RECOLLECTrONS OF AUBREY DE VERE.* Mn. DE VERE labours under

a disadvantage in the publication of this volume. Already in his essays, in Sara Coleridge's Memoir, and in the biographies of Lord Houghton and Lord Tennyson, the author has recorded, in words full of sympathy

and charm, his memories of those friends, and has, therefore, to some extent diminished the attraction of the present work. Mr. de Vere, however, is far from being crippled from lack of matter; his resources are manifold, and in his description of persons and places he displays in old age the ardour and buoyancy so often characteristic of the poetic temperament.

In one of his essays Hazlitt makes the paradoxical state- ment that the habit of writing verse never improves and generally injures an author's prose style. The slightest exercise of memory will conjure up a whole army of poets to contradict this statement, and we may say with confidence that Mr. de Vere's pellucid and manly prose owes much to his mastery of English verse. It is as all good style ought to be, wholly destitute of effort, and rises or falls as the subject may chance to prompt. The author is careful to say that this book is not an autobiography; but in recollections that begin with childhood and extend over a long life it is inevitable that the poet's personal story should be linked to that of his associates, and in the chapter entitled "My Submission to the Roman Catholic Church" the writer very paraonably indulges in an account of what he regards as the most important crisis of his life. He had lay advisers as well as clerical, and among the former was Carlyle, who gave him "the most curious form of warning" :—

"'I have ridden over here to tell you not to do that thing. You were born free. Do not go into that hole.' I answered, 'But you used always to tell me that the Roman Catholic Church was the only Christian body that was consistent and could defend her position.' He replied, And so I say still. But the Church of England is much better notwithstanding, because her face is turned in the right direction.'"

This chapter and the two devoted to his friends, Cardinal Newman and Cardinal Manning, exhibit, as several of his essays have done already, the ecclesiastical position of the

author. Those of our readers who are acquainted with Mr. de Vere's poetry will remember how much of that also is coloured by his creed. The larger portion of the Recollections, however, is devoted to subjects which will admit more readily

of treatment in a review.

The story of Mr. de Vere's youthful days exhibits in many ways strange pictures of a bygone time. At Cur- ragh Chase, the lovely home in which he has lived all his life, the poet remembers his grandmother driving about the park with her four greys and an outrider, while his father, with whom she lived, had his four blacks and an out- rider. Those were days when Irish gentlemen fought duels, were carried to bed drunk, and did not love their enemies.

Mr. de Vere relates how on one occasion an old gentleman of high breeding walked up and down the library at Curragh Chase, and exclaimed, "It is a great thing to be able to look back on a long life, and record as I can that never once did any man injure me but sooner or later I had my revenge."

• Recollections of Aubrey do Vero. London: Edward Arnold,

yropos of the drinking habits of an earlier period, he remembers his father telling him how-

" When be was eighteen years of age after a day's hunt he had only avoided intoxication at dinner by watching till the others were beginning to get tipsy, and after that pouring each new glass of wine down his neck-cloth, then worn so large that the chin was buried in it. When the last of the topers lay under the table he rushed to his bedroom, took a bath, dressed again and joined the ladies at their twelve o'clock tea. The next morning at breakfast all the gentlemen rose when my father entered and received him as if he had been a prince. They had heard that he had been unaffected by the wine, and considered that so strong a head was entitled to the highest honours."

In Mr. de Vere's youth he found a friend in Gerald Griffin, the author of The Collegians, "the best picture existing of Irish peasant life—at once the most vivid and the most accurate." The story is founded on a murder committed in Limerick at the beginning of this century. A young gentle- man fell in love with a peasant girl, married her secretly, got tired of her, and drowned her in the Shannon. The crime was discovered, and the murderer, having been found guilty, requested, since he was of gentle birth, that he might be taken to the gallows in a carriage. Upon crossing a bridge the horses plunged furiously and would not advance. "The murderer fell into an agony of terror. He exclaimed, 'Let me out and I will walk.' He walked to the place of execution and was hanged." The author has another story, in which a young man who had killed his antagonist in a faction fight came to the priest saying he wished to give himself up to justice. The priest remarked that it was a serious thing to die, and finding him very ignorant, offered to instruct him every night in the Christian faith, adding : "As soon as ever I find you are fit to be hanged I will tell you so. Till then, don't dare to do anything of the kind." The priest kept his promise, and at length informed the hopeful youth that he never knew a man fitter to be hanged than himself. He con- fessed his crime accordingly, but escaped the gallows, and was transported.

Mr. de Vere was privately educated, and his first tutor pronounced him to be an idiot. He had a delightful child- hood, gladdened by family affection and by the beauty of the country, which he early learned to love. "The recollections of those years come to me," he writes, "with the smell of the new-mown grass in the pleasure-grounds, the breath of the cows as they stood still to be milked, rolling their eyes in quiet pleasure. with a majestic slowness, such as the Greeks attributed to the eyes of Juno." At eighteen the youth began to write poetry, and at the same age he won the friendship of Professor Hamilton, afterwards known as Sir William Rowan Hamilton, Astronomer Royal in the Dublin University. The testimony of Wordsworth, who considered him one of the most wonderful men of the century, is confirmed by Mr. de Vere, who observes that in him the moral qualities were as great as the mental. "The Royal Astronomer did not look through his telescope more than once or twice a year ! He used to say, 'That is my deputy's business. The stars move all right, but what interests me is the high mathesis that

accounts for their movements.'" Hamilton was a great admirer of the transcendental philosophy, and on one occa- sion was so absorbed with the subject that he walked into the water till it was half-way up to his knees. "What's this P" he exclaimed. "We seem to be walking through a

river ; had we not better return to the dry land ? " Another friend of those early days was Mrs. Hemans, whose verse receives a warm expression of praise; but Mr. de Vere is surely mistaken in calling her an Irish poet. Her birthplace was Liverpool, and we believe that her parents were English. Fifty-six years ago Mr. de Vere had the pleasure of meeting Wordsworth, and of staying for several days under the poet's roof, which he regards as the greatest honour of his life.

There, too, he gained the friendship of the Arnold family, and made the acquaintance of Mrs. Fletcher, "who some fifty years before had broken the hearts of all judicious young men at Edinburgh." Wordsworth gladdened the young poet by saying that he considered the sonnets of his father, Sir Aubrey de Vere, the best of the age ; but he added charac- teristically, "I need not remind you, Mr. de Vere, that in making such a remark one does not mean to institute any- thing in the way of a comparison between oneself and another writer."

The magic of Byron was felt only for a brief period, and was completely exorcised by Wordsworth, whose verse Mr. de Vere loved to recite or read aloud. On one occasion he did so with some effect :—

"When still but a boy I was asked by two lady friends to read to them some of Wordsworth's poems. The volume opened at his Address to the Ruins of Kilchurn Castle,' and I began to read in a tone which I intended to be solemn : Skeleton of Untleshed Humanity !' One of the two ladies (she was certainly as thin as a skeleton) leaped up indignantly and exclaimed, Well, I am the thinnest woman in Ireland ; but I cannot approve of personal remarks.' She thought I was addressing her."

While in the Lake country Mr. de Vere visited Nab Cottage the residence of Hartley Coleridge, and thus describes that wayward man of genius, who was, as he says himself, all his life a child :—

"It was a strange thing to see Hartley Coleridge fluctuating about the room, now with en° hand on his head, now with both arms expanded like a swimmer's. There was some element wanting in his being. He could do everything but keep his footing, and doubtless in his inner world of thought, it was easier for him to fly than to walk, and to walk than to stand. There seemed to be no gravitating principle in him. One might have thought he needed stones in his pockets to prevent his being blown away."

A poet of a very different order, Sir Henry Taylor, was the author's lifelong and intimate friend, and in his company and that of his wife a considerable period was spent in foreign travel, the recollections of which are recorded.

Taylor, who admired the Apennines, was, it appears, " uncivil " to the Alps. "I pray to Heaven," he said, "I may never see mountains of this sort again."

Some of the most vivid of Mr. de Vere's memories relate to the Irish famine, and he tells an impressive story of the action taken by his elder brother, now Sir Stephen de Vere, at that period of distress. Not only did he encourage emigration, but he took a steerage passage for Canada with the men who had been labouring under his supervision on the public works. In those days the voyage took six weeks, and often much longer. On reaching Quebec fever broke out among the emigrants Sir Stephen had taken with him, and for eight months they received from him all the attention they could have had from a hospital nurse. The aim for which he had toiled was accomplished. He had had personal

experience of the sufferings inflicted on steerage passengers, and his letter describing the misery of the voyage having been read in the House of Lords by Earl Grey, the "Passengers Act" was amended. "It is impossible to guess," Mr. de Vere writes, "how many thousand of emigrants may have been saved by this enterprise, for the enormous Irish

emigration continued and increased for several years after the famine The deaths on the voyage to Canada had at one time risen from five in the thousand to sixty in the

thousand; and the deaths while the ships were in quarantine from one to forty in the thousand." The poet's modesty pre- vents him from recording his own exertions daring that time

of sorrow.

The contents of the volume are very varied, and the writer passes readily from serious subjects to the lively anecdotes which savour of the Irish soil. One could wish that he had drawn a little more freely from the stores accumulated through a long life. Mr. de Vere has met so many famous men, has gained so many friends, has been open to so many influences, and has so wide a capacity for admiration and love, that the very worth of this volume makes us feel how readily the author might have made it worthier. Yet it would be ungrateful to complain that while possessing a full purse, he has not chosen to empty it, especially as a hint is thrown out in the preface that the deficiencies of the present volume may be remedied in another. The Recollections are likely to be widely read, for they will interest all readers.