Laman Blanchard. 1804-1845. SAMUEL LAMAN BLANCHARD was, like Thomas Hood, both a serious poet and a wit in verse-a preacher and a jester. He was a brilliant personage among a brilliant company in the earlier half of the century, and did not a little to commemorate its oddities and eccentricities as well as its genius. Lord Lytton, Charles Dickens, Douglas Jerrold, Talfourd, Procter, Thackeray and Albany Fonblanque, were among his friends, as well as Robert Browning, R. H. Horne ("Orion "), John Forster, and George Cruickshank. He was an industrious writer, as well as a graceful poet. He wrote a memoir of Harrison Ainsworth, and published some volumes of "Sketches from Life "-clever, observant, piquant, with just a touch of satire now and then-and Corporation Characters exquisitely posed and grouped, with quaint original touches. He is more forgotten and overlooked than he ought to be, considering the varied kinds of work he did, and that he did all with skill and indivuality. Laman Blanchard was born on May 15th, 1804, at Great Yarmouth, where his father was a successful merchant. The family removed to London, however, when Laman was but a boy, and he was placed at St. Olave's School, Southwark, where he was long remembered as a brilliant pupil. But good fortune did not stay with the father in London; and it became necessary for Laman at an early age to turn his talents to account. He was, for a time, a reader in a printing office; but his spare hours he devoted to the composition of verses; and, luckily, about this time he became acquainted with Douglas Jerrold, like himself, a struggler. They soon became great friends. In 1827 Blanchard was appointed Secretary to the Zoological Society, where it became possible for him at once to cultivate his literary tastes, and to enter into literary society: and here it was, when he was twenty-four years of age, that he published his first volume of poems-" Lyric Offerings." The volume was inscribed to Charles Lamb, and secured Blanchard that distinguished man's friendship. The volume showed a delicateness, tenderness, and a quaint truthfulness which could not but have attracted and pleased Lamb. Younger men were equally charmed with it: Robert Browning and Lord Lytton among them. Blanchard was a staunch Liberal, and that led him early to begin to write for newspapers. He relinquished his secretaryship in 1831, and became a journalist, writing for The Sun, The Constitutional, and other papers, as well as for Jerdan's Literary Gazette. No subject, we are told, came amiss to him. By-and-by, he became editor of The Courier, which position he kept till 1839. Various efforts were made to secure appointments for him-the editorship of The Gazette among them-but they failed; and he fell back on journalism, writing for the New Monthly, Jerrold's Illustrated Magazine, and others. In 1841 he became sub-editor of the Examiner, in which he was associated with Fonblanque and John Forster, and in this position he remained to the end. He was active, in company with George Cruickshank, in bringing out The Omnibus. He experienced a great loss in 1844 in the death of his wife; and he himself did not long survive her : he died by his own hand on February 15th, 1845, in his forty-second year. A short life, yet one of marked activity and productiveness. One of the most interesting friendships of his life we have not mentioned. At an early period of his career he read the poems of Miss Landon (“L. E. L.”), and by-and-by made her acquaintance. They became close friends. Blanchard was the very man to be touched with new interest in her work by the strange and tragic fate that overtook her in the distant land to which she had gone. He wrote her biography with great sympathy and insight as well as discrimination--one of the most touching of poet's lives written by a poet. His own poems waited a considerable time to receive due and full meed of honour in the shape of a complete collected edition. This was accomplished in 1876 by Blanchard Jerrold, who prefixed a memoir in which the poet's life is sketched with a practised and sympathetic pen. From this memoir we have mainly drawn the facts in our sketch. Blanchard Jerrold adds a very admirable and judicious summary of his characteristics as a poet and wit; the whole forming a fitting tribute to one who was equally gifted and unfortunate. Mr. Laman Blanchard as a poet is marked at once by great tenderness and freshness of feeling, by flowing metres, and by very felicitous lines and touches. If not a great poet, he is everywhere an attractive and pleasing one. He touches a varied lyre too always pure, elevated, and inclined to celebrate common incident and the domestic affections. As a humorous poet, he shares with Thomas Hood the power of punning with a kind of natural ease and grace and sometimes in his case this is more effective than anywhere else we can recall save in the pages of "Hood's Own." Some of his parodies are exceedingly good. In one or two pieces there is a felicity and daintiness of touch to be surpassed only by the happiest efforts of Praed, Locker, or Austin Dobson, ALEX, H. JApp. SAMUEL LAMAN BLANCHARD. 1.-THE POET'S HEART. IS like unto the dainty flower And lifts unto a darkened hour Its little essence cup. 'Tis as the grape on which it lives, Or like some silver-winged fly, And sure it bears a fortune such As waits upon that graceful bird, Whose music, mute to living touch, At death's dim porch is heard. And still the dolphin's fate partakes; Though bright the hue which pride hath giver 'Tis pain whose darting pencil wakes The master-tints of heaven. A mine where many a living gem That man sends down a sigh for them, But not that dainty flower, the grape, |