ions of the wandering and disastrous fortunes of "the fairest and
crudest of princesses."

It is of an Elizabethan poet strayed into our Victorian age that I
propose to write. Few people except professed students of literature
know more of Thomas Lovell Beddoes than his name. More than a year ago
an article on him appeared in the _Fortnightly_, half biographical, half
occupied with a sketch of his principal tragedy--an article doing more
justice to the dramatic than to the lyric quality of his genius. But it
is by his songs that his name is kept in the minds of men
to-day--exquisite snatches of melody, full of the peculiar charm of that
Elizabethan age to which they properly belong.

In 1851 an edition of his poems in two volumes, with a memoir and
letters, was published by Pickering. The edition was small and soon
exhausted, but the literary world of England was unanimous in its
praise; and Landor, Browning, Proctor, and many others came out with
generous tributes to the genius of that poet whose circle of listeners
has always been so small. "Nearly two centuries have elapsed," wrote
Walter Savage Landor, with his hearty enthusiasm, "since a work of the
same wealth of genius as _Death's Jest-Book_ has been given to the
world." And Browning wrote to Mr. Kelsall, the author of the memoir:
"You might pick out scenes, passages, lyrics, fine as fine can be: the
power of the man is immense and irresistible."

The two volumes contain, besides the Life and letters, two dramas, _The
Brides' Tragedy_ and _Death's Jest-Book_, two unfinished plays,
_Torrismond_ and _The Second Brother_, and many dramatic and poetic
fragments and songs. The Life is an uneventful history, but the letters,
though singularly free from egotism, bring up before us a most
interesting character--a curious mixture of genius and want of faith in
that genius, of energy and self-distrust, of intense devotion to
practical studies and the most impractical and dreamy fancy, an
affectionate nature lonely and misunderstood, a spirit of the most
sturdy and uncompromising independence, a mind of keen and scientific
insight--a character made up, in short, of all the warring elements of
philosopher, physician, politician and poet.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes was born in Clifton in 1803, and died at Bale in
Switzerland in 1849. His mother was a sister of Maria Edgeworth, and his
father a distinguished physician and an intimate friend of Sir Humphry
Davy. In the father's