ing old associations, and he
almost seemed to be gathering around him a small literary company when
his health broke, and he died on the 22nd of November 1895 at Ryde, in
his sixty-first year. He was buried at Little Peover in Cheshire.
Although his reputation will live almost exclusively as that of a poet,
De Tabley was a man of many studious tastes. He was at one time an
authority on numismatics; he wrote two novels; published _A Guide to the
Study of Book Plates_ (1880); and the fruit of his careful researches in
botany was printed posthumously in his elaborate _Flora of Cheshire_
(1899). Poetry, however, was his first and last passion, and to that he
devoted the best energies of his life. De Tabley's first impulse towards
poetry came from his friend George Fortescue, with whom he shared a
close companionship during his Oxford days, and whom he lost, as
Tennyson lost Hallam, within a few years of their taking their degrees.
Fortescue was killed by falling from the mast of Lord Drogheda's yacht
in November 1859, and this gloomy event plunged De Tabley into deep
depression. Between 1859 and 1862 De Tabley issued four little volumes
of pseudonymous verse (by G. F. Preston), in the production of which he
had been greatly stimulated by the sympathy of Fortescue. Once more he
assumed a pseudonym--his _Praeterita_ (1863) bearing the name of William
Lancaster. In the next year he published _Eclogues and Monodramas_,
followed in 1865 by _Studies in Verse_. These volumes all displayed
technical grace and much natural beauty; but it was not till the
publication of _Philoctetes_ in 1866 that De Tabley met with any wide
recognition. _Philoctetes_ bore the initials "M.A.," which, to the
author's dismay, were interpreted as meaning Matthew Arnold. He at once
disclosed his identity, and received the congratulations of his friends,
among whom were Tennyson, Browning and Gladstone. In 1867 he published
_Orestes_, in 1870 _Rehearsals_ and in 1873 _Searching the Net_. These
last two bore his own name, John Leicester Warren. He was somewhat
disappointed by their lukewarm reception, and when in 1876 _The Soldier
of Fortune_, a drama on which he had bestowed much careful labour,
proved a complete failure, he retired altogether from the literary
arena. It was not until 1893 that he was persuaded to return, and the
immediate success in that year of his _Poems, Dramatic and Lyrical_,
encouraged him to publish a second series in 1895, the year o