BURDY'S LIFE OF SKELTON.*
MACAULAY called Burdy's Life of Skelton an admirable picture of life in Ireland from 1707 to 1787. Skelton, it will be recalled, was an Ulster clergyman of considerable learning and great piety. During the many famines which occurred in the course of his fifty-nine years of ministry he used almost incredible exertions to obtain and distribute oatmeal among his poor. Twice he sold his little collection of books— his sole companions in an isolated parish in Fermanagh —when all other means of raising money for the poor failed him. On one occasion Skelton saw a vision pleasantly typical of his epoch. A lady—a widow—had offered him the position of tutor to her children. One night, while he was still in doubt whether to accept, "he saw the appearance of a wig- block rising by degrees out of the floor of his room, which, when it got above the floor, moving backwards and forwards, said in a solemn voice, Beware of what you are about,' and sank gradually down." He refused the poet, and the words of the majestic visitant were justified two years after- wards, when the lady married the tutor who went in his stead and made the rest of the poor man's life wretched by her conduct. Skelton never obtained the preferments to which his oratorical skill and virtuous life entitled him. However, as Ms biographer remarks, he would not have benefited by the richest living, as it was his custom only to keep so much of his income for himself as would buy him absolute necessaries. The rest he devoted to the poor, succouring Roman Catholics and Presbyterians as freely as men of his own congregation.
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