

Messrs. Blackwood at their London house. "He was doomed, however, to live and die inedited ; and when his heirs inquired for The Impious Rebellion, behold ! as rare things will, it had vanished."

From his earliest childhood, Philip Gosse felt the pinch of poverty. He was born in lodgings over a shoemaker's shop in Worcester, but his earliest recollections were of Poole, in Dorsetshire, for there his boyhood was passed. His passion for natural history was awakened at a very early period, and at the same time the love of verse was aroused by Byron's Lara, which "he read and re-read, devouring the romantic poem with an absorbing interest which obliterated the world about him." It was, he said, the dawning of Poetry on his imagination. Meanwhile, the lad had been taught some Latin and the elements of Greek, but all the education worthy of the name was self-acquired, for at fifteen Philip obtained a clerkship at Poole, and at seventeen was sent in the same capacity to a counting-house in Newfoundland. The voyage proved a long one, and Philip kept a naturalist's journal for the family at home. His strength of character was already manifested in an inflexible determination to do what was right. His mother's final injunction had been that he should read the Bible daily :—

" No one else in the ship had cultivated the same habit, and as there was no opportunity for retirement, and as the lad was obliged to brave publicity, it was not altogether easy to persevere. His young shipmates looked upon the practice with stern disap- proval, and took an opportunity of advising him to get rid of that sort of thing, as that wouldn't do for Newfoundland.' At no period of his life, however, was my father affected in the slightest degree by considerations of this sort. His conscience was a law to him, and a law that he was prepared to obey in face of an army of ridicule drawn up in line of battle This was a personal characteristic with him, and one which will be found to have coloured his whole career."

Eight years were spent in Newfoundland, and there the bent of Gosse's genius as a naturalist was fully developed.

Though he did not then know it, he had found the vocation of his life. The story of his first boyish love is amusing, and reminds one of the mode of wooing adopted by the Laird of Dumbiedikes :—

"My unconquerable bashfulness precluded my ever hinting my love to Jane. A year or two afterwards I was at a ball at Newell's, the only one I ever attended, and the Elson girls were there. It was customary for the fellows each to escort a lady home. I asked Jane to allow me the honour. She took my arm, and there under the moon, we walked for full half-a-mile, and not a word—literally not a single word—broke the awful silence ! I felt the awkward- ness most painfully ; but the more I sought something to say, the more my tongue seemed tied to the roof of my mouth."

We may add that a year later Jane Elson was married, but not, it is needless to say, to Philip Gosse.

While in Newfoundland, Gosse had an adventurous winter journey across the country through thick snow, in which the foot on being set down would sink to mid-thigh, and had to

be painfully dragged out for the next step. His guide, an old furrier and trapper, told him of a game played by the otters

which is worth recording :-

" Several of these amusing creatures combine to select a suitable spot. Then each in succession, lying flat on his belly, from the top of the bank slides swiftly down over the snow, and plunges into the water. The others follow, while he crawls up the hank at some distance, and running round to therliding-place, takes his turn again to perform the same evolution Ts before. The wet running from their bodies freezes on the surface of the slide, and so the snow becomes a smooth gutter of ice. This sport the old trapper had frequently seen continued with the utmost eagerness, and with every demonstration of delight, for hours together."

In 1832, at the age of twenty-two, a spiritual change took place in Philip Gosse. Always conscientious, he now became devout; and henceforth his life was that of a sincere, but in some respects, narrow-minded Christian. At this period, too, after a five years' absence, he visited his home, carrying with him a devotion to natural history, which was to be hence- forward his "central occupation." Three years later, Gosse left Newfoundland with some pious friends who proposed to take a farm in Canada. He was full of hope and energy, and intended, with his slender savings, to purchase a hundred acres himself.

The first entry in his journal upon reaching Canada is as follows :—" July 15.—As I this day arrived at Quebec, I pro- cured some lettuce for my caterpillars, which they ate greedily." The emigrants settled at Compton, in the Lower Province, and there, as Gosse confessed long afterwards, he "felt and acted as if butterfly-catching had been the one great business of life." Great gain, from a naturalist's point of

view, was reaped by a three years' sojourn in Canada, but the farm was a failure, and "at twenty-eight years of age, he was

not possessed, when all his property was told, of so many pounds." Carrying with him a cabinet of insects, Gosse now sought his fortune in the United States, and on reaching Philadelphia, was advised by some friends to go to Alabama.

After a miserable voyage, he landed at Mobile with much faintness of heart, and then took the Alabama river-steamer for King's Landing. He proposed to be a schoolmaster, and on the voyage was engaged in that vocation by a Judge who was seeking a master for a school to be established at Dallas.

He was delighted with the splendour of the vegetation and the abounding life that surrounded him, and his exquisite skill as an artist found ample employment in the fauna of the neighbourhood. Some excellent stories are told of this period of Mr. Gosse's life, for which we must refer our readers to the volume. The first months spent in Alabama were happy ones, but the lawless state of society, the institution of slavery, and the physical and mental depression caused by the hot, damp atmosphere, made Gosse anxious to leave for England :-

" It was in September, when the bustle of cotton-picking made an unusual strain upon the native laziness of the negro, that Gosse was made physically ill by the ruthless punishments which were openly inflicted on all sides of him. The shrieks of women under the cow-hide whip, cynically plied in the very courtyard beneath his windows at night, would make him almost sick with distress and impotent anger, and I have heard him describe how he had tried to stuff up his ears to deaden the sound of the agonising cries which marked the conventional progress of this very peculiar domestic institution.' With the Methodist preachers and other pious people with whom he specially fraternised, he would occasionally attempt, very timidly, to dis- cuss the ethics of slavery, but always to find in these ministers and professors of the gospel exactly the same jealousy of criti- cism and determination to applaud existing conditions, that could characterise the most dissolute and savage overseer, as he sat and flicked his boots with his cow-hide on the verandah of a rum-shop."

Gosse had been persuaded that he bad a call to remain in Alabama as a Wesleyan minister ; but his health or his feelings decided him to leave for England. He carried home about twenty specimens of the skins of rare birds, and a few fur-pelts. " In cash he found that he was, when he had paid his passage to England, even poorer than when he left Canada." On the voyage home, Gosse felt it his duty to preach to the crew, and to speak on the subject of religion to the Captain. " an amiable and well-informed man, a profane swearer, and one who seems to entertain considerable contempt for godli- ness."

Strange to say, although his pocket was empty, he refused the post of Curator at a museum, partly not without reason perhaps, because he was ignorant of mineralogy, but partly, to quote his own words, because "I should fear that I might be thrown into situations in which I might find it difficult to keep that purity of intention which I value more than life." The position of Curator in a provincial museum is not, as Mr. Edmund Gosse justly remarks, commonly looked upon as one of peculiar temptation to worldliness ; but he adds that his father hoped, if possible, to become a Wesleyan minister. This hope, however, was doomed to disappointment. For some months he loiterqd at his brother's house; but the want of money made some actin imperative, and with a manuscript in his pocket, he went to London, and took a miserable lodging in Drury Lane. The book he had to sell was The Canadian Naturalist; but before Mr. Van Voorst, the publisher to whom the manuscript had been sent, could pronounce his decision about it, Gosse was almost in the condition of Johnson when be walked in the streets at night for lack of a lodging. At length, in the utmost state of dejection, he called on Mr. Van Voorst

"The publisher began slowly, I like your book ; I shall be pleased to publish it ; I will give you one hundred guineas for it.' One hundred guineas ! It was Peru and ball the Indies ! The reaction was so violent that the demure and ministerial-looking youth, closely buttoned up in his worn broadcloth, broke down utterly into hysterical sob upon sob, while Mr. Van Voorst, murmuring, My dear young man ! my dear young man !' hastened out to fetch wine and minister to wants which it was beyond the power of pride to conceal any longer."

This was the first of a series of volumes that ultimately gained Philip Gosse an income and the reputation of a scientific naturalist. For a long time, however, he was doomed to live in obscurity and poverty. We read of his opening a school in Hackney, and also giving lessons in flower-painting. At the same time, he acted as a local preacher, until he severed his connection with the Wesleyans, and became a " Plymouth Brother." It is unnecessary to follow Mr. Gosse's career as an author, which, when once he had made his mark, was singularly successful. In 1844, he was sent to Jamaica by the British Museum as a collector of specimens. " When he arrived, the ornithology of Jamaica was in a chaotic state ; when he left, nearly two hundred species of birds were clearly ascertained to belong to the island fauna." Of mammalia, reptiles, and fishes, he was able to add twenty-four new species to science. Eighteen fruitful months were spent in the island, and his investi- gations there are recorded in one of his most delightful books, A Naturalist's Sojourn in Jamaica, and also in The Birds of Jamaica, which " raised Philip (base's reputation at a bound.'

At the mature age of thirty-eight, Gosse met, at a, meeting of Plymouth Brethren in Hackney, a lady older still, but endowed, notwithstanding, with many outward charms, and blessed also with intellectual gifts of no common order. A friendship sprang up between them, and they were married in 1848. Marriage was not per- mitted to interfere with Mr. Gosse's labours, not even a single day being allowed for the honeymoon. His wife therefore fell back upon her studies also, and annotated an interleaved copy of the Hebrew Bible. The Botifera were now occupying Gosse's attention, and he fixed in his garden some stagnant open pans for infusoria :-

" In the midst of all this, and during the very thrilling exami- nation of three separate stagnations of hemp-seed, poppy-seed, and hollyhock-seed, his wife presented him with a child, a helpless and unwelcome apparition whose arrival is marked in the parental diary in the following manner :—" E. delivered of a son. Received green swallow from Jamaica.' Two ephemeral vitalities, indeed, and yet, strange to say, both exist ! The one stands for ever behind a pane of glass in the Natural History Museum at South Kensing- ton ; the other, whom the green swallow will doubtless survive, is- he who now puts together these deciduous pages."

Two years later, Gosse, who had long been working without a, holiday, became suddenly ill, and was forced to leave London. He went, therefore, with his wife and child to South Devon, and took lodgings at St. Marychurch, Torquay, where he was destined afterwards to find a home. Ilfracombe was also visited, and altogether ten months were spent in the county with which Mr. Gosse's name is most intimately associated.

And now for the first time he attempted to create a marine aquarium, and a large tank set up in the Zoological Gardens was stocked by the naturalist. This was a fresh and delightful employment, and other engagements of a like kind took him once more to the South Coast in the following year. His volume The Aquarium had a large sale, and yielded a profit of more than £900. An acquaintance with Charles Kingsley at this period ripened into a warm friendship ; but Gosse was shy of acquaintances, and did not enlarge his circle much with the growth of his reputation. "At any moment he would have cheerfully given a wilderness of strangers for a new rotifer."

The death of Mrs. Gosse, after terrible suffering under the hands of a quack-doctor, suggests the remark, of which the present writer has had large experience, that peculiar religious views are almost invariably associated with a peculiarity of judgment with regard to medical treatment. Regular prac- titioners are rarely, if ever, in favour with " Friends " or " Brethren." Mr. Gosse's creed admitted of no discussion and of no enlargement. Every article in it was rigidly fixed, and as the devout Roman Catholic solves all doubt by implicit reliance on the infallibility of his Church, so did Mr. Gosse's belief in the verbal inspiration of the Bible save him from the " obstinate questionings " that beset men of wider thought. After some period of widowhood, Gosse married a second time, and for more than a quarter of a century had the com- panionship of a lady who entered largely into all his pursuits, and whom her step-son mentions with gratitude and affection, as the good genius of the house. The latter years of the naturalist's life were actively and happily spent, and his one fear, as the end approached, was that the personal advent of the Saviour, for which he was daily waiting, would be still delayed. "Even within the last fortnight," his wife writes, " seeing me distressed, he said, ' Oh, darling! don't trouble.

It is not too late; even now the Blessed Lord may come and take us both up together.' I believe he was buoyed up almost to the last with this strong hope."