ried Jean Armour, who had been refused him by her father when he was poor and there was scandal in their love; and then he sang to her:

"She is a winsome wee thing,
She is a handsome wee thing,
She is a lo'esome wee thing,

This dear wee wife o' mine.

"The warld's wrack we share o't,
The warstle and the care o't;
Wi' her I'll blythely bear it,

And think my lot divine."

The wild, wilful, defiant verse, the wanton lines cast in the teeth of censure, belonged partly to Burns's own nature, partly. to the tumult of his time; but out of the depths of his soul came many a strain of thought and feeling that had taken root there in the poor farm at Mount Oliphant, when, "The cheerfu' supper done," "The saint, the father, and the husband" prayed. In 1789 Burns had obtained for himself a place in the Excise, but it now took him away from his farm-work. Captain Grose, the antiquary, came to his farm when gathering materials for his "Antiquities of Scotland," published in 1789-91. Burns told him a Galloway legend, and gave it him in verse for his book as "Tam o' Shanter." In the winter of 1791 Burns was promoted to the Dumfries division of the Excise, with seventy pounds a year, and went with his family to Dumfries. Parted from the nature of which he was poet, exposed to the temptations that he was weak to resist, Burns failed in health and spirits. War with France was impending. Burns felt all the revolutionary fervor and the hope that sprang out of the ruins of the Bastile. He had gallantly seized an armed smuggling craft, and when her effects were sold he bought four small carronades, and sent them as a gift from Robert Burns to the French Convention. They were stopped at Dover, and the too zealous exciseman was admonished. The rest is a sad tale of poverty and failing health, until the poet's death on the 21st of July, 1796.

8. There were several poets in this period who once had considerable reputation. Erasmus Darwin (b. 1731, d. 1802) published, in 1781, "The Botanical Garden," in exposition of

the loves of plants. Elizabeth Carter (b. 1717, d. 1806) was noted as a letter-writer, poet, and linguist. John Wolcot (b. 1738, d. 1819) published, under the name of Peter Pindar, many witty but coarse satires; particularly, “A Poetical Epistle to the Reviewers;""Lyric Odes to the Royal Academicians; "The Lousiad;" and "The Apple Dumplings and a King." Anna Lætitia Barbauld (b. 1743, d. 1825) was an industrious writer of many sorts of books, particularly of poems, of which the last is "Eighteen Hundred and Eleven." Henry James Pye (b. 1745, d. 1813) was made poet-laureate in 1790. Among his poems are Farringdon-Hill; ""The Progress of Refinement:" and “ Alfred," an epic. James Grahame (b. 1765, d. 1811) is remembered chiefly for his poem, "The Sabbath.'

9. Elizabeth Inchbald (b. 1753, d. 1821) was first an actress; then won success as a writer of plays, including "Such Things Are," "Lovers' Vows," and "To Marry, or not to Marry." She also wrote novels. Hannah Cowley (b. 1743, d. 1809) wrote several successful poems, "The Maid of Arragon," "The Siege of Acre," etc.; besides many comedies, such as "The Runaway," and "The Belle's Stratagem. Charles Dibdin (b. 1748, d. 1814), and his son, Thomas Dibdin (b. 1771, d. 1840), wrote operas, comedies, farces, popular songs, etc.

Joanna Baillie.

William Gifford.
William Cobbett.
Leigh Hunt.
Charles Lamb.
William Hazlitt.

Sydney Smith.

Robert Bloomfield.
William Lisle Bowles.
Mary Tighe.
James Montgomery.
Robert Montgomery.
Henry Kirke White.

NOVELISTS.
Mrs. Shelley.
James Morier.
Thomas Hope.
Robert P. Ward.
Theodore Hook.
Thomas H. Lister.
Lady Blessington.
Mrs. Trollope.

Mary Russell Mitford.
G. P. R. James.

DRAMATISTS.

Thomas Loveli Beddoes.
John Keble.
Ebenezer Elliott.
Hartley Coleridge.
Arthur Henry Hallam.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon

John Galt.

William H. Ainsworth.
Captain Marryat.
Lord Lytton.

Lord Beaconsfield.
Charlotte Bronté.

Charles Dickens.

William M. Thackeray.

| Sir Thomas N. Talfourd. | James Sheridan Knowles

ESSAYISTS AND SATIRISTS.

John Wilson.

Walter Savage Landor.

Thomas De Quincey.

James Smith.

Horace Smith.

Lord Jeffrey.

CHAPTER XVII.

FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY:

POETS.

1. William Wordsworth. - 2. Samuel Taylor Coleridge.-3. Robert Southey.-4. Sir Walter Scott.-5. George Crabbe. — 6. Samuel Rogers.-7. Thomas Campbell.-S. Walter Savage Landor.-9. Thomas Moore.-10. Lord Byron. - 11. Percy Bysshe Shelley.-12. John Keats. - 13. Robert Bloomfield; William L. Bowles; Mary Tighe; James Montgomery; Robert Montgomery; Henry Kirke White; Reginald Heber; Felicia Hemans; James Hogg; T. L. Beddoes; John Keble; Ebenezer Elliott; Hartley Coleridge; Arthur Henry Hallam; Letitia Elizabeth Landon.

1. William Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth, on the 7th of April, 1770, second son of John Wordsworth, attorney and law-agent to Sir James Lowther, afterwards Earl of Lonsdale. From 1770 to 1778, when his mother died of consumption, Wordsworth spent his infancy and early boyhood at Cockermouth, and sometimes with his mother's parents at Penrith. He was the only one of her five children about whom she was anxious; for he was, he says, of a stiff, moody, violent temper. He was bold in outdoor sports; and, free to read what he pleased, read Fielding through in his boyhood, "Don Quixote," "Gil Blas," "Gulliver's Travels," and the "Tale of a Tub." After home teaching at a dame school, and by a Rev. Mr. Gilbanks, Wordsworth was sent, in 1778, to Hawkshead School, in the Vale of Esthwaite, in Lancashire. His father died in 1783, and bequeathed only a considerable debt from his employer, paid to his children long afterwards, when Lord Lonsdale died. In October, 1787, Wordsworth's uncles sent him to Cambridge, where the university life of that time fell below his young ideal. He spent his first summer vacation, 1788, in the old cottage at Esthwaite with Dame Tyson; his second vacation he spent with his uncles at Penrith, who were educating him, and who designed him for the church. But that