given in Edinburgh in 1827,
Lord Meadowbank--who, as
president, made the first pub-
lic announcement of the au-
thorship of the Waverley nov-
els-spoke of Scott as "the
mighty magician who rolled
back the current of time and
conjured up
before our living
senses the men and manners

of days which have long since passed away. It is he who has conferred a new reputation on our national character and bestowed on Scotland an imperishable name." Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh on the 15th day of August, 1771. His father was a writer to the Signet, and his mother (Annie Rutherford) was the daughter of a medical professor in the university of that city. Lame from his infancy, he was shut out from the usual sports of childhood and was a great reader, especially of poetry and works of the imagination. His first efforts in literature were in the form of translations from the German. He made pleasant English versions of the "Erl-King," and "Lenore" and "The Wild Huntsman" in 1796. The next year he presented "Otto of Wittelsbach," which was soon followed by "Götz von Berlichingen." In 1802 he issued the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, a collection in verse of ballads, traditions and old Scottish legends, which was very acceptable to the pride of the Scottish people. These were, however, only the trials of his "'pren

Successful in his profession of the law and in his publications, Scott purchased an estate on the banks of the Tweed, near Melrose Abbey, and built a mansion, in which he lived as a feudal proprietor. At Abbotsford he did the honors for the nation, cordially receiving the thousands who came to do homage to his genius and honor to his virtues. As he felt his poetical powers lagging, he had as early as 1805 made an essay in the fields of romantic fiction, but the manuscript was thrown aside until 1814, when he finished it and gave it to the world as Waverley, the first of that splendid series known as "the Waverley novels." They need no eulogy: everybody has read them. Charming in description, interesting in plot, they here and there contain full-length portraits of historic characters-especially those of the kings and the queens of England and of Scotland-that may be said to be truer than history itself.

Involved in pecuniary embarrassments by the failure of the Ballantynes and of Constable & Co., Scott found himself, in honor if not in law, responsible for the payment of

about half a million dollars. He manfully resolved to write himself free, and almost succeeded. But his powers were overtasked; a stroke of apoplexy made the brain torpid and the hand nerveless. In search of health he made a fruitless journey to Malta and to Italy, but to no purpose. Another stroke caused him to hasten home to find the grata quies patria which is so longed for by dying He passed away from earth on the 21st of September, 1832, the most renowned of the illustrious men who died in that fatal year. His son-in-law, Lockhart, has written a full and exhaustive biography, to which the reader is referred for details of great value and interest.

men.

CHA

CHARLES MACKAY.

HARLES MACKAY, a poet and journalist, was born at Perth in 1814. He is a descendant of an honorable Highland family, the Mackays of Strathnever. Having received the rudiments of his education in London, he was in 1827 sent to a school at Brussels, and he remained in Belgium and Germany for some years. On his return to England he abandoned his intention of entering the East India service, for which he had been originally intended by his uncle, General Mackay, and devoted himself to literature. In 1835, after the publication of a small volume of poems which attracted the notice of Mr. John Black, he became connected with the Morning Chronicle.

While employed in his arduous duties as sub-editor of a daily paper, Mr. Mackay published two poetical works, The Hope of the World and The Salamandrine, a third edition of which, illustrated by Gilbert, ap

peared in 1856; within the same period he published three works in prose-The Thames and its Tributaries, Popular Delusions and Longbeard, Lord of London: A Romance. In 1844 he removed from London to Glasgow, to succeed the late Mr. Weir as editor of the Argus, then a leading Liberal journal in the West of Scotland. During his residence in Scotland he produced The Legends of the Isles, and Other Poems, A Series of Twelve Letters to Lord Morpeth on the Education of the People, and a volume entitled The Scenery and Poetry of the English Lakes: A Summer Ramble. He also published Voices from the Crowd, which contained the spirit-stirring song "The Good Time Coming."

It was while Mr. Mackay remained in Scotland that he received from the University of Glasgow the honorary degree of LL.D. In 1847 he returned to the metropolis, where he succeeded to the political editorship of the Illustrated London News. He published in 1848 his Town Lyrics; in 1850, Egeria; or, The Spirit of Nature, and Other Poems, to which was prefixed "An Inquiry into the alleged Anti-poetical Tendencies of the Present Age." In 1851 he edited for the Percy Society, with notes and an introduction, an important antiquarian work entitled A Collection of Songs and Ballads relative to the London 'Prentices and Trades, and to the Affairs of London generally, during the Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. He also edited A Book of English A Book of English Songs and A Book of Scottish Songs, with Notes and Observations. In 1856, Dr. Mackay published the Lump of Gold, and in the following year Under Green Leaves, two poetical works abounding with

verses of the utmost melody, rich with the choicest English epithets and phrases.

After the publication of these works Dr. Mackay made a tour to America, where he delivered lectures upon "Poetry and Song," receiving everywhere a cordial and enthusiastic reception. After his return to England he published his Life and Liberty in America, which is characterized in the Athenaeum as a bright, fresh and hopeful book worthy of an author whose songs are oftenest heard on the Atlantic. Dr. Mackay lately published a narrative poem entitled "A Man's Heart," and has just edited A Collection of the Jacobite Ballads of Scotland.

Like all the great song-writers, Dr. Mackay is a musician and the composer of all the melodies published with many of his songs. He possesses in a high degree the rare faculty of a true lyric poet-that of working his words and music up into harmony and unison with the feelings they express. He died A. D. 1889.

THIS

try.

S. O. BEETON.

CAPTAIN MAYNE REID. HIS prolific writer was born in A. D. 1818, in Ireland, and educated for the minisBut an adventurous spirit caused him at the age of twenty to leave his home for America. From New Orleans he made journeys in the region of the Red River, and afterward travelled extensively throughout the United States. Upon the prospect of war with Mexico, he received a commission in the New York volunteers, and marched from Vera Cruz to Mexico with the army of General Scott.

Participating in all the actions of that campaign, he was so severely wounded at Chapultepec (September 13, 1847) that he was left for dead on the field. Mentioned in despatches, he was honorably discharged at the close of the war. In 1849 he started with a body of troops to aid Hungary in her struggle for independence. On his arrival in Paris he was stopped by the intelligence that the cause of Hungary was lost by the overthrow of her arms. He then settled in London and began rapidly to write books more or less imaginative, but suggested by his observation and experience in travel. The Rifle Rangers and The Scalp-Hunters were followed by a large number of volumes, many of them intended for the perusal of boys. They have been very popular. He died in October, 1883, while still in literary vigor, and with no indications of a falling off in the verve and interest of his writings.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD.

HIS poet was born on December 3, 1766, at Honington, in Suffolk, England. He served his time as a shoemaker's apprentice. It is related of him that he read by moonlight, being too poor to purchase candles, and that many of the stanzas of his most celebrated poem, "The Farmer's Boy," for lack of pen and ink, were scribbled with a shoemaker's awl on scraps of leather. His poems are chiefly pastoral. Vivid pictures of farm-life, they teem with quiet descriptive beauty, but are lacking in enthusiasm. He died August 19, 1823.

S the cause of writing the following printed poem called "Retaliation" has not yet been fully explained, a person concerned in the business begs leave to give the following just and minute account of the whole affair.

At a meeting of a company of gentlemen who were well known to each other,

and diverting themselves, among many other things, with the peculiar oddities of Dr. Goldsmith, who never would allow a superior in any art, from writing poetry down to dancing a hornpipe, the doctor with great eagerness insisted upon trying his epigrammatic powers with Mr. Garrick, and each of them was to write the other's

epitaph. Mr. Garrick immediately said that his epitaph was finished, and spoke the following distich extempore:

"Here lies NOLLY Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll, Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll." Goldsmith, upon the company's laughing very heartily, grew very thoughtful, and either would not or could not write anything at that time. However, he went to work, and some weeks after produced the following printed poem

1 Printed for G. Kearsly, at No. 46 in Fleet Street, A. D. 1774. 4to.

2 At the St. James's coffee-house, in St. James's Street. See Art. James's (St.) Coffee-House," in Cunningham's Hand-Book of London, 2d ed., 1850, p. 254.

called "Retaliation," which has been much admired and gone through several editions. The public in general have been mistaken in imagining that this poem was written in anger by the doctor: it was just the contrary. The whole on all sides was done with the greatest good humor, and the poems in manuscript were written by several of the gentlemen on purpose to provoke the doctor to an answer, which came forth at last with great credit to him in "Retaliation." D. GARRICK [MS.].3

Or old, when Scarron his companions invited,

Each guest brought his dish, and the feast was united;

If our landlords supplies us with beef and with fish,

Let each guest bring himself and he brings

the best dish.

For this highly interesting account (now first printed, or even referred to, by any biographer or editor of Goldsmith) I am indebted to my friend Mr. George Daniel of Islington, who allowed me to transcribe it from the original in Garrick's own handwriting discovered among the Garrick papers, and evidently designed as a preface to a collected edition of the poems which grew out of Goldsmith's trying his epigrammatic powers with Garrick. I may observe also that Garrick's epitaph or distich on Goldsmith is (through this very paper) for the first time printed as it was spoken by its author.

"Retaliation" was the last work of Goldsmith and a posthumous publication, appearing for the first time on the 18th of April, 1774. PETER CUNNINGHAM. Paul Scarron, a popular French writer of burlesque, Died 1660.

5 The landlord of the St. James's coffee-house.