Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets, Vol. 1 (of 2)

The religion, too, of Thomson was the religion not of creeds and crabbed doctrines of humanity. He had studied nature in the spirit of its Maker, and the fruit of that study was an enlarged and tender sympathy for his fellow-men. This sentiment is every where conspicuous as his piety; and in the passage following the fine account of the man perishing in the snow, rises to the power and descriptive eloquence of Shakspeare.

Yes, if the great sentiment of this passage were but firmly imprinted on the hearts of all men and all women, but especially the rich and powerful, how soon would the face of this earth be changed, and the vale of tears be converted into a lesser heaven! It is the grand defect of our systems of education, for rich and for poor, but pre-eminently for the former, that it is not taught that no man can live innocently who lives only for his own enjoyment; that to live merely to enjoy ourselves is the highest treason against God and man; that God does not live merely for himself, his eternal existence is one constant work of beneficence; and that it is the social duty of every rational being to live like God, his Creator, for the good of others. Were this law of duty taught faithfully in all our schools, with all its responsibilities, the penalties of its neglect, the ineffable delight of its due discharge, there would be no longer seen that moral monster, the man or woman who lives alone for the mere purpose of selfish enjoyment. That host of gay and idle creatures, who pass through life only to glitter in the circles of fashion; to seek admiration for personal attractions and accomplishments—for dressing, playing, dancing, or riding—whose life is but the life of a butterfly when it should be the life of a man, would speedily disperse, and be no more seen. That life would be shrunk from as a thing odious and criminal, because useless; when faculties, wealth, and fame are put into their hands, and a world is laid before them in which men are to be saved and exalted; misery, crime, shame, despair, and death prevented; and all the hopes and capacities for good in the human soul are to be made easy to the multitude. To live for these objects is to be a hero or a heroine, and any man or woman may be that; to live through this world of opportunities given but once, and to neglect them, is the most fearful fate that can befall a creature of eternal responsibilities. But poets and preachers have proclaimed this great truth for ages; the charge now lies at the door of the educators, and they alone can impress effectually on the world its highest and most inalienable duty, that of living for the good of others.

Among those who have used the voice of poetry given them of God to rouse their fellow-men to a life of beneficence, none have done it more zealously or more eloquently than Thomson. For this we pass over here the mere charms of his poetic achievements; over those great pictures which he has painted of the world, and its elements of forests, tempests, plagues, earthquakes; of the views of active life at home and abroad; the hunter's perils and the hunter's carouse

of man roaming the forests of the tropics, or climbing the cliffs of the lonely Hebrides; to notice in this brief article those bursts of eloquent fire, in which he calls to godlike deeds—those of mercy and of goodness. In this respect, as well as in that of mere poetical beauty, his poem of the Castle of Indolence is pre-eminent. Thomson suffered from the seductions of the vile wizard of Indolence, and in his first canto he paints most effectively the horrors of that vice; in the second canto he shows that, though he had fallen into the net of sloth, it had not entirely conquered, and it could not corrupt him. He calls with the energy of a martyr on his fellow-men to assume the privileges and glories of men. The Castle of Indolence is as felicitous in its versification as in its sentiments; it is full of harmony, and the spirit of picturesque beauty pervades every line; there is a manliness of sentiment about it that is worthy of true genius. Such a stanza as this is the seed of independence to the minds of thousands:

The address of the bard of active virtue is worthy of being listened to in every age:

It is a pleasure to find that the spot where these noble sentiments were penned is still preserved sacred to the memory of the poet of truth and virtue. As far as the restless and rapid change of property would permit so near London, the residence of Thomson has been kept from destruction: changed it is, it is true, but that change has been made with a veneration for the Muse in the heart of the new inhabitant. The house of Thomson, in what is called Kew-foot Lane, at Richmond, as shown in the wood-cut at the head of this article, was a simple cottage; behind this lay his garden, and in front he looked down to the Thames, and on the fine landscape beyond. The cottage now appears to be gone, and in the place stands the goodly villa of the Earl of Shaftesbury; the cottage, however, is not really gone: it is only swallowed up in the larger house of the present time. After Thomson's death, his cottage was purchased by George Ross, Esq., who, out of veneration for his memory, forbore to pull it down, but enlarged and improved it at the expense of £9000. The walls of the cottage were left, though its roof was taken off, and the walls continued upward to their present height. Thus, what was Thomson's cottage forms now the entrance hall to Lord Shaftesbury's house. The part of the hall on the left hand was the room where Thomson used to sit, and here is preserved a plain mahogany Pembroke table of his, with a scroll of white wood let into its surface, on which are inlaid, in black letters, this piece of information:

These initials, F. B., are those of the Hon. Frances Boscawen, the widow of Admiral Boscawen, who came into possession of the property after the death of Mr. Ross, whose name, however, still attaches to it, being called Rossdale, or, more commonly, Rosedale House. Mrs. Boscawen it was who repaired the poet's favorite seat in the garden, and placed in it the table on which he wrote his poems there; she it was, too, no doubt, who hung the inscriptions there, her initials being again found appended to one of them. Her son, Lord Falmouth, sold the place. No brass hooks are now to be seen, that I could discover or learn any thing of.

The garden of Thompson, which lay behind the house, has been preserved in the same manner and to the same extent as his house; the garden and its trees remain, but these now form only part of the present grounds, as the cottage forms only part of the present house. Mr. Ross, when he purchased the cottage and some adjoining grounds, and came to live here after Thomson, not only enlarged the house, but threw down the partition fence, and enlarged the grounds to their present extent. A pleasanter lawn and shrubberies are rarely to be seen; the turf, old and mossy, speaks of long duration and great care; the trees, dispersed beautifully upon it, are of the finest growth and of the greatest beauty. In no part of England are there so many foreign trees as in the grounds of gentlemen's villas near London; in many of them the cedars of Lebanon are of a growth and majesty which probably Lebanon itself can not now show. In these grounds there are some fine ones, but there is one of especial and surpassing loveliness: it is the pinus picea, or silver cedar. The growth is broad, like that of the cedar of Lebanon; but its boughs do not throw themselves out in that exact horizontal direction that those of the cedar of Lebanon do; they sweep down to the ground in a style of exquisite grace. Heavy, full of life, rich in hue as masses of chased silver, their effect, with their young cones sitting birdlike on them, is like that of some tree of heaven, or of some garden of poetic romance. Besides this superb tree, standing on its ample portion of lawn, there are here the evergreen ilex, hickory, white sassafras, scarlet and Ragland oaks, the tulip-tree, the catalpa, the tupelo, the black American ash, &c. The effect of their fine growth, their varied hues and foliage, their fine, sweeping branches, over the soft velvet turf, is charming, for trees display the effects of breeding and culture quite as much as horses, dogs, or men.

A large elm, not far from the house, is pointed out as the one under which Thomson's alcove stood; this alcove has, however, been removed to the extremity of the grounds, and stands now under a large Spanish chestnut-tree in the shrubbery. It is a simple wooden construction, with a plain back, and two outward, sloping sides, a bench running round it within, a roof and boarded floor, so as to be readily removable altogether. It is kept well painted of a dark green, and in it stands an old, small walnut table with a drawer, which belonged to Thomson. On the front of the alcove overhead is painted, on a white oval tablet,

Within the alcove hang three loose boards, on which are painted the following inscriptions:

On a brass tablet in the top of the table in the alcove is inscribed, "This table was the property of James Thomson, and always stood in this seat."

Such is the state of the former residence of James Thomson at Richmond. Here, no doubt, he was visited by many of his literary cotemporaries, though it does not appear that he ever was by Pope, who was so near a neighbor. Old poets grow exclusive. As Wordsworth nowadays says he reads no new poets—he leaves them to their cotemporaries—it is enough for him to stick to his old loves; so, in the correspondence of Pope, you find no further mention of Thomson than that "Thomson and some other young men have published lately some creditable things;" and Gray, writing to one of his friends, says, "Thomson has just published a poem called 'The Castle of Indolence,' which contains some good stanzas."

The view down to the Thames, and over the country beyond, which he enjoyed, is now obstructed by the walls, including part of the royal property, on which the queen has erected her laundry, sending, it seems, all the royal linen from Windsor, the Isle of Wight, and elsewhere, to be washed and got up here, sufficiently, as one would think, near enough to the smoke of London. The vicinity of the royal wash-house certainly does not improve Lord Shaftesbury's residence here, especially as a tall, square, and most unsightly tower, most probably intended to carry the soot from the drying fires pretty high, overlooks his grounds. But it will not disturb the remains of the poet; and let us hope that the queen's linen will enjoy the benefit of all the Seasons from this close neighborhood.

Thomson is buried in Richmond Church, at the west end of the north aisle. There is a square brass tablet, well secured into the wall with ten large screws, bearing this inscription:

"In the earth below this Tablet
Are the remains of
James Thomson,
Author of the beautiful Poems entitled The Seasons, Castle of Indolence,
&c., &c., who died at Richmond on the 27th day of August,
and was buried here on the 29th, old style, 1748. The Earl
of Buchan, unwilling that so good a man and sweet a poet
should be without a memorial, has denoted the place
of his interment for the satisfaction of his admirers,
in the year of our Lord, 1792."

WILLIAM SHENSTONE.

No poet of the same pretensions has been so much known through his residence as Shenstone. Without the Leasowes he would have been nothing. His elegies and pastorals would have lain on the dustiest of book-shelves, and his Schoolmistress, by far the best of his productions, would hardly have retained vitality enough to make herself noticeable in the crowd of poetical characters. The Leasowes was the chief work of Shenstone's life, and it is the chief means of that portion of immortality which he possesses. Into every quarter of the kingdom the fame of this little domain has penetrated. Nature there formed the grand sub-stratum of his art, and nature is always beautiful. But I do confess, that in the Leasowes I have always found so much ado about nothing; such a parade of miniature cascades, lakes, streams conveyed hither and thither; surprises in the disposition of woods and the turn of walks, with a seat placed here, and another there; with inscriptions, Latin and English; and piping Fauns fauning upon you in half a dozen places, that I have heartily wished myself out upon a good rough heath, with the winds blowing away the cobwebs of so many conceits from my brain.

In the days of Shenstone there prevailed the falsest notions of life and poetry. If poetry be indeed "the eloquence of truth," as Campbell beautifully pronounced it—if great passions, great sentiments, great wrestlings with our destinies, and conflicts for the good of others—if these constitute the sublimity of duty, and give occasion for the sublimity of poetry, how poor a delusion was that which led one to dream and drone in some fantastic retirement; to whimper over petty troubles, and waste the intellect on petty themes; exalting mole-hills into mountains, and the stings of a morbid selfishness into picturesque sorrows, when they should have been up and doing, dragging out to the light of day, like Crabbe, all the wretchedness and the wrong of social life, or breathing into the trumpet of a generous indignation the notes that rouse the world to a higher tone and task.

The remarks of Dr. Johnson appear to me, in the case of Shenstone, who was amiable but trifling, as very just: "Now was excited his delight in rural pleasures and his ambition of rural elegance. He began, from the time of occupying his own estate, to point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters, which he did with such judgment and such fancy as made his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the skillful; a place to be visited by travelers, and copied by designers. Whether to plant a walk in undulating curves, and to place a bench at every turn where there is an object to catch the view; to make water run where it will be heard, and to stagnate where it will be seen; to leave intervals where the eye will be pleased, and to thicken the plantation where there is something to be hidden, demand any great powers of mind, I will not inquire; perhaps a sullen and surly spectator may think such performances rather the sport than the business of human reason. But it must be at least confessed that to embellish the form of nature is an innocent amusement, and some praise must be allowed by the most supercilious observer to him who does best what such multitudes are contending to do well."

This seems to me the precise merit of Shenstone. He introduced a better taste in landscape gardening, though his taste was often questionable, and may be ranked with Browne and Kent. He was a man of taste rather than of genius, and may claim a full alliance with the lovers of nature, but is as far from the association with great poets—with such men as Milton or Shakspeare, Burns or Elliott, as the glow-worm is with the comet. Poetry is not only the highest art, but, next to religion itself, the most divine principle on earth. It is a religion itself, or, rather, forms part and parcel of that of Christ; for its object is to stimulate virtue, abash vice, raise the humble, abase the proud, call forth the most splendid qualities of the soul, and pour love like a river over the earth till it fills every house, and leaves behind it a fertility like that which follows the inundations of the Nile. We do injustice to Shenstone when we place him beside the giants, and thus provokingly display his true proportions.

"The pleasure of Shenstone," continues Johnson, "was all in his eye; he valued what he valued merely for its looks; nothing raised his indignation more than to ask if there were any fishes in his water.

"His house was mean, and he did not improve it; his care was of his grounds. When he came home from his walks, he might find his floors flooded by a shower through the broken roof, but could spare no money for its reparation. In time, his expenses brought clamors about him that overpowered the lamb's bleat and the linnet's song, and his groves were haunted by beings very different to fauns and fairies. He spent his estate in adorning it, and his death was probably hastened by his anxieties. He was a lamp that spent its oil in blazing. * * * He died at the Leasowes, of a putrid fever, in 1763, and was buried by the side of his brother in Halesowen churchyard.

"He was never married, though he might have obtained the lady, whoever she was, to whom his Pastoral Ballad was addressed. He is represented by his friend Dodsley as a man of great tenderness and generosity, kind to all that were within his influence, but if once offended, not easily appeased; inattentive to economy, and careless of his expenses. In his person he was larger than the middle size, with something clumsy in his form; very negligent of his clothes, and remarkable for wearing his gray hair in a particular manner; for he held that the fashion was no rule of dress, and that every man was to suit his appearance to his natural form. His mind was not very comprehensive, nor his curiosity active; he had no value for those parts of knowledge which he had not himself cultivated."

Gray visited the Leasowes, and his opinion of Shenstone was very similar to that of Johnson. "I have read, too, an octavo volume of Shenstone's letters. Poor man! he was always wishing for money, for fame, and other distinctions; and his whole philosophy consisted in living against his will in retirement, and in a place which his taste had adorned, but which he only enjoyed when people of note came to see and commend it. His correspondence is about nothing else but this place and his own writings, with two or three neighboring clergymen, who wrote verses too."

I have ascertained the present condition of the Leasowes through an intelligent friend who visited it the other day at my request. The Leasowes is about six or seven miles distant from Birmingham, on the road to Kidderminster, and about four miles from Hagley, in the parish of Halesowen. Arriving at Halesowen, you have to descend a long and steep hill, from the top of which you have a view of the Bromsgrove, Clent, and Dudley hills, which are in the immediate neighborhood—Hagley Park being situated on one of the Clent hills—and of the Clee hills in the distance; these form a boundary between the counties of Hereford and Salop. About half way down this descent, which is a mile long, you turn to the left down a shady lane; this leads to the Leasowes, and in some degree partakes of the character of the place; winding continually, yet still presenting a beautiful archway of trees, of nearly all descriptions. From this lane you enter the Leasowes, and, crossing a bridge, pass on to the lawn. On your left lies a beautiful piece of still water, overshadowed with evergreens, and conveying the idea of infinite depth. This is nearly the lowest part of the grounds, which here begin to ascend toward the house, commanding, not an extensive, but a beautifully condensed prospect. Going round the house to the right, and still ascending, you gain another prospect equally beautiful, yet different, and in both cases must be surprised by the skill which presents to the eye the artificial depth of forest which there strikes it. A canal which has been cut through the valley, between the house and Halesowen, so far from injuring the prospect, as many of these things are apt to do, rather improves it than otherwise, giving a rest to the eye, and shutting out, by its embankment, sundry forges which would otherwise be visible. In order to discover, however, the true spirit of the place, you must cross the lawn at the back of the house, where you are reminded of passages in Shenstone's pastorals.

Let us now suppose the grounds lying in the shape of a Y; the house not standing at the top, but near the center of the fork, and the lowest part of the scene, the stem. The lines forming the fork of the Y are beautifully wooded ravines or dells, down which flow small streamlets, meeting at the bottom of the hill, and in their progress forming numerous small pools, which may well represent "the fountains all bordered with moss." The walks along the sides of these streams are now neglected, but they still conduct you to the natural beauties of the scene. There is one spot which commands the view of the whole grounds, and all the poetry of them. Following the course of one of the streams, you arrive at that part of the scene which was Shenstone's favorite spot, still marked by the remnants of several fallen statues. Still advancing along the brook side, you come to a pool. This may be called the tail or stem of the Y; and at dusk, on a November day, it gives you no bad idea of the Lake of the Dismal Swamp in miniature. Indeed, the feeling on quitting the place is, that you have been well deceived as to the extent of it, so small a space really containing so much variety of scenery.

The Leasowes now belongs to the Attwood family, and a Miss Attwood resides there occasionally; but the whole place bears the impress of desertion and neglect. The house has a dull look; the same heavy spirit broods over the lawns and glades; and it is only when you survey it from a distance, as when approaching Halesowen from Hagley, that the whole presents an aspect of unusual beauty. It is said to be a favorite resort of the members of the Society of Friends, as, halting for tea at Halesowen, on their return from their meetings at Stourbridge to Birmingham, they are fond of a stroll in the Leasowes, no doubt the quiet character of the poetry of Shenstone according well with their own habits.

CHATTERTON.

The Church of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, is a beautiful church; some of the biographers of Chatterton have declared that it is the finest parish church in England. Mr. Britton has been almost as enamored of it as was Chatterton himself. He has written a complete history of it, and has for years zealously exerted himself to rouse the inhabitants of Bristol to have this ornament of their city put into thorough repair by subscription, an object in which I am glad to find that he has finally succeeded, and that the perfect restoration, especially of the time-worn exterior, is already commenced under the superintendence of himself and Mr. Brayley.

"Beautiful exceedingly" is St. Mary of Redcliffe; and it is the triumph of this beauty that it has awoke the poet in the soul of one of its lovers, and a poet so extraordinary in the circumstances of his life, in the mere boyhood of his age, in the tragic nature of his death, and, above all, in the proud splendor of his genius; that his passion for this lovely structure, and the facts which have sprung out of it, have flung round St. Mary an everlasting interest, and made it one of the most brilliant monuments of national glory which stand on the bosom of our mother-land.

If it had turned out that the Rowley Poems produced to the public by Chatterton had been genuine, and that the fame of so great a poet as Thomas Rowley the priest had been buried for near four hundred years in the iron chest of William Canynge, it would have been a most extraordinary circumstance that it should have been a boy of fourteen who had discovered them; who had had the taste and discernment to pick them out from amid the ordinary documents of such a chest, of little interest except to parishioners; to transcribe them, to press them upon the attention of his townsmen and the literary public, and to have suffered insult, obloquy, and persecution on their account. Had he only raised that great public astonishment, inquiry, quarrel, and controversy among the learned and antiquarian of his time, and had been satisfactorily proved to be only the discoverer, introducer, and champion of the merit of these productions, it would have been one of the most remarkable occurrences in the whole history of literature, and the boy Chatterton would have still merited the happy epithet of "the marvelous boy." Had he been allowed, on justly admitted grounds, to have taken only that position which he claimed, that of the discoverer of the Rowley MSS., and the writer of his own acknowledged poems, the occurrence would have stood alone in the annals of letters, and Chatterton must have still remained one of the most extraordinary of precocious geniuses. The wit which sparkles through the whole series of his verses, from Sly Dick to his Journal and his Will; the bold satire, the daring independence of his thoughts, setting defiance to public opinion, even on the most solemn of all subjects—religion; the indomitable pride, and bold adventure of the lad; these are facts, in connection with his great "discovery," supposing it to have been a real discovery, which must have raised the wonder of every one, and have given him a distinguished niche in the Walhalla of his country. The boy of sixteen, who could pen such a description as that of Whitfield in his Journal, beginning,

the daring description of religion in his Defense; or who could make such a will as that which he drew up, when he for the first time proposed to himself suicide, must be pronounced a startling but most uncommon lad. The youth who, without friends or patrons in the great metropolis, could set out with a small fund borrowed at the rate of a guinea apiece from his acquaintances, to make his fortune and fame; and there, in the midst of the utter wreck of all his august visions and soaring hopes; in the depth of neglect, contempt, and the most grinding indigence, could issue satire after satire, and launch Junius-like letters from the newspapers at the highest personages of the land, not sparing even the crowned head, can, however we might estimate such productions in an experienced adult, only be regarded with the most profound and unmixed wonder. We may lament over the waywardness of his genius, but we must admit its unequivocal reality; and when its career is closed by self-violence, after appealing to Heaven from the abyss of its agony in stanzas such as the following, we know not whether most to marvel at the greatness of the phenomenon, or the dense stolidity of the age which did not perceive it, but suffered it to expire in horror, to the eternal disgrace of human nature and our country.

"THE RESIGNATION.

But pride and despair triumphed over this deep feeling of trust in Divine goodness. These words were the rending cry of the dying giant; they were the mighty poetry of forlornest misery; and, independently of the poems of Thomas Rowley, stamped beyond dispute the high poetical renown of Thomas Chatterton. They showed that, notwithstanding the unworthy subjects on which necessity had forced him to attempt the waste of his sublime endowments, and had forced him in vain, for the soul of poesy within him had refused to come forth at the call of booksellers and political squabblers, there lay still in his bosom the great heart and the great mind of the first-rate poet.

But what were all these flashes and indications of the mens divinior to the broad and dazzling display of it in the Rowley poems themselves; those poems which would have crowned any grown man a king in the realms of intellectual reputation, which yet the towering pride of the boy—"that damned, native, unconquerable pride" which he said "plunged him into distraction," that "nineteen twentieths of his composition," as he himself asserted it to be—flung determinedly from him? These poems, now admitted on all hands to be his own boyish compositions, and which, indeed, were thrust upon him as crimes by those of his cotemporaries who ought to have seen in them the proofs of a genius which should have been carefully and kindly cherished for the good of humanity and the honor of England—these are, indeed, more stately and beautiful than the fair pile of St. Mary, which had first awoke in his spirit the deathless love of poetry and antique romance. Ah! what a sad, beautiful, but heart-wringing romance is itself the story of Chatterton! His real history is this.

There was a little boy in Bristol, whose fathers, for many generations, had been the sextons of St. Mary Redcliffe. The veneration for this beautiful fabric, from the habit of ages, might be said to be woven into the frames and infused into the blood of this family. The office was gone out of the family; the boy's father had become a schoolmaster, and died three weeks previous to the child's birth. His uncle had been the last to fill this post, but he, too, was deceased. The boy's mother, however, lived in a small house, in a back court, nearly opposite to this church; and the lad, very likely led by what he heard her say of the former long connection of their family with it, was in the habit of going into it when open, and wandering about it for hours. At that time, nearly a century ago, neither churches nor church-yards were so rigidly locked up as at present, and ample and often was the time when a little boy on the watch might enter, and while marriage or burial ceremony went on, while the cleaners and sweepers were at work, or while the evening and the morning bell was rung, might stroll to and fro, and gaze and wonder to his heart's content. That this was his dearest occupation was soon well known to his family. "His mother's house," says one of his biographers, "was close to the fine structure of St. Mary Redcliffe, and they well knew that the boy's favorite haunts were the aisles and towers of that noble pile. And there they would find the truant, seated generally by the tomb of Canynge, or lodged in one of the towers, reading." And what effect this church-haunting had upon him was very early visible. At five years of age he went to the day-school in Pyle-street, which had formerly been taught by his father, but here he was dull and stupid; and, till he was six and a half years old, his master could trace no sign of intellectual progress in him, and his poor mother began to think him an absolute fool. But the objects of the silent church had not fallen in vain on his infant fancy. Those quaint and gorgeous paintings, and those antique letters engraven on floor crosses, had acquired a strong hold upon him, and, without doubt, led him to seize, as he did, with an avidity new to him, on the old musical manuscript in French, adorned with illuminated capitals, which he found at home. "He fell in love with it," said his mother; and the shrewd woman, catching at this discovered charm, brought him an ancient black-letter Bible, which she possessed, to read, and the boy's inner nature came to light: "he was no longer a dunce." At eight he was a voracious devourer of books. He read morning, noon, and night, from the hour that he awoke to that in which he went to bed. But another cause now contributed to strengthen the impression of antiquity which he had received in St. Mary's Church. He was become an inmate of the Blue-coat School of Bristol, on St. Augustine's Back, founded by Colston, a merchant, in 1708. Here, in an institution which, though not of ancient date, was yet conducted in the ancient fashion, he was arrayed in long blue coat and belt, and scarlet stockings, and tonsure cap. Here, say some of his schoolfellows, he took no part in the poetical and literary emulations which arose. An usher wrote poetry, and his example stimulated others to a like ambition; but Chatterton "possessed apparently neither the inclination nor ability for literary pursuits;" he contented himself with the ordinary sports and pastimes of his age. But, in truth, he was secretly gleaning up knowledge wherever he could lay hands on it. Long before, he had begged of a painter to paint him an angel, with wings and a trumpet, to trumpet his name over the world! This spirit once awoke, was not likely to die again, even in the bosom of a child. He had continually in his heart that cry which haunted Cowley: