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Full text of "Bernard Barton and his friends: a record of quiet lives"

ABeresford Ryley. 



BERNARD BARTON AND HIS FRIENDS. 








BERNARD BARTON. 



BERNARD BARTON AND HIS 
FRIENDS: A RECORD OF 
QUIET LIVES. BY EDWARD 
VERRALL LUCAS. 



PUBLISHED BY EDWARD HICKS, JR., 
14, BISHOPSGATE STREET WITHOUT, 
LONDON, 1893. 



Hay man, Christy, & Lilly, Limited, London, B.C. 



TO 
MRS. EDWARD FITZGERALD 

IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDG- 
MENT OF HER UNTIRING 
HELPFULNESS AND ENCOU- 
RAGING INTEREST DURING 
ITS PROGRESS, THIS RECORD 
OF THE LIFE AND FRIEND- 
SHIPS OF HER FATHER IS 
RESPECTFULLY AND AFFEC- 
TIONATELY DEDICATED. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 

In 1849, the year of Bernard Barton's death, 
there was published a selection of his letters 
and poems, edited by his daughter, together 
with a brief memoir of the poet by his friend 
the late Edward FitzGerald. This memoir, 
for delicacy of style, justice of appreciation, and 
rightness of proportion, is a model of what such 
memoirs should be ; and to tamper with it is 
almost sacrilege. But the volume of which it 
is a part being out of print and only rarely 
obtainable, and the life of Bernard Barton, by 
reason of its wise cheerfulness, simplicity, and 
wholesome sweetness, being in this hurried, 
incomplete day of ours so fraught with charm 
and instruction, I gladly accepted the invitation 
to attempt to recover and reproduce some of its 
serenity. With the consent of Mr. FitzGerald's 
literary executor, Mr. Aldis Wright, I have 
however on every possible occasion used the 
words of the memoir rather than my own, so that 
the present book is practically a reprint of the 
volume of 1849, with much new matter added. 

The readers will find, I hope not to their 
confusion, that in the pages that follow little 
attempt has been made at a consecutive narra- 
tive. I regret that it was impracticable to 



PREFATORY NOTE. 

present the life of Bernard Barton year by- 
year, achievement after achievement ; but his 
career was so uneventful, and so devoid of any 
kind of progression, that he may be said truth- 
fully to have been as firmly established in his 
convictions and philosophy of living at the age of 
thirty as of sixty. Even his latest poems show 
no advance upon his earliest. Moreover he did 
not move with the times, and he took no part 
in public affairs ; from the death of his wife in 
1808, until his own death in 1849, he lived 
through one long, level day. At the risk there- 
fore of sinning against art, I have occasionally 
leaped from the twenties to the forties, and from 
the thirties back to the tens, in such a way as 
would cause bewilderment were the dates of any 
importance. 

I have to express my thanks principally to 
Mrs. Edward FitzGerald, and also to Miss 
Churchyard, Mr. Samuel Alexander, and others, 
for the assistance they have given me in my 
researches ; and to Mr. Aldis Wright and 
Messrs. Macmillan and Co., for kindly allowing 
me to make extracts from the Letters and 
Literary Remains of Edward FitzGerald. 

EDWARD VERRALL LUCAS. 

LONDON, December, itfpj. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter I. — Ancestry and Youth 

B.B.'s Ancestry— John Barton, of Ive Gill, his Great-Grandfather— 
Bernard Barton, his Grandfather— John Barton, his Father— Love 
Troubles— An Honest Letter— B.B.'s Birth— Thomas Home— Old 
Tottenham— Recollections of Boyhood— Youth— B.B.'s Marriage— 
His Wife's Death— " My Lucy" — Tutorship — William Roscoe— 
B.B. enters the Bank — Characteristics — Sonnet. Pages 15 — 31 

Chapter II. — Woodbridge 

Homeless — Anne Knight — Unchanged Woodbridge — Recollections 
of the Poet — His Social Qualities — Local Honour — " To The 
Bernard Barton Schooner " — Playford — Suffolk Rural Beauty — " To 
the Deben." 32 — 45 

Chapter III. — Home Life 

B.B. as Host — The Evening's Occupations — His Gift of Improvisa- 
tion — Overwork — "An Invitation" — His Love of Scott — Books — 
His Critical Faculty— " Izaak Walton "—" Selborne "—Pictures 
and Picture Buying — His Sympathy. 46—59 

Chapter IV. — Early Friends 

Maria Hack — Eliza Barton — John Barton — W. H. Finnie — "The 
Solitary Tomb "—The Old Barracks— A Night Alarm— Rev. C. B. 
Tayler — Dr. Nathan Drake — Sonnet — John Barton's Portrait— The 
Ive Gill Cousins — Rev. John Mitford — B.B. and the Nightingale — 
" Benhall " — " Prometheus Unbound." 60 — 73 

Chapter V. — Charles Lamb and Quakerism 

The First Meeting of Elia and B.B. —At the India House— Lamb's 
Kindness for the Friends — Hester Savory — " Imperfect Sym- 
pathies" — "A Quakers' Meeting" — His Quaker Appearance — 
Hazlitt's Description— Elia's Mischief— B.B. a Personification of 
Broad-minded Quakerism. 74 — 81 

Chapter VI. — Charles Lamb's Letters 

Barry Cornwall's Scant Justice — Wholesome Advice on Unwise 
Ambition — Lamb in Colebrook Row — B.B. and Lucy's Visit — Mary 
Lamb — B.B.'s Intemperance in Work — Quaker Testimonial to B.B. 
— Lamb's Wise Counsel — Album Verses for Lucy Barton — A Solemn 
Warning — Elia's Liberation — The Picture — A Letter in Verse — 
" Fireside Quatrains to Charles Lamb " — Decline of the Correspon- 
dence — B.B.'s Estimate of Lamb. 82 — 114 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter VII. — More Friends 

Mrs. Sutton — Sonnet — B.B.'s Quaker Principles — The Shawes — 
Sonnet — John Linnell — Quakerism and Art — William Blake — 
Romney's Portrait of Cowper — London Impressions — Allan Cun- 
ningham — An Invitation — A Worthy Yeoman — Thomas Seckford. 

115 — 127 

Chapter VIII. — Edward FitzGerald 

Early Life — Characteristics — Habits — His Love of the Country — 
Oppressive London — The Dedication of Tennyson's Tiresias — 
A Boating Party — Selections from the Letters — Bernard Barton's 
Portrait — Tennyson's Elegy on his Friend. 128 — 141 

Chapter IX. — Friends of Later Days 

W. B. Donne — Mrs. Bodham — Cowper's "Gentle Anne" — Rev. 
George Crabbe — Some Good Letters — Thomas Churchyard — A 
Birthday Greeting — "To a Yery Young Housewife" — The Misses 
Charlesworth — An Invisible Correspondent— A Pleasant Party — 
Major Edward Moor — Sonnet — Occasional Acquaintances — Visit to 
Farnham Castle— Sonnet — B.B.'s Pension — Sir Robert Peel — Letters 
from Byron, Jeffrey, Southey, and Scott — L.E.L.'s Mistake — James 
Hogg's Request — Robert Bloomfield. 142 — 168 

Chapter X. — The Quaker Poet 

List of B.B.'s Works— His Poetic. Creed— Criticism— " Leiston 
Abbey" — "Cowper's Rural Walks" — "The Deserted Nest" — 
"To 'a Friend in Distress "—" On a Garden" — "The Spiritual 
Law "—"A Stream "—Stanzas from "Napoleon " — Moonlight Scene 
— "Great Bealings Churchyard "— " Old Age " — Rhymed Addresses 
— Four Sonnets— B.B. as Revolutionist. 169 — 188 

Chapter XL— The End 

Advancing Years— Premonitions of Illness— B.B. as " Skulker"— A 
Deficit in the Bank— The Last Evening— Death— The Poet's Grave 
— Edward FitzGerald's Valediction. 189 — 193 



CHAPTER I. 

ANCESTRY AND YOUTH. 

The pride that springs from high descent 

May be no pride of mine ; 
My lowlier views are well content 

To claim a humble line : 
Fancy shall wing no daring flight, 

And rear no lofty dome ; 
Ive-Gill's small hamlet her delight, 

Ive-Gill her modest home. 

Ive-Gill. 

THE home of the Bartons was in Cumber- 
land. John Barton, Bernard's great-grand- 
father, dwelt at Ive-Gill, a little hamlet near 
Carlisle, and was, in his great-grandson's words, 
" one of those truly patriarchal personages, a 
Cumbrian statesman, living on his own little 
estate, and drawing from it all things needful 
for himself and his family." The estate was 
little indeed, for its annual value was estimated 
at only £2 15s. ; and yet so wisely was it 
administered, that John Barton, a zealous 
Churchman, was the chief means, as his 



16 BERNARD BARTON 

descendant is glad to record, of building 
the little chapel in the dale. Bernard con- 
tinues : " I doubt not he was a fine, simple- 
hearted, noble-minded yeoman, in his day, and 
I am very proud of him. Why did his son, 
my grandfather, after whom I was named, ever 
leave that pleasant dale, and go and set up a 
manufactory in Carlisle, inventing a piece of 
machinery for which he had a medal from the 
Royal Society ? Methinks he had better have 
abode in the old grey-stone, slate-covered 
homestead on the banks of that pretty brooklet, 
the Ive. But I bear his name, so I will not 
quarrel with his memory." 

This Bernard Barton, the grandfather of 
the poet, died at Carlisle in 1773, aged forty- 
five, and was followed to the grave thirteen 
years later by his wife, five infant sons being 
buried with them. Referring to these children 
half-a-century afterwards, the poet writes : 
" Only think of those five uncles of mine, or 
uncle-ets rather, for they grew not up to mature 
unclehood ! Had they all lived, wedded, and 
had families, what a Bartonian host we should 
or might have been." One son however did 
survive, John Barton, Bernard's father, who 
inherited the manufactory but not the business 
capabilities of a manufacturer. " I always," he 
wrote, " perused a Locke, an x\ddison, or a 
Pope, with delight, and ever sat down to my 
ledger with a sort of disgust." x When quite a 
young man he determined to quit business 



1 See a letter from his son on page 69. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 17 

altogether, but never carried out the resolve, 
although he made many changes both in occu- 
pation and the scene of its transaction. 

At an early age he married Maria Done, a 
Quaker lady, who came of a Cheshire family; 
and at the same time himself embraced the 
Quaker faith. The following letter concerning 
his courtship illustrates so clearly the frankness, 
independence, and thorough worthiness of the 
man, and is at the same time so admirable a 
composition, that the reader is asked to pardon 
its insertion. It should be stated that the letter 
was inscribed to John Bell, of Carlisle, a minis- 
ter of the Society of Friends. 

Carlisle, 21th April, 1775. 

I am going, my much esteemed Friend, to take the 
liberty of addressing you upon, and to solicit your kind, 
your Christian interposition and assistance, in an affair 
which most deeply and tenderly affects me. In doing this, 
I should, perhaps, by some, be thought to assume a liberty 
which the shortness of our acquaintance would hardly 
justify ; and the mode of application I have made choice 
of, 'tis very probable might be censured by many as singular 
and extraordinary. But the assurance I already have of the 
goodness of your heart is sufficient to encourage me to hope 
that, when you reflect on the importance of the subject I 
am going to address you upon (for to me it is truly impor- 
tant), you will consider it as a sufficient apology for the 
freedom which I have ventured to take, and likewise for 
the manner in which I have taken it. 

It is entirely needless, I presume, to inform you of my 
prepossessions in favour of Miss Done, as I have sufficient 
reason to believe that this is an attachment which you 
are by no means ignorant of. It is an attachment which I 

2 



18 BERNARD BARTON 

have long avowed, which I have ever warmly cherished and 
cultivated, and which has been attended with many pleasing, 
many happy consequences. But, alas ! all its consequences 
have not been pleasing ! Some it has produced which have 
been far, very far, from contributing to that happiness which 
I had flattered myself such an attachment could not fail to 
promote. By endeavouring to attain the esteem and affection 
of Maria (and to obtain these I always have done, and ever 
shall do, everything in my power) I have unfortunately in- 
curred the united opposition of almost all her relations — a 
circumstance which has given me much pain, and which is 
rendered a thousand times more afflicting by this most 
unpleasing consideration, that she likewise has perhaps 
experienced the unmerited slights of those who were for- 
merly zealous to show every expression of cordial affection, 
and whose approbation and regard are still essential to her 
happiness. It is this circumstance which has cast a 
melancholy gloom over a connexion that in other 
respects has equally contributed to my honour and 
satisfaction ; and in order to remove this it is that I 
ardently desire, and earnestly request, that you would 
exert your friendly endeavours to put an end to this 
opposition, and to restore us, if possible, to the general 
esteem and friendship of one another. 

The particular part you act in that Society to which all 
my opponents belong, your years, your character, your 
intimacy with the family — and in particular your well 
known esteem for Maria — all these point you out as the 
man who of all others is best qualified for the important 
task I wish you to engage in. And surely that task is far 
from being an unworthy one. There can be no character 
which as men, or more especially as Christians, we ought to 
be more ambitious of sustaining than that of a Peacemaker. 
Peace merely for its own sake, and the sake of Maria, is all 
I wish for. 

It is very possible, indeed, that even this character, 
amiable as it generally is, may sometimes be an unworthy 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 19 

one ; and cases may be supposed both in public and 
private life, in the affairs of families as well as those of 
nations, where dishonourable treaties may be made. But 
in the present instance, I would gladly hope, this is not 
the case. If I thought it was — if I had reason to expect 
that this connexion would, in any instance, deprive Maria 
of anything which was necessary to her happiness ; or con- 
tribute in any measure to lessen her in the estimation of 
any one impartial individual whose good opinion was worth 
caring for, if I thought such a connexion would be dis- 
honourable to herself, or to her family, much and sincerely 
as I wish for it — I seriously and solemnly declare I would 
not persist in my suit another hour. 

From what motives has arisen the opposition of her 
relations I am at a loss to understand. Extremely sorry 
should I be to suppose that it rested on any reasonable 
or solid foundation ; and I am still persuaded k would be 
equally unjust to imagine it is grounded on a selfish or 
illiberal one. Would they but exercise that candour upon 
this occasion which is so natural to them upon others, I trust 
a little examination would make it appear that their oppo- 
sition only proceeded from groundless prejudice or gross 
misinformation. And were they but once, through your 
friendly interposition, convinced of this, I hope their 
present shyness and reserve would be changed into a 
very different and much more agreeable sort of conduct. 
But why am I presuming to beg your assistance in remov- 
ing the objections of others, when, for anything I know to 
the contrary, these very objections are equally your own, 
and you yourself a party to that opposition which I am so 
earnestly soliciting you to endeavour to put an end to ? 
To confess the truth, I am not without my fears that this 
has hitherto in some measure been really the case. But 
such is my opinion of your candour and benevolence, that 
I persuade myself if you have, indeed, any considerable 
objections to the connexion in question, you will tell me of 
them with frankness and ingenuity, and give me a fair 

2A 



20 BERNARD BARTON 

opportunity of pleading my own cause in a case wherein I 
am so much interested ; and if upon an impartial examina- 
tion you should still think it your duty to oppose me, [ 
have then no right to expect either encouragement or 
assistance from you. 

In the meanwhile, I think I may be allowed to say, 
without the imputation of vanity, that my conduct is as 
irreproachable, and my circumstances by no means worse 
than those of another who was so far from being objected 
to by my opposers, that they did everything in their power 
to forward and befriend him. One circumstance there was, 
indeed, in which he certainly had the advantage of me— I 
mean his being of the same religious profession with the 
amiable woman he wished to be connected with. But if 
this has been a principal objection, it need not be one any 
longer. Convinced as I am, and as I have publicly acknow- 
ledged myself to be, of the superiority of the tenets and 
principles of your Society over those of the Church in which 
I have been educated, I can have no objection to a change 
of profession, if such a change shall be found practicable — I 
say, if such a change shall be found practicable — for I have 
often feared, and I have sometimes been told, that the 
Society would not be willing to acknowledge me as a 
member. They may, perhaps, consider such a change, 
not as proceeding from real conviction, but as matter of 
interest or convenience, and think themselves sufficiently 
justified in supposing that some other love than that of 
Truth merely has induced me to take so unusual a step. 
Should these be their sentiments, and should these senti- 
ments lead them to reject me, all my hopes of a reconcilia- 
tion with Maria's relations may prove groundless, and I 
may still experience those slights and that opposition from 
which I have already suffered so much. 

But if you are convinced of the contrary, I make no 
doubt you will have it in your power entirely to remove the 
scruples of others. Permit me, then, to give you this assur- 
ance that, though I should probably never have thought of 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 21 

becoming a member of your Society had my attachment to 
Maria never existed, yet still, that no attachment, however 
endearing, should induce me to espouse any principles of 
the truth of which I was not fully convinced, or to give an 
outward and verbal preference to anything unwarranted by 
the conviction of my understanding and the feelings of my 
heart. 

But I fear you will begin to think an apology necessary 
for detaining you so long. I have only one more request 
to make, and I will detain you no longer. Should this 
application not meet with its wished-for success — should 
you, instead of favouring me with your assistance, think it 
proper to act a contrary part, I hope you will at least be 
content to let this letter pass by without further notice : so 
that, if it cannot be subservient to any useful purpose, I may 
still have the satisfaction of knowing that my futile en- 
deavours are buried in oblivion. Farewell, and believe 
me 1 ever am, with much respect, your very sincere friend, 

John Barton. 1 



1 This letter was given to Bernard Barton by an unknown friend, 
Deborah Robinson, of Cockermouth, nearly fifty years after it was 
panned. He held it almost as a sacred thing, and would proudly 
allude to himself as the son of the man who wrote it. In the letter 
which accompanied the gift, the reference to Maria Done's poetical 
talent is noteworthy. Deborah Robinson wrote as follows : 

Cockermouth, ~,tk 3rd, 1824. 
Respected Friend, Bernard Barton, — 

The precious relic which accompanies these few lines from an unknown friend 
will, I trust, be a sufficient apology for the liberty taken in addressing thee. A 
little explanation on my part may be satisfactory respecting the letter which I have 
had in my possession, I believe, over forty years, and now with real heartfelt 
pleasure give up to thee. 

The letter was addressed to John Bell, a minister in our Society, then resident 
in Carlisle, and (as thou wilt perceive) an intimate in thy mother's family. I was 
not much acquainted with either John Bell or his wife ; an intimate friend of the 
atter gave me the letter, I believe for no other reason than my admiring the manly 
sentiments it contained, and also my being an admirer of Maria Done's (afterward 
thy mother) poetical effusions. I am quite ignorant what part John Bell acted in 
the affair after the receipt of the letter ; if I ever was told, length of time has erased 
it from my memory. Although I have often occasionally read the letter to my 



22 BERNARD BARTON 

John Barton was fortunate in his champion, 
and his marriage with Maria Done soon took 
place. They had several children, but all died 
young save Maria (afterwards Maria Hack, the 
author of many instructive books for children), 
Eliza, and Bernard. 

Bernard Barton was born on January 31st, 
1784. At the time of his birth his father was 
dwelling in London, where he found society 
and interests more to his liking than those 
offered by Carlisle. Bernard's mother died 
when he was only a few days old, " but," he 
wrote subsequently, "my father married again 
in my infancy so wisely and happily, that I 
knew not but his second wife was my own 
mother, till I learned it years after at a boarding- 
school." 

John Barton's second wife, who bore him 
one son, Bernard's half-brother John, was 
Elizabeth Home, a Quaker, the daughter of 
Thomas Home, of Bankside and Tottenham. 



intimate friends, I ever felt a scrupulous delicacy in having it copied, though not 
enjoined to it, nor has there ever been a copy taken, to my knowledge, since it was 
in my possession. When thy first volume of poems was sent me by a friend, the 
perusal of which afforded me much gratification, I thought if ever it was in my 
power to have this letter of thy father's properly conveyed to thee, I should like to 
do so, and it is with much satisfaction I can now do it thro' the medium of our 
mutual friend, Mary Sutton. Thou -wilt value it, and no doubt the perusal may- 
awaken the sentiments of filial affection in thy breast, and probably excite such 
tender emotions as no other person can feel from its perusal. 

I am glad it is preserved so entire, and it sometimes appears wonderful to me that 
it has been preserved in my hands such a very long time, seemingly for no other 
substantial reason but to be sent to thee. 

Farewell — and believe me, with sentiments of cordial esteem, 

Thy sincere, though unknown Friend, 

Deborah Robinson. 

P.S. — The friend from whom I had this letter has some lime been deceased, 
therefore no further information can be had on that subject. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 23 

Of this excellent man the poet wrote fifty 
years later : 

My most delightful recollections of boyhood are con- 
nected with the fine old country-house in a green lane 
diverging from the high road which runs through Totten- 
ham. I would give seven years of life as it now is, for 
a week of that which I then led. It was a large old 
house, with an iron palisade and a pair of iron gates in 
front, and a huge stone eagle on each pier. Leading up to 
the steps by which you went up to the hall door, was a 
wide gravel walk, bordered in summer time by huge tubs, 
in which were orange and lemon trees, and in the centre of 
the grass-plot stood a tub yet huger, holding an enormous 
aloe. The hall itself, to my fancy then lofty and wide as a 
cathedral would seem now, was a famous place for battle- 
dore and shuttlecock ; and behind was a garden, equal to 
that of old Alcinous himself. My favourite walk was one of 
turf by a long straight pond, bordered with lime-trees. But 
the whole demesne was the fairy ground of my childhood ; 
and its presiding genius was grandpapa. He must have 
been a very handsome man in his youth, for I remember 
him at nearly eighty, a very fine-looking one, even in the 
decay of mind and body. In the morning a velvet cap ; by 
dinner, a flaxen wig ; his features always expressive of 
benignity and placid cheerfulness. When he walked out 
into the garden, his cocked hat and amber-headed cane 
completed his costume. To the recollection of this de- 
lightful personage, I am, I think, indebted for many soothing 
and pleasing associations with old age. 

In a letter to another friend the poet records 
a further reminiscence of these happy Tottenham 
days. Of his grandfather's house he says : 

But every earthly elysium has its set-off; and this was 
not exempt. A good citizen of the name of Townsend, a 
particular friend of the venerable pair, used to come down 



24 BERNARD BARTON 

there and bring his gout with him ; and my poor grandam's 
fright lest I should go near his too susceptible foot, used to 
keep her and me in a worry. Well nigh half-a-century has 
elapsed since those days, but her reiterated exclamation, 
1 Child ! do take care and not run against friend Townsend's 
foot/ is yet distinctly in my mind's ear. T. was a patient, 
quiet old sufferer too, and if I did touch the forbidden 
stool in an unlucky moment, he was the first to notify that 
no harm was done. 

John Barton took some part in public affairs 
in London, for, in 1787, we find his name on the 
first committee appointed to promote the aboli- 
tion of the slave trade, " in honourable com- 
panionship with that of Thomas Clarkson ; " but 
his temperament would not permit him to settle 
down, and he moved soon afterwards to Hert- 
ford, where he had bought a partnership in a 
malting business. Here he died, not yet forty, 
in Bernard's seventh year. His widow, with her 
own son and three stepchildren, returned to 
her paternal home at Tottenham, and Bernard 
was sent to a Quaker school at Ipswich. 
There he stayed until his fourteenth year, 
when he was apprenticed to Samuel Jesup, a 
Quaker, at Halstead, in Essex. In 1806, at the 
expiration of his indentures, he moved to Wood- 
bridge, in Suffolk, and in 1807 married Lucy 
Jesup, the niece of his late master, and set up 
in business, in partnership with her brother, as a 
corn and coal merchant. A year later his wife 
died in giving birth to a daughter. The blow- 
was almost too severe, and Bernard Barton felt 
compelled to leave a town so full of associations 
of his lost happiness. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 25 

Little record of Lucy Barton has come down 
to us, but only a lovely and lovable character 
could have inspired these touching verses : 

thou from earth for ever fled ! 
Whose reliques lie among the dead, 
With daisied verdure overspread, 

My Lucy ! 

For many a weary day gone by, 

How many a solitary sigh 

I've heaved for thee, no longer nigh, 

My Lucy ! 
And if to grieve I cease awhile, 

1 look for that enchanting smile 
Which all my cares could once beguile, 

My Lucy ! 
But ah ! in vain — the blameless art 
Which used to soothe my troubled heart 
Is lost with thee, my better part, 

My Lucy ! 
Thy converse, innocently free, 
That made the fiends of fancy flee, 
Ah, then I felt the want of thee, 

My Lucy ! 
Nor is it for myself alone 
That I thy early death bemoan ; 
Our infant now is all my own, 

My Lucy ! 
Could'st thou a guardian angel prove 
To the dear offspring of our love, 
Until it reach the realms above, 

My Lucy ! 
Could thy angelic spirit stray, 
Unseen companion of my way, 
As onward drags the weary day, 

My Lucy ! 



26 BERNARD BARTON 

And when the midnight hour shall close 
Mine eyes in short, unsound repose, 
Could'st thou but whisper off my woes, 

My Lucy ! 
Then though thy loss I must deplore, 
Till next we meet to part no more, 
I'd wait the grasp that from me tore 

My Lucy ! 
For, be my life but spent like thine, 
With joy shall I that life resign, 
And fly to thee, for ever mine, 

My Lucy ! 

And here, in one of the most beautiful of 
the many poems which Bernard Barton ad- 
dressed to his daughter, is another testimony 
to the sweet virtues of her mother : 

My child, this is thy natal day, 

And might a father's prayer 
For thee inspire his votive lay, 

What blessing should'st thou share? 

Shall wit, or wealth, or beauty move 

Thy sire to bend his knee? 
I hold thee far too dear, my love, 

To crave these things for thee. 

If wish of mine might prove of worth, 

Be this thy portion given, — 
Thy mother's blameless life on earth, 

Thy mother's lot in heaven. 

On leaving Woodbridge, the young widower 
abandoned business and accepted a situation at 
Liverpool as private tutor in the family of Mr. 
Waterhouse, a merchant. Always tenderly 
fond of children, he soon lost some of the 
poignancy of his grief in the companionship 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 27 

of his pupils, and he was, moreover, enabled 
to turn his mind to those congenial studies 
which commerce had rendered impossible. As 
a matter of fact, Mr. Barton was well rid of 
buying and selling ; for like so many men with 
the artistic temperament, he was completely 
lost in trade, being no more fitted to make a 
bargain than to command a man-of-war. To 
the end of his days he could never balance his 
own accounts, however methodically kept were 
those of his employers. At Liverpool he was 
fortunate in winning the friendship of William 
Roscoe, who offered advice on his poetry, lent 
him books, and helped to correct his taste ; a 
kindness acknowledged by the poet some years 
after in the stanzas beginning : 

When first, like a child building houses with cards, 

I mimick'd the labours of loftier bards ; 

Though the fabrics I built felt each breath that came near, 

Thy smiles taught me hope, and thy praise banish'd fear. 

Thou didst not reprove with an Aristarch's pride ; 
Or unfeelingly chill, or uncandidly chide ; 
It was not in thy nature with scorn to regard 
The fresh-breathing hopes of an untutor'd bard. 

After a stay of only a year in Liverpool, 
Mr. Barton returned to Woodbridge, and ac- 
cepted the post of clerk in the bank of Dykes 
and Samuel Alexander, in whose service he 
remained until his death, forty years later. It 
is with those forty years that we are concerned. 

And here, before the record begins of Ber- 
nard Barton's quiet pilgrimage, it would be well 
perhaps to warn the reader that in the pages 



28 BERNARD BARTON 

that follow he need look for none of those 
extremes or eccentricities that so often make 
biographies hardly less piquant than romance. 
He will find himself in the presence of a plain 
man, unselfish and undistinguished, whose every 
thought was kindly, whose every word was 
gentle, whose leisurely walk through life lay 
along sheltered lanes and over level meads ; 
a man, none the less, of fine judgment, broad 
sympathies, generous toleration, and rich 
humour — attributes which have been missed 
by many who have risen to far greater 
eminence. 

But the reader if he be wise will find 
ample compensation for the absence of spiced 
anecdote and all the brilliancies which have 
come to be associated with the literary career, 
in the insight he will gain into a contented 
mind. Had he been possessed of more leisure 
and means, or had he at an early age come into 
contact with some powerful and luminous in- 
tellect, Bernard Barton might have done great 
work. But such speculation is idle ; more- 
over no companionship however stimulating 
could have strengthened the Quaker Poet's 
native sanity. Indeed, were not arrogance 
foreign to his nature, he might have looked 
with calm superiority upon many of his 
wealthier and more talented fellows, for his 
was the rare secret of self-containment and 
content : acceptance of and adherence to the 
facts of life were his also. 

By a happy chance, at the time this chap- 
ter was under revision, there appeared Mr. 



• AND HIS FRIENDS. 29 

C. E. Norton's Letters of James Russell Lowell 1 
In that most interesting book is printed an 
estimate of the American critic by Mr. Leslie 
Stephen, some of whose words are so truly 
applicable to Bernard Barton that they are 
reproduced here. Mr. Stephen says that his 
strongest impression of his friend is one of 
"his unvarying sweetness and simplicity." 
He continues : "I have seen him in great 
sorrow and in the most unreserved domestic 
intimacy. The dominant impression was al- 
ways the same : of unmixed kindliness and 
thorough wholesomeness of nature. There 
did not seem to be a drop of bitterness in 
his composition. There was plenty of vir- 
tuous indignation on occasion, but he could 
not help being tolerant even towards an- 
tagonists. He seemed to be always full of 
cordial goodwill. . . ." Unless this book 
has been sadly mis-handled, the reader will 
find that such a man was Bernard Barton. 

14 My temperament," he writes to one of his 
correspondents, " is, as far as man can judge of 
himself, eminently social. I am wont to live 
out of myself, and to cling to anything or any- 
body lovable within my reach " — a sentiment 
repeated and amplified in a letter to another 
friend, written when the poet was fifty-five : 

The longer I live the more expedient I find it to 
endeavour more and more to extend my sympathies and 
affections. The natural tendency of advancing years is to 
narrow and contract these feelings. I do not mean that I 



1 Published by Messrs. Macmillan and Co. 



3o BERNARD BARTON 

wish to form a new and sworn friendship every day — to 
increase my circle of intimates ; these are very different 
affairs. But I find it conduces to my mental health and 
happiness to find out all I can which is amiable and love- 
able in all I come in contact with, and to make the most of 
it. It may fall very short of what I was once wont to dream 
of ; it may not supply the place of what I have known, felt, 
and tasted ; but it is better than nothing — it serves to keep 
the feelings and affections in exercise — it keeps the heart 
alive in its humanity ; and, till we shall be all spiritual, this 
is alike our duty and our interest. 

And again, in one of the many poems 
addressed to his daughter occurs this beautiful 
confession : 

I have no foes — to set them 

As beacons in thy sight ; 

But if I had—' Forget them ! ' 

Is all that I would write. 1 

The history of a broad mind cannot but be 
instructive, however feebly the historian may 
have done his work. Of Bernard Barton's 
wide tolerance there cannot be two opinions : 
although a Quaker, he numbered among his 



i The same spirit of Christian charity informs these lines, which 
wers written by Bernard Barton in his daughter's prayer book : 
My creed requires no form of prayer ; 

Yet would I not condemn 
Those who adopt with pious care 
Their use as aids to them. 

One God hath fashion'd them and me ; 

One Spirit is our guide ; 
For each, alike, upon the tree 

One common Saviour died ! 

Each the same trumpet-call shall wake, 

To face the judgment seat ; 
God give us grace, for Jesus' sake, 

In the same heaven to meet. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 31 

friends a Barrack-master and a Reader of 
Plays, and to the curate of his town he could 
address this sonnet : 

Dear friend, and Christian brother ; if thy creed 

May not on every point agree with mine ; 

Yet may we worship at one common shrine, 
While both alike we feel our urgent need 
Of the same Saviour ; as a broken reed 

Count all — except His righteousness Divine : 

And equal honour reverently assign 
Unto that Spirit, who for both must plead ! 

Since in these grand essentials we agree, 

Oh, what are modes of worship, forms of prayer, 
Or outward sacraments ? I would not dare 

To doubt that such are helpful unto thee ; 

Nor wilt thou fail in charity for me, 

Seeking within to know and feel them there! 

"Since in these grand essentials we agree." 
There we have it. Bernard Barton was one 
of the few who have discovered the " grand 
essentials " and have clung to them. 



BERNARD BARTON 



CHAPTER II. 

WOODBRIDGE. 

My own beloved, adopted town ! 

Even this glimpse of thee, 
Whereon I've seen the sun go down 

So oft — suffices me. 

For more than forty chequer'd years 
Hast thou not been my home ? 

Till all that most this life endears 
Forbids a wish to roam. 

I came to thee a stranger youth, 

Unknowing and unknown ; 
And Friendship's solace, and Love's truth, 

In thee have been mine own. 

Loved for the living and the dead, 

No other home I crave j 
Here would I live till life be fled, 

Here find a nameless grave. 

On a Vignette of Woodbridge from the Warren Hill, 

NOT until the latter half of his life had 
Bernard Barton a roof to call his own, 
although no man could have a finer sense of 
the sanctities of the home, nor better dispense 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 33 

the hospitalities of the hearth. During his first 
years in the bank he made the experiment of 
more than one lodging, where he was forced to 
endure much discomfort on account of con- 
tracted space. Many indeed must have been 
the poems composed by him under the worst 
of difficulties. Heat length found a lodging as 
nearly like a home as any lodging could be, in 
the house of Anne Knight and her sisters. 
Anne Knight was a clever and very charming 
Quaker lady, a widow, who on the death of her 
husband had returned to Woodbridge to help 
her sisters in the management of a school 
where the minds of little Quaker children were 
instructed in the elements of learning and their 
thoughts led to white and worthy things. 

" So A. K. keeps a school," wrote Charles 
Lamb, to whom Bernard Barton had introduced 
her; " she teaches nothing wrong, I'll answer 
fort. I have a Dutch print of a schoolmistress ; 
little old-fashioned Fleminglings, with only one 
face among them. She is a princess of 'a school- 
mistress, wielding a rod for form more than 
use ; the scene, an old monastic chapel, with a 
Madonna over her head, looking just as serious, 
as thoughtful, as pure, as gentle as herself. 
'Tis a type of thy friend." 

The school must have been a pleasant one, 
for there are still old pupils who love to 
tell of delightful evenings when Mr. Barton 
would come in with a merry greeting and the 
narrative of some portentous Woodbridge event 
for the ears of the children ; or, glowing from 
its achievement, would read a new poem to 

3 



34 BERNARD BARTON 

Anne Knight, his critic, counsellor, and friend 
in one. The warm regard which he entertained 
for the three sisters finds some expression in 
these stanzas, written by him to accompany the 
gift of one of his early volumes : 

Whether these pages win for me, 

In other eyes, a Poet's name, 
Allow them in your own to be 

A pledge of Friendship's dearer claim. 

The proudest fame the World can give 
Scarce pays the Bard whose wishes roam : 

The fame for which 'tis sweet to live, 

Must come from eyes, lips, hearts — at home ! 

Meanwhile, his little daughter Lucy, who 
from her infancy had been in the charge of her 
grandparents, was steadily growing up. When 
old enough she was sent to boarding-school, 
dividing the holidays very happily between 
various relatives : her favourite visiting-place 
perhaps being the home of her aunt Maria 
Hack. As soon as was convenient after she 
became of a companionable and helpful age, 
father and daughter took up their quarters in 
what was perhaps the tiniest house ever in- 
habited by a poet. Many were the happy 
hours spent there ; but Bernard Barton's true 
environment was the bank house, whither they 
moved some years after, and where they lived 
until his death. There, in sufficiently spacious 
rooms of his own, he was able at last to express 
himself ; and the walls growing every day more 
wealthy in books and pictures, soon reflected, 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 35 

as all walls should, the individuality of their 
owner. Henceforward, Bernard Barton was 
to roam no more. 

In the forty and four years that have passed 
by since the Quaker Poet was laid to rest in 
the little burying-ground of the Woodbridge 
meeting-house, the old town has seen few 
changes. The houses have crept farther into 
the country on the north side, and the new 
railway has made it easier for the townsfolk to 
gain that immediate knowledge of public affairs 
without which no modern civilized man deems 
himself able to be happy ; but the Deben tide 
runs in and out as of old, the waterfowl utter 
their plaints with as melancholy a voice, and the 
dun sails of the barges offer as gracious a rest 
to the eye as they did when the century was 
still young. The graves on Warren Hill lie 
thicklier, it is true, than when the poet sang of 
''The Solitary Tomb," and the foliage of the 
surrounding trees now hides all but bright 
glimpses of the river. Moreover, a notice- 
board warns the wayfarer that it is criminal 
to leave the footpath that crosses the " Valley 
of Fern." 

Could the poet return again, he would find 
little change in the town's diurnal course and 
ways of thinking. Just as an isolated field of 
corn sometimes escapes all damage during the 
thunderstorms of July, so has Woodbridge 
avoided harm from the torrents of osopkies and 
isms which have beaten upon less fortunate dis- 
tricts of the country. The curfew is still rung 

3A 



36 BERNARD BARTON 

at eight of an evening. At the Seckford Hos- 
pital, another race of aged pensioners identical 
in dress and feebleness with the aged pensioners 
of Bernard Barton's day, sit on fine mornings 
with their faces turned to the sun, secure in 
haven at last, watching as did their pre- 
decessors the ascending smoke of tobacco, 
their most constant temporal friend. The 
bank is unchanged too. Bernard Barton's 
corner is as it was ; and although put now to 
other uses, the room in which he died, the 
sitting-room hung with pictures wherein he 
received his guests, and the little study where 
many of his poems and most of his letters were 
written, are almost as he left them. The 
creeper has spread farther over the wall — that 
is all. 

These forty and four years have however laid 
low all but a handful of the poet's friends and 
acquaintances. But although Edward Fitz- 
Gerald is their distinguished townsman whom 
the Woodbridge people most delight to honour, 
Bernard Barton's name is still revered. Stories 
are gladly told of his joviality, his kindly 
humour, his generosity and thoughtfulness for 
little things. There are still in Woodbridge 
aged men and women who retain a clear im- 
pression of his cheery presence, and recall with 
no small pleasure the merry twinkle in his 
brown eyes as he dropped some sly jest or 
daring compliment. And there are many 
others with fewer years to their account who 
recollect that as children they were often in- 
debted to Mr. Barton for stray pence, sweet- 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 2>7 

meats and buns, and encouraging pats on their 
curly heads. The diminutive house in Cum- 
berland Street where Bernard Barton lived 
in his middle Woodbridge days, is still known 
as Poet's Cottage ; and tradition still has it 
that when at the dinner hour he left the Bank 
and walked home, his punctuality was so unfail- 
ing that the housewives on the route were 
used to put the potatoes into water as he 
passed their doors. 

Bernard Barton and Woodbridge were in- 
separably associated. It probably would be 
hard to find another instance of a man of such 
liberal views and such great literary ambition who 
was content to remain for the whole of his life 
in so dull an environment as that offered by an 
East Anglian market-town. As we shall see, 
Bernard Barton was occasionally troubled by 
desires to exchange Woodbridge for London, 
but they soon passed, leaving him even better 
satisfied to spend and end his days in retire- 
ment. And in his later life, at any rate, 
retirement meant little less than actual con- 
finement : a circumstance noticed by the author 
of a religious work entitled The Summer and 
Winter of the Soul, which has for frontispiece 
a picture of Bernard Barton's grave. With 
the Quaker Poet, says this writer, "life ap- 
pears to have gently and equably ebbed away ; 
and standing beneath his memorial tree, one is 
struck by reflecting within what brief circum- 
ference his house of business, home, and final 
resting-place were bounded. ... A walk 
of some ten minutes would embrace them all." 



38 BERNARD BARTON 

Much as he loved Woodbridge and Wood- 
bridge folk, and notable as he was among the 
men of the town, Mr. Barton held no public 
offices. Occasionally his pen was employed 
in the service of local charity, and he wrote 
more than a few sets of memorial verses upon 
well-known persons of the neighbourhood ; 
but in municipal affairs he took no part. 
" Politics of any sort, or of all sorts," he once 
wrote to a correspondent, " are not to my 
taste ; but those connected with electioneering 
tactics are the most loathsome." When, how- 
ever, it may be noted, he was persuaded to 
take sides on behalf of some personal friend, 
he was found usually among the Liberals, 
although his love of Suffolk farms and Suffolk 
farmers led him to stand against the repeal of 
the Corn Laws. He called himself u a Whig 
of the old school." His refusal to touch public 
matters did his popularity no harm : all classes 
of Woodbridge society held him in affection, 
and his advice and company were eagerly 
sought after. In the words of the Memoir 
of the poet written by Mr. Edward FitzGerald — 

His literary talents, social amiability, and blameless 
character, made him respected, liked, and courted among 
his neighbours. Few, high or low, but were glad to see 
him at his customary place in the bank, from which he 
smiled a kindly greeting, or came down with friendly, open 
hand, and some frank words of family inquiry — perhaps with 
the offer of a pinch from his never-failing snuff-box — or with 
the withdrawal of the visitor, if more intimate, to see some 
letter or copy of verses, just received or just composed, or 
some picture just purchased. Few, high or low, but were 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 39 

glad to have him at their tables; where he was equally 
pleasant and equally pleased, whether with the fine folks at 
the Hall, or with the homely company at the Farm ; carry- 
ing every where indifferently the same good feeling, good 
spirits, and good manners; and by a happy frankness of 
nature, that did not too precisely measure its utterance on 
such occasions, checkering the conventional gentility of the 
drawing-room with some humours of humbler life, which in 
turn he refined with a little sprinkling of literature. 

At a later point in the Memoir Mr. Fitz- 
Gerald says : 

One of his favourite prose books was BoswelPs 'John- 
son ' ; of which he knew all the good things by heart, an 
inexhaustible store for a country dinner-table. And many 
will long remember him as he used to sit at table, his snuff- 
box in his hand, and a glass of genial wine before him, 
repeating some favourite passage, and glancing his fine 
brown eyes about him as he recited. 

In 1840, the people of Woodbridge were 
pleased to name a native boat after their 
illustrious compatriot. In his own words in 
a letter to a friend — 

Some of my townsmen . . . took it into their heads 
to name a schooner, built at this port, after their Wood- 
bridge poet. The parties were not literary people, or great 
readers or lovers of verse ; I am not sure that they ever 
read a page of mine. But I suppose they thought a poet 
creditable, some how or other, to a port ; and so they did me 
that honour, for which I am vastly their debtor. 

The letter is interrupted here to insert the 
lines " To the Bernard Barton Schooner," from 
which a quotation is made in its next sentence : 



4 o BERNARD BARTON 

Glide gently down thy native stream, 

And swell thy snowy sail 
Before fair April's morning beam, 

And newly waken'd gale. 

Thine onward course in safety keep, 

By favouring breezes fann'd, 
Along the billows of the deep 

To Mersey's distant strand. 

Thou bearest no such noble name 

As all who read may know; 
But one at least that well may claim 

The blessing I bestow. 

That name was given to honour me 

By those with whom I dwell ; 
And cold indeed my heart would be 

Did I not speed thee well. 

Not all the glory those acquire, 

Who far for glory roam, 
Can match the humble heart's desire 

For love fulfill'd at home. 

The letter goes on : 

The stanza 

Thou bear'st no proud or lofty name 
Which all who read must know, 1 
is no flight of voluntary humility on my part, but a simple 
record of a positive fact ; for the captain has told me he has 
been asked over and over again, up the Mersey, the Humber, 
the Severn, and I know not where else, what persoii or place 



i This difference in the wording of the stanza is to be accounted 
for by the fact, that when Miss Barton and Mr. Fitzgerald were 
preparing the poems for the volume of selections, they made such changes 
as seemed to them wise. The poet was no loser by their alterations- 
In every case where possible the quotations in these pages have been 
made from the amended versions. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 41 

his ship is named after ? and I fancy the poor fellow has 
been at some pains to convince inquirers that among my 
own folk I really pass for somebody. At any rate, his vessel 
was once put down in the shipping list, among the arrivals 
at some far-off port, as ' The Barney Burton' 

Writing earlier about the launch of the 
" Bernard Barton," the poet states that even 
if the offer had been made to him of a large 
vessel, he would have given ''his vote, most 
cordially, for the schooner 'B.B.' at Wood- 
bridge," adding, 

I have so decided a preference for humbler fame of 
home growth, awarded by folks that I have lived among for 
thirty-five years, and am linked to by numberless and name- 
less ties of neighbourly, social, and friendly syn» F . *hy. With 
these feelings thou wilt readily feel and understand that the 
B. B. is a bit of a pet with me, and I really believe I have as 
much interest in her well-doing as if I held a share in her. . . . 
Our ancestors, who used to be devout in their phraseology, 
even about business, had in their old printed bills of lading 
a phrase, now, I believe, gone out of fashion, and, after 
stating the cargo, and the time allowed for the voyage and 
delivery, the old finale ran thus— 'and so God speed the 
good ship, and send her safe to her desired port.' . . . 
I thought this evening, as I turned away from the quay, I 
could echo the old phrase very cordially. 

1 Barney Burton," a funny enough variant 
of the Quaker poet's name, was not the only 
misunderstanding of the kind; for, in 1822, one 
of his nieces wrote to tell him that some friends 
who recently had been to Paris had seen there 
a dramatic performance by English actors, one 
of whom was named Barton. During the 



42 BERNARD BARTON 

evening a member of the audience "called out 
to inquire if it was the Quaker Poet." 

"In earlier life," says Mr. FitzGerald, 
" Bernard Barton had been a fair pedestrian," 
and was in the habit of rambling easily about 
the Woodbridge country, "to the vale of 
Dedham, Constable's birth-place and painting- 
room ; or to the neighbouring sea-coast, loved 
for its own sake — and few could love the sea 
and the heaths beside it better than he did — 
but doubly dear to him for its association with 
the memory and poetry of Crabbe." Or he 
would stray to Playford to see his good friends 
Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Biddell — Playford, of 
which he sweetly sang : 

Upon a hill side green and fair 

The happy traveller sees 
White cottages creep here and there, 

Between the tufts of trees ; 
With a white farm-house on the brow, 
And an old grey Hall below, 

With moat and garden round ; 
And on a Sabbath wandering near, 
Through all the quiet place you hear 

A Sabbath-breathing sound 
Of the church-bell slowly swinging 

In an old grey tower above 
The wooded hill, where birds are singing 

In the deep quiet of the grove ; — 
And when the bell shall cease to ring, 
And the birds no longer sing, 
And the grasshopper is heard no more, 

A sound of praise, of prayer, 

Rises along the air, 
Like the sea murmur from a distant shore. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 43 

In order the more often to have the plea- 
sure of his company, Mr. Biddell lent Bernard 
Barton a horse, but the poet found walking 
more to his liking. These walks had a power- 
ful influence upon him, traceable in every line 
of his descriptive and personal verse. In 
Suffolk — wrote Mr. FitzGerald in a local paper, 
with the object of exciting such an interest 
among its readers as should cause a popular 
protest against the wholesale fellers of the 
county's trees — 

in Suffolk, there is nothing but cheerful home-scenery, 
as it is called, — scenery not grand and large, but bounded, 
peaceful, agreeable, and homely \ the scattered farmhouses, 
with their gables and tufted elms ; the neat, clean villages ; 
the walk through the trim cornfield or down the low meadow ; 
the hawthorn lane, rich in primroses, violets, wild roses, 
honeysuckle, briony, clematis, each in its season ; and in 
autumn, with the golden decay of the maple ; such beauties 
indeed as man has entirely under his hand, to make or mar, 
like a garden. 

And as one turns over the pages of the Quaker 
Poet's volumes, the mind's eye rests upon just 
such smiling scenes of peaceful life. 

In his later years, Bernard Barton walked 
abroad but rarely. To quote the Memoir again, 

He gradually got to dislike exercise very much, and no 
doubt greatly injured his health by its disuse. But it was 
not to be wondered at, that having spent the day in the 
uncongenial task of ' figure-work,' as he called it, he should 
covet his evenings for books, or verses, or social intercourse. 
It was very difficult to get him out even for a stroll in the 
garden after dinner, or along the banks of his favourite 



44 BERNARD BARTON 

Deben on a summer evening. He would, after going a 
little way, with much humorous grumbling at the useless 
fatigue he was put to endure, stop short of a sudden, and, 
sitting down in the long grass by the river-side, watch the 
tide run past, and the,well-known vessels gliding into har- 
bour, or dropping down to pursue their voyage under the 
stars at sea, until his companions, returning from their pro- 
longed walk, drew him to his feet again to saunter homeward 
far more willingly than he set forth, with the prospect of the 
easy chair, the book, and the cheerful supper before him. 

That when he did walk his eyes were not 
idle is amply proved by such poems — still 
favourites with Suffolk readers — as (to name 
no others) M The Valley of Fern," the Burstal 
sonnets, " Great Bealings Churchyard," and the 
descriptive stanzas in " Napoleon." With the 
lines "To the Deben " this chapter may fittingly 
be closed : 

No stately villas, on thy side, 
May be reflected in thy tide; 
No lawn-like parks, outstretching round, 
The willing loiterer's footsteps bound 
By woods, that cast their leafy shade, 
Or deer that start across the glade ; 
No ruin'd abbey, grey with years, 
Upon thy marge its pile uprears ; 
Nor crumbling castle, valour's hold, 
Recalls the feudal days of old. 

Nor dost thou need that such should be, 
To make thee, Deben, dear to me : 
Thou hast thy own befitting charms, 
Of quiet heath and fertile farms, 
With here and there a copse to fling 
Its welcome shade, where wild birds sing ; 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 45 

Thy meads, for flocks and herds to graze ; 
Thy quays and docks, where seamen raise 
Their anchor, and unfurl their sail 
To woo and win the favouring gale. 

And, above all, for me thou hast 
Endearing memories of the past ! 
Thy winding banks, with grass o'ergrown, 
By me these forty years well known, 
Where, eve or morn, 'tis sweet to rove, 
Have oft been trod by those I love; 
By those who, through life's by-gone hours, 
Have strew'd its thorny paths with flowers, 
And by thy influence made thy stream 
A grateful poet's favourite theme. 



46 BERNARD BARTON 



CHAPTER III. 

HOME LIFE. 

Penates ! in my partial eyes, 

Might I to idols bow, 
You, of all heathen deities, 

Should claim my grateful vow. 

The Naiades of the dark blue sea, 

The Dryads of the grove, 
However lovely these might be, 

Could never win my love. 

But you, beside the household hearth. 

Domestic worship shared ; 
And thoughts which owed to home their birth, 

Your social rites prepared. 

To the Penates. 

BERNARD BARTON'S home life was 
singularly placid and serene. When he 
and his daughter were alone together each 
other's company was all-sufficing ; when visi- 
tors called it was as though the family was 
increased by so many. Company manners 
and bustling ceremony were alike unknown. 
Among his guests it was admitted without 



* 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 47 

demur that there was no host like Bernard 
Barton. His rooms were small, his purse was 
small, but his heart was boundless. He was 
full of sunshine ; in Mr. FitzGerald's phrase, 
he was used whether at home or abroad to 
" radiate good humour around him." And 
when we remember this, and remember also 
how incomplete was the private life of many 
of his great poetical contemporaries, we are 
almost glad that Bernard Barton was denied 
the highest gift of song. It would not be sur- 
prising to find that in the sum of things the 
radiation of good humour in Woodbridge is of 
more import than the composition (say) of 
many "Queen Mabs." 

From the time of Bernard Barton's removal 
into the Bank house, when he was just entering 
his fifth decade, until his death, the even tenour 
of the way of father and daughter was hardly 
disturbed. "Amiable as Bernard Barton was in 
social life," says Mr. FitzGerald, "his amiability 
in this little tete-a-tete household of his was yet 
a fairer thing to behold ; so completely was all 
authority absorbed into confidence, and into 
love. 

' A constant flow of love, that knew no fall, 
Ne'er roughen'd by those cataracts and breaks 
That humour interposed too often makes,' 1 

but gliding on uninterruptedly for twenty years, 
until death concealed its current from all human *. 
witness." Their habits were of the simplest. 
By day there were duties of the ledger and 



1 From Cowper's lines on the receipt of his mother's picture. 






48 BERNARD BARTON 

domestic business to be performed ; but the 
evenings were emphatically their own. Then, 
when no friends looked in, one or the other 
would read aloud, from book, letter, or paper ; 
or Bernard Barton would retire early to his 
little study, there to dash off a gossiping epistle, 
or correct a proof, or make a copy of verses. 
When composing Bernard Barton was just 
such a poet as the untutored mind loves to 
think of — the rapid amanuensis of the gods ; 
for he had that spontaneous fluency which 
induces so much amazement and yields so 
much undistinguished matter. He had, says 
Mr. FitzGerald, 

a certain boyish impetuosity in pursuit of anything he had 
at heart, that age itself scarcely could subdue. Thus it was 
with his correspondence ; and thus it was with his poetry. 
He wrote always with great facility, almost unretarded by 
that worst labour of correction ; for he was not fastidious 
himself about exactness of thought or of harmony of 
numbers, and he could scarce comprehend why the public 
should be less easily satisfied. Or if he did labour — and 
labour he did at that time — still it was at task-work of a 
kind he liked. He loved poetry for its own sake, whether 
to read or to compose, and felt assured that he was employ- 
ing his own talent in the cause of virtue and religion, and 
the blameless affections of men. No doubt he also liked 
praise ; though not in any degree proportional to his eager- 
ness in publishing j but inversely, rather. Very vain men 
are seldom so careless in the production of that from which 
they expect their reward. And Barton soon seemed to 
forget one book in the preparation of another ; and in time 
to forget the contents of all, except a few pieces that arose 
more directly from his heart, and so naturally attached 
themselves to his memory. And there was in him one 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 49 

great sign of the absence of any inordinate vanity — the total 
want of envy. He was quite as anxious others should 
publish as himself; would never believe there could be too 
much poetry abroad; would scarce admit a fault in the 
verses of others, whether private friends or public authors, 
though after a while (as in his own case) his mind silently 
and unconsciously adopted only what was good in them. 

At one period of his life, when the century 
was in its tens and twenties, poetry was his 
sole hobby. Anyone who has flirted ever so 
lightly with literature must know how tyranni- 
cal a mistress she can become : claiming every 
spare moment of the day and grasping many of 
the hours which by right belong to sleep. Says 
Mr. FitzGerald— 

The preparation of a book was amusement and excite- 
ment to one who had little enough of it in the ordinary 
routine of daily life : treaties with publishers — arrangements 
of printing — correspondence with friends on the subject — 
and, when the little volume was at last afloat, watching it 
for a while somewhat as a boy watches a paper boat com- 
mitted to the sea. 

So whole-hearted a servant to literature did 
Mr. Barton grow to be that there was once a 
real danger that his eagerness to compose 
would bring upon him a serious illness 1 ; but 
in course of time he sobered down and took 
fewer and fewer liberties with his health. 
Before the year 1830, much of the writing 
fever had abated, and after that we find him 
devoting many more evenings to reading, hos- 
pitality, and conversation. 



1 See pages 43 and 90. 



So BERNARD BARTON 

In some such words as these would Bernard 
Barton invite his friends to drop in : 

My fireside friend, the moon to-night, 

Moore says, is near the full ; 
My ingle-nook is warm and bright, 

If I be cold and dull. 

But, that I may resemble it, 

I need a guest like thee 
Beside its cheerful blaze to sit 

And share its warmth with me. 

Iron sharpens iron — the kindling touch 
Of steel strikes fire from stone ; 

That friend for friend can do as much 
We both of us have known. 

Then come, and let us try once more, 

On topics grave or gay, 
How converse, or the muse's lore, 

Can wile an hour away. 

Let us suppose that the invitation is ad- 
dressed to us. At the door our host greets us 
heartily with a warm hand-shake that does not 
loosen until he has drawn us well within his 
walls : a man of middle height, with a fine, 
open face, eminently genial ; gentle, luminous 
brown eyes, kindling as he talks ; brown hair, 
and a rich, clear voice of singular pleasantness 
of tone. He is clean-shaven, and dressed in 
dark clothes of prim cut surmounted by a white 
stock. He takes his own chair — one with 
spreading arms that welcome their owner 
as he welcomes us. We sit on the other 
side of the hearth. The conversation, en- 
livened with anecdote, touches rustic humours, 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 51 

the last new book from London, Woodbridge 
gossip, the letter just received from a distant 
correspondent. 

This letter has to be picked with some 
difficulty from the heap of envelopes which 
crowd his pockets ; for Mr. Barton had a 
way of thrusting his letters as soon as read 
into his coat, either with the idea of re-perusal 
in odd moments, or of displaying them to those 
of his acquaintances likely to be interested in 
their contents. He was always masculinely 
averse to any winnowing process, and con- 
sequently his pockets often bulged like a 
gamekeeper's, until his daughter resolutely 
set about making a thorough clearance. 
When at last rescued from his coat, most of 
the envelopes bore a circular stain, for at his 
afternoon tea, Mr. Barton would drink from 
the saucer, placing the cup the while upon 
some letter extracted for that purpose. But 
Charles Lamb's communications were never 
thus employed. 

To return to our fireside entertainment : 
after the conversation has ranged over a variety 
of subjects, our host will perhaps suggest a 
chapter from the new Scott. Those who were 
privileged to hear him, say that Bernard Barton 
was always a delightful reader, but never so 
much so as when he came to a passage in the 
Scottish tongue. His musical voice readily 
assumed the soft northern burr, an accomplish- 
ment learned by him from his friend Mrs. 
Finnie, a Scotch lady. So apt a pupil was 
Bernard Barton that Mrs. Finnie expressed 

4A 



52 BERNARD BARTON 

amazement at the accuracy of his pronunciation 
and intonation. Scott was his favourite author 
to the very end. Mr. FitzGerald tells us how- 
he went through the best of the Waverleys 
with Mr. Barton at regular Saturday sittings, 
varied occasionally by poems of Tennyson, who 
was then comparatively unknown to the world 
at large, although holding as high a place in his 
friend's opinion as ever he did. Of these Scott 
evenings Mr. FitzGerald has left a pleasant 
account : 

Then [says he] was the volume taken down impa- 
tiently from the shelf almost before tea was over; and at 
last, when the room was clear, candles snuffed, and fire 
stirred, he would read out, or listen to, those fine stories, 
anticipating with a glance, or an impatient ejaculation of 
pleasure, the good things he knew were coming — which he 
liked all the better for knowing they were coming — relishing 
them afresh in the fresh enjoyment of his companion, to 
whom they were less familiar. 

The humorous parts, adds his co-reader, 
he relished most : " Baillie Nicol Jarvie's 
dilemma at Glennaquoich, rather than Fergus 
Mclvor's trial ; and Oldbuck and his sister 
Grizel, rather than the Scenes at the Fisher- 
man's Cottage. Indeed," he continues, "many, 
I daresay, of those who only know Barton by 
his poetry, will be surprised to hear how much 
humour he had in himself, and how much he 
relished it in others. Especially, perhaps, in 
later life, when men have commonly had quite 
enough of 'domestic tragedy,' and are glad to. 
laugh when they can." Scott, as has been said, 
was his favourite author to the very end ; it 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 53 

was only three days before his death that he 
finished The Heart of Midlothian. 

But although Sir Walter held the throne, 
other writers came very near it, as we are able 
to see when the reading is over and our host 
invites us to look at his shelves. '" A man is 
known by his books," says the sage. Bernard 
Barton's pets give us his temperament in a 
moment. There are volumes here of all kinds : 
presentation copies, minor verse, and so on ; 
but if you want that insight into a man's mind 
which is imparted by his library, it is useless 
to seek among the bright bindings and smooth 
backs. Look rather at the faded colours, the 
broken backs, the thumbed pages, which be- 
token continual usage. Here we find Words- 
worth, affectionately called the " Daddy " in 
Bernard Barton's circle, and Cowper, and 
Crabbe, and Burns. Here also are Lamb, 
and Gilbert White, and Izaak Walton, and 
Goldsmith, and Evelyn, and John Bunyan, and 
Boswell. Robinson Crusoe is here, and here too 
are Carlyle's Miscellanies and Past and Present, 
and Lockhart's Scott, and one or two of the earlier 
Dickens'. Bernard Barton had few religious 
books — he preferred to read his Bible in the 
text rather than the commentary, by the light 
only of the Light within it 1 — but there were some 

I Bernard Barton wrote : 

Word of the Ever-living God ! 

Will of His glorious Son ! 
Without Thee how could earth be trod ? 

Or heaven itself be won? 
Yet to unfold Thy hidden worth, 

Thy mysteries to reveal, 
That Spirit which first gave thee forth 

Thy volume must Unseal! 



54 BERNARD BARTON 

of the old Quaker writers of whom he never tired ; 
notably John Woolman, and the quaint John 
Rutty, M.D., that self-tortured diarist who so 
persistently "feasted beyond holy bounds," and 
so penitently chronicled the backsliding. 

Bernard Barton was a wise as well as a 
copious reader. His tastes, as we have seen, 
lay among familiar rather than majestic litera- 
ture, but they were concerned only with the 
best. The critical faculty was sound within 
him, and he never committed that common 
error of allowing the nearest object to loom too 
large. His sonnet to Elia 1 , and the following 
poems, are notable for just criticism. These 
lines are entitled " Izaak Walton" : 

Cheerful old man ! whose pleasant hours were spent 
Where Lea's still waters through their sedges glide ; 

Or on the fairer banks of peaceful Trent, 

Or Dove hemm'd in by rocks on either side : 

Thy book is redolent of fields and flowers, 

Of freshly-flowing streams and honeysuckle bowers. 

Although I reck not of the rod and line, 
Thou needest no such brotherhood to give 

Charm to thy artless pages — they shall shine, 
And thou depicted in them, long shall live 

For many a one to whom thy craft may be 

A thing unknown, ev'n as it is to me. 

Thy love of nature, quiet contemplation, 

In meadows where the world was left behind ; 

Still seeking with a blameless recreation 
In troubled times to keep a quiet mind ; 

This, with thy simple utterance, imparts 

A pleasure ever new to musing hearts. 

i See page 82. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 55 

And thou hast deeper feelings to revere, 
Drawn from a fountain even more divine, 

That blend thine own with memories as dear, 

With names our hearts with gratitude enshrine ; — 

Holy George Herbert, Wotton, Ken, and Donne, 

The pious Hooker, Cranmer, Sanderson. 

And this is a sonnet on " Selborne," Gilbert 
White's village : 

That quiet vale ! it greets my vision now, 
As when we saw it, one autumnal day, 
A cloudless sun brightening each feathery spray 

Of woods that clothed the Hanger to its brow : 

Woods, whose luxuriance hardly might allow 
A peep at that small hamlet, as it lay, 
Bosom'd in orchard-plots and gardens gay, 

With here and there a field, perchance, to plough. 

Delightful valley ! still I own thy claim ; 

As when I gave thee one last lingering look, 
And felt thou wast indeed a fitting nook 

For him to dwell in, whose undying name 

Has unto thee bequeath 'd its humble fame, 
Pure, and imperishable — like his book ! 

But even a better test of Bernard Barton's 
discrimination and sense of proportion is his 
attitude towards his own poetry : 
I frankly own 
Myself no lofty poet, 

he wrote when at the zenith of his popularity, 
and in 1844 these words occur in a letter to a 
publisher : 

I think it grows time for me to make my bow and retire 
from the vain and unprofitable vocation. No man can go 
on scribbling verse for ever, and not weary out his readers or 
himself. I begin to feel somewhat of the latter symptoms ; I 
think it very likely my readers may have gotten the start of me. 



56 BERNARD BARTON 

That Bernard Barton's taste in art was 
equally sound, we shall soon have occasion to 
see ; for after we have sufficiently handled his 
books, our host suggests a tour of the walls 
while supper is preparing, himself holding the 
lamp before each dear possession as we pause 
to admire. B.B. (as he was called among his 
friends) was rich in pictures. 

" With little practical knowledge," says Mr. 
FitzGerald, 

he was very fond of them, especially such as represented 
scenery familiar to him — the shady lane, the heath, the 
corn-field, the village, the sea-shore. And he loved, after 
coming away from the Bank, to sit in his room and watch 
the twilight steal over his landscapes as over the real face 
of nature, and then lit up again by fire or candle light. 

It is thus that we see them now. There 
are, first and foremost, the portrait of his father, 
described in full in a later chapter, and the 
dearly loved sketches of Ive-Gill, the ancestral 
home, and of the old Woodbridge house of his 
wife's mother. Then there are a farm scene, by 
Constable, inhis earlierand more subdued manner 
— a very beautiful work ; an Old Crome, a master- 
piece of this great painter, depicting a rain-cloud 
bursting over a peaceful mere at evening, full 
of that peculiar mellow softness which is now 
associated with the name of Corot ; a sketch of 
Norwich market-place on a busy market day, 
by Cotman, in the early style of water-colour ; 
and a portrait of Stothard, by Northcote. 
Bernard Barton had another Northcote, which 
he "opined to be by Opie," a tiny sketch of a 
villainous head, called by the dealer " The 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 57 

Poacher," by Mr. FitzGerald, who gave it to 
the poet, " Bill Sykes," and by Bernard Barton 
himself " Peter Bell." Also we see many 
paintings of Woodbndge, by Tom Churchyard, 
of whom more will be found later, and Perry 
Nursey, a Suffolk artist, "in whose sketches," 
said Mr. FitzGerald, " there is as genuine a 
feeling of Nature as in Rubens' and Claude's ; " 
a gipsy fortune-teller, with a beautiful English 
face — a veritable Romney ; a small group by 
Lancret ; Lamb's coloured print, in the frame 
patched up by himself and Tom Hood 1 ; a 
replica by Frost, of Ipswich, of a pastoral scene 
by Gainsborough ; one or two water-colours, 
copies of pictures at Boulge, by Edward Fitz- 
Gerald ; and an exquisite Madonna and Child, 
after Raphael, painted on china by a master 
hand. 2 

Many of these pictures were stationary and 
as much a part of the house as himself, but 

1 See page 103. 

2 The gift of Mary Frances FitzGerald. B.B. wrote some stanzas 
suggested by the picture, of which these are the first two : 

I may not change the simple faith, 

In which from childhood I was bred ; 
Nor could I, without scorn, or scathe, 

The living seek among the dead ; 
My soul has far too deeply fed 

On what no painting can express, 
To bend the knee, or bow the head, 

To aught of pictured loveliness. 

And yet, Madonna! when I gaze 

On charms unearthly, such as thine ; 
Or glances yet more reverent raise 

Unto that infant, so Divine ! 
I marvel not that many a shrine 

Hath been, and still is reared to thee, 
Where mingled feelings might combine 

To bow the head and bend the knee. 



$8 BERNARD BARTON 

Mr. Barton was continually picking up some 
clever or attractive sketch, keeping it awhile, 
and then giving it away or exchanging it for 
another. Mr. FitzGerald gives this account of 
his friend's method of acquiring treasures : 

Nor could any itineiant picture-dealer pass Mr. Barton's 
door without calling to tempt him to a new purchase. And 
then was B.B. to be seen, just come up from the Bank, with 
broad-brim and spectacles on, examining some picture set 
before him on a chair in the most advantageous light ; the 
dealer recommending, and Barton wavering, until partly by 
money, and partly by exchange of some older favourites, with 
perhaps a snuff-box thrown in to turn the scale, a bargain 
was concluded— generally to B.B.'s great disadvantage and 
great content. 

Then friends were called in to admire ; and letters 
written to describe ; and the picture taken up to his bedroom 
to be seen by candle light on going to bed, and by the 
morning sun on awaking ; then hung up in the best place in 
the best room ; till in time perhaps it was itself exchanged 
away for some newer favourite. 

So much for Bernard Barton as host and 
connoisseur. When need came he could be 
sympathising friend and adviser too ; and many 
were the anxious ones who went to the Quaker 
Poet for an encouraging word or a ray of light 
to illumine their darkness. As the writer of a 
memorial notice in a Suffolk paper expressed it — 

However the rebound of native and long-nourished 
humour in the hours of release from worldly business would 
gladden his accustomed associates, or astonish stranger 
visitants, the joke and cheerful tale were not his sole 
accomplishments, nor the stores of even the richest fanci- 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 59 

ful literature the only spring whence his feelings sought 
refreshment. Some who were used to commune with him 
in single fellowship, and without the ministration of any 
written records, know that he was fully able to appreciate 
and to yield instruction from the deep hidden sources of 
pious meditation. 

How delicately and tenderly he could proffer 
sympathy is testified by such poems as " To 
a Friend, on the Death of Her Father" and 
"To a Friend in Distress." 1 

1 Quoted on page 178. 



6o BERNARD BARTON 



CHAPTER IV. 

EARLY FRIENDS. 

Thus fares it with the human mind, 
Which Heaven has seem'd to bless 

With a capacity to find 
In friendship happiness : — 

Its earliest and its brightest years 

Predict no pangs, forebode no fears ; 
No doubts awake distress : 

Within it finds a cloudless sun, 

Without, a friend in every one. 

On the Alienation of Friends in the Prime of Life. 

IN dealing with Bernard Barton's friends it 
has been found necessary to divide them 
into more or less elastic groups. That they 
have been parcelled into companies labelled 
" Early Friends," " More Friends," and 
44 Friends of Later Days," is for the sake of 
convenience only, for many of them overlapped 
the period in which they are placed, and occa- 
sionally there is one — Thomas Hurd, for 
example — who might with equal propriety 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 61 

figure in any of the three chapters. Again, 
Bernard Barton's sisters died only a few years 
before himself, whereas his brother survived 
him, but it was thought best that they should 
be placed first on the roll of his friendships by 
virtue of their nearness to him. And in every 
other case some similarly cogent reason has 
determined the position of friends of long 
standing. 

As we have seen, Bernard Barton had two 
sisters and one half-brother. The sisters were 
Maria, said to be very like him in the face, and 
Eliza, both being his senior ; the brother, John, 
was younger by nearly ten years. Maria on 
her marriage became Maria Hack, under which 
name she issued numerous instructive books 
for children, which at the beginning of the 
century were found in every Quaker school- 
room. When Bernard was a child he was 
much in the company of this sister, who was 
both his playmate and teacher; "a sort of 
oracle to me," he says. And writing elsewhere 
he calls her " Almost the first human being I 
remember to have fondly loved, or been fondly 
loved by. " Bernard Barton dedicated to his 
sister Maria his first important volume — the 
Poems of 1820. She died in 1844, at the age 
of sixty-six. 

Eliza Barton, the other sister, never mar- 
ried. Bernard alludes to her in a letter to Mrs. 
Shawe, written in 1837, as a " discreet, sedate, 
and deliberate spinster of sixty and more, with a 
head as white as snow," and again in the same 
communication, as " my dear, good, orderly 



62 BERNARD BARTON 

old maiden sister." She lived a quiet, helpful 
life, and was a devoted daughter to her step- 
mother. Bernard addressed to this sister the 
charming dedication of the minor verse in the 
A T apoleon volume of 1822 : 

I would not, love ! prefix a name like thine 

To verse that dwelt on ills which flow from strife : 
That name is one Affection would entwine 
Among those lovelier things that sweeten life. 

But these, with feelings of fraternal love, 

And with an author's mingled hopes and fears, 

These I to Thee would offer. — May they prove 
Dear to thy heart for ' days of other years ' ! * 

Of John Barton, who lived at Stoughton, 
near Chichester, whither Bernard gladly went 
as often as could be, Mr. FitzGerald wrote in 
one of his letters to Bernard — 

I should much like to see your Platonic Brother. By 
your account he must have a very perfect mental organi- 
sation : or, phrenologically speaking, he must be fully and 

1 Eliza Barton was by way of being a versifier herself, as the 
following stanzas, written in reply to a request for a poem from her 
niece, go to show : 

' An original poem \ ' Fie on it, my love, 

How on such a request couldst thou stumble ? 
And what didst thou think would the consequence prove, 
But to set my poor brains in a jumble J 

Consider, I'm not like thy Father, whose Muse 

Is so kind he has only to beckon, 
And whatever the theme which his Hardship may choose, 

On her aid he securely may reckon. 

But for me, 'twould of labour and pains be a waste 

To ransack for rhymes my invention ; 
And the Muse, while I strove to display my fine taste, 

Would laugh at my empty pretention. 

Then believe me, my Lucy, I love thee no less, 

Though I take my own method to shew it : 
And in plain simple prose my good wishes express, 

An affectionate Aunt, but no Poet. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 63 

equally furnished with the bumps of ideality and causality : 
which, as Bacon would say, are the two extreme poles on 
which the perfect ' sound and roundabout ' intellect is 
balanced. A great deficiency of the causality bump causes 
me to break short in a long discussion which I meant to 
have favoured you with on this subject. I hope to meet 
your Brother one of these days : and to learn much from him. 

Several of Bernard's poems are addressed 
to John Barton, and A Widows Tale (1827) 
was affectionately inscribed to him with this 
quatrain : 

Thou bear'st our father's name ; in thee 

His worth and talents live ; 
Canst thou need more — to claim from me 
The little I can give ? 

One of Bernard Barton's earliest Wood- 
bridge friends was William Hamilton Finnie, 
who was for many years barrack-master in the 
town. At one time the two men were almost 
inseparable. At this late day it is difficult to get 
personal facts about Mr. Finnie, but there can 
be no doubt that he was a notably good man. 
In the footnote added to " Stanzas composed 
wmile walking on the Warren Hill," within 
sight of Mr. Finnie's grave, Bernard Barton 
describes him as "a man no less respected for 
the uprightness of his character than beloved for 
his social qualifications " ; and in the lines that 
follow the poet thus addresses his dead friend : 

Silent and sad is the place of thy rest, 

Where thou sleep'st the last slumber decreed thee ; 
But well I remember, when warm was that breast, 

How few in gay mirth could exceed thee. 



64 BERNARD BARTON 

Thine was not the laughter which leaves us more sad ; 

Unnatural, unheeded, unglowing ; 
Twas a gush of enjoyment, which seem'd to be glad 

To get loose from a heart overflowing. 

****** 

Thy sterling integrity, candour, and sense, 
Thy benevolence, frank and warm-hearted, 

Which sham'd the professions of empty pretence : 
These live, though thy life has departed. 

It was the same dead friend that inspired 
the beautiful poem "The Solitary Tomb" : 
Not a leaf of the poplar above me stirr'd, 
Though it stir with a breath so lightly ; 
Not a farewell note sang the sweet singing bird 
To the sun that was setting brightly. 

I stood alone on the quiet hill, 

The quiet vale before me ; 
And the spirit of nature serene and still 

Gather'd around and o'er me. 

Afar was the Deben, whose briny flood 
By its winding banks was sweeping ; 

And under the hill-side where I stood 
The dead in their graves were sleeping. 

Quiet and lovely their resting-place seem'd, 

Where trouble could never enter ; 
And sweetly the rays of sunset beam'd 

On the lonely tomb in its centre. 

When at morn or eve I have wander'd here, 
And in many moods have view'd it, 

With many a form to memory dear 
My fancy has endued it. 

Now it has looked like a lonely sail 
Far away on the deep green billow ; 

And now like a lamb in the grassy vale, 
Asleep on its verdant pillow. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 65 

He that lies under was on the seas 

In his youth a fearless ranger ; 
Borne on the billow, and blown by the breeze, 

Little cared he for danger. 

And yet through peril and toil he kept 

The freshness of gentlest feeling ; 
Never a tear has woman wept 

A tenderer heart revealing. 

But here he sleeps — and many there are 
Who love his lone tomb and revere it ; 

And one who, like yon evening star, 
Far away, yet is ever near it. 

The solitary tomb has now only too many 
companions, and is itself razed to the ground and 
almost undecipherable. The barracks exist no 
longer, nothing but some farm buildings mark- 
ing their place ; but in Mr. Finnie's day, in 
1 8 14, they were probably the focus of the town. 
Old men are still living who can recall some- 
thing of the fever of those stirring times, when 
a cyclone of fear and excited suspense swept 
over the southern and eastern coasts of Eng- 
land. One ancient Woodbridge inhabitant dis- 
tinctly remembers being awakened at dead of 
night by a clattering of hoofs in the road 
mingled with the sound of shouts and hurrying 
feet. "The French have landed at Hollesley 
bay ! Boney is marching on Woodbridge " ! 
so the neighbours cried as they shivered 
with cold and fright. And then on the sum- 
mit of Warren Hill a bugle called, and a few 
minutes later down came the regiment with 
a fine show of courage, and away through the 

5 



66 BERNARD BARTON 

echoing streets they galloped, calling lights to 
the windows as by magic and striking fire 
in many a young heart. It was only a test 
alarm arranged by the Army authorities, and 
before morning the men were in quarters again ; 
but for an hour or so Woodbridge had felt the 
true martial glow, the never to be wholly stifled 
joy of the invitation to the fray. 

In the early twenties Mr. Barton carried on 
a copious correspondence with the Rev. Charles 
Benjamin Tayler, the curate of Hadleigh, who 
was then, and who continued to be until a few 
years ago, a prolific writer of devotional and 
didactic books, the best known of which was a 
collection of stories entitled May You Like I/, 
which was rather popular in its day. In Bernard 
Barton's criticism of this work we get another 
glimpse of his sunny temperament, his inveterate 
preference for the genial and unsullied side of 
life. In his letter to the author he entreats him 
to write other stories " where the appeals to 
one's feelings are less frequent — I mean one's 
sympathetic feelings with suffering virtue — and 
the more pleasurable emotions called forth of 
the spectacle of quiet, unobtrusive, domestic 
happiness more dwelt on." As a pendant to 
the above critical suggestion comes a sly hit at 
his friend's literary bent towards guilt and grief, 
when on Mr. Tayler's long neglect to answer a 
letter, B.B. proposes "to rob him on the high- 
way, in hopes of recovering an interest by crime 
which he supposed everyday good conduct had 
lost." At another time he writes thus sturdily 
and sensibly concerning Poetic Vigils — 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 67 

As to its Quakerism, I meant it should be Quakerish. I 
hope to grow more so in my next — else, why am I a Quaker ? 
My love to the whole visible, ay, and the whole invisible 
church of Christ, is not lessened by increased affection to 
the little niche of it in which I may happen to be planted. 
The bird would not mourn the less the fall of the tree which 
held its nest, because in that nest was found the first and 
primary source of its own little hopes and fears. How 
absurdly some people think and reason about Sectarianism ! 
In its purer and better element it is no bad thing — not a 
bit worse than patriotism, which need never damp the most 
generous and enlarged philanthropy. When I no longer 
love thee, dear Charles, because thou art a Churchman, I 
will begin to think my Quakerism is degenerating. 

Here is a letter in a different key. Mr. 
Tayler, it seems, had asked his friend to recom- 
mend a Quaker cook, and Bernard Barton 
replies : 

But what, my dear friend, could put it into thy head to 
think of a Quaker cook, of all nondescripts ? Charles Lamb 
would have told thee better : he says he never could have 
relished even the salads Eve dressed for the angels in Eden 
— his appetite is too highly excited ' to sit a guest with 
Daniel at his pulse.' Go to ! thou art a wag, Charles ; and 
this is only a sly way of hinting that we are fond of good 
living. But perhaps, after all, more of compliment than of 
inuendo is implied in the proposition. Thou thoughtest 
we were civil, cleanly, guiet, &c., all excellent qualities, 
doubtless, in women of all kinds, cooks not excluded. But, 
my dear friend, I should be sorry the reputation of our 
sect, for the possession of these qualities, should be exposed 
to the contingent vexations which culinary mortals are 
especially exposed to. ' A cook whilst cooking is a sort of 
fury,' says the old poet. Ay ! but not a Quaker cook — at 
least, in the favourable and friendly opinion of Adine and 

5 A 



68 BERNARD BARTON 

thyself : we are very proud of that good opinion, and I would 
not risk its forfeiture by sending one of our sisterhood to 
thee as cook. Suppose an avalanche of soot to plump down 
the chimney the first gala day — 'twould be Cookship versus 
Quakership whether the poor body kept her sectarian 
serenity unruffled ; and suppose the beam kicked the wrong 
way, what would become of all our reputation in the tem- 
porary good opinion of Adine and thee ? 

In 1825 B.B. sends to Mr. Tayler the follow- 
ing account (which could only have been written 
by a man bountifully blessed with humour) of 
one of the most embarrassing interviews that 
any poet ever can have undergone : 

I met with a comical adventure the other day, which 
partly amused, partly piqued me. We had a religious visit 
paid to our little meeting here by a minister of our Society, 
an entire stranger, I believe, to every one in the meeting. 
He gave us some very plain, honest counsel. After meeting, 
as is usual, several, indeed most, Friends stopped to shake 
hands with our visitor, I among the rest ; and on my name 
being mentioned to him, rather officiously, I thought, by 
one standing by, the good old man said, ' Barton ? — 
Barton ? — that's a name I don't recollect.' I told him it 
would be rather strange if he did, as we had never seen each 
other before. Suddenly, when, to my no small gratification, 
no one was attending to us, he looked rather inquiringly 
at me and added, ' What, art thou the Versifying Man ? ' 
On my replying with a gravity which I really think was 
heroic, that I was called such, he looked at me again, I 
thought 'more in sorrow than in anger,' and observed, 
' Ah ! that's a thing quite out of my way.' It was on the 
tip of my tongue to reply, ' I dare say it is,' — but, afraid 
that I could not control my risible faculties much longer, 
I shook my worthy friend once more by the hand, and bid- 
ding him farewell, left him. I dare say the good soul may 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 69 

have since thought of me, if at all, with much the same 
feelings as if I had been bitten by a mad dog — and I know 
not but that he may be very right. 

One more letter to Mr. Tayler, and then that 
estimable gentleman must pass from our pages. 
In 1824, a very precious gift came to Bernard 
Barton through the kindness of his friend Mrs. 
Sutton — nothing less than a portrait of his 
father. Mrs. Sutton had heard that such a 
portrait was in existence, and had persuaded 
Bernard's cousins at Carlisle to give it up. 
This they readily agreed to do, on the condition 
that the poet should send them a likeness of 
himself. The exchange was made, and the 
delight of the recipient of the oil picture was 
almost boundless. He writes to Mr. Tayler — 

My head and heart are full, even to overflowing : my 
eyes are almost dim with gazing at one object, yet are still 
unsatisfied. I keep thinking of one thing all day, stealing 
to feast my eyes on it when I can, and lie down to dream of 
it o' nights. 

Then he describes the portrait : 

My dear pater is seated at a round table, his elbow 
resting on it, and his right hand as if partly supporting his 
head ; the little finger folded down, the two fore ones 
extended up to his temple. Before him is a sheet of paper 
headed ' Abstract of Locke ; the chapter on Perception,' 
and the first volume of Locke, open, is on his left hand, on 
his knee. His countenance is full of thought, yet equally 
full of sweetness. What an ugly fellow I am compared to 
him ! A little further on the table is a German flute, and a 
piece of Handel's music, open, leaning against Akenside's 
1 Pleasures of Imagination.' A larger volume also lies on the 
table, lettered 'Kenrick's Dictionary.' . . . In the corner, 
just below the table, stands a globe. On the bookshelves 



70 BERNARD BARTON 

behind him are, first, a volume . . . 'on Euclid,' then, 
I think, 'Simpson's Algebra,' 'Fitzosborne's Letters,' another 
book lettered, I think, 'Verulam,' 'Fordyce,' £ Pope's Works/ 
f Dictionary of Arts and Sciences,' two or three volumes. 
His dress is a suit of so red a brown as almost 
to approach to crimson ; his hair turned back from a fine 
clear forehead, with a curl over each ear, and tied in a sort 
of club behind : the ruffles at his wrists, as well as a frill, to 
say nothing of the flute, show that he had not then joined 
the Quakers. . . . His countenance is all I could wish 
it — (delicately fair, which I had always heard, and rather 
small features) — in the bloom of youth, yet thoughtful — to vie 
full of intellect and benignity. Oh, how proud I am of him ! 
The picture, now in the possession of the 
family, inspired numerous other letters ; and its 
receipt was also the occasion of the following little 
reciprocative poem addressed to the cousins at 
Carlisle : 

My courteous Cousins ! you have won, 
Both from the Poet and the Son, 

Thanks publicly recorded J 
And could I hope my lay might give 
Your praise in deathless verse to live, 

You should be well rewarded. 
But see how hopeless is my case ! 
Cowper, with all a Poet's grace, 

And all a son's affection, 
Has so pre-occupied the ground, 
That my poor verse, by his, were found 

Unworthy of inspection. 
When I peruse the page, whose fame 
Enshrines his Cousin Bodham's name, 

It chills my emulation : 
To rival it I could not hope ; 
And who, where feeling should have scope, 
Could stoop to imitation? 



AND HIS FRIENDS 71 

Themes which comparisons invite 
Put minor Bards in doleful plight ; 

'Tis policy to shun them : 
Then let warm thanks, in one brief line, 
Content a grateful heart like mine, 
And yours, who well have won them. 
In Mr, Tayler's parish of Hadleigh dwelt the 
erudite Dr. Nathan Drake (1766- 1836), who was 
the author of a large number of essays, tales, and 
verses, and as amiable a man as one could wish 
to meet. Dr. Drake, indeed, belonged to that 
company of genial literary physicians which 
includes the names of Oliver Wendell Holmes 
and John Brown. Bernard Barton addressed 
to him the following sonnet suggested by the 
title of one of his books : 

' Mornings in Spring ! ' — Oh ! happy thou, indeed, 
Thus with the glow of sunset to combine 
Day's earlier brightness, and in life's decline 
To send thought, feeling, fancy back to feed 
In youth's fresh pastures, from the emerald mead 
To cull Spring flowers with Autumn fruits to twine ; 
And borrow from past harmonies benign 
Strains sweeter far than of the pastoral reed. 

Not such the lot of him who, ere his sun 

Have passed its Summer solstice, feels the bloom 
Of June o'ershadow'd by December gloom ; 
Thankful if, when life's stormy race be run, 
The humble hope that his day's work is done 
May cheer the shadowy entrance to the tomb. 

Another clerical friend was the Rev. John 
Mitford, of Benhall, a scholar, a wit, and a 
poet, who afterwards became editor of The 
Gentleman *s Magazine. Here is one of Mr. 
Mitford's invitations to Bernard Barton : 



72 BERNARD BARTON 

Benhall, 1820. 
My dear Poet, 

We got your note to-day. We are at home and 
shall be glad to see you, but hope you will not swim here ; 
in other words, we think it better that you should wait till 
we can seat you under a chestnut and listen to your oracular 
sayings. We hope that, like your sister of the woods, you 
are in full song ; she does not print, I think ; we hope you 
do ; seeing that you beat her in sense, though she has a little 
the advantage in melody. Together you will make a pretty 
duet in our groves. You have both your defects ; she devours 
glow-worms, you take snuff ; she is in a great hurry to go 
away, and you are prodigious slow in arriving ; she sings at 
night, when nobody can hear her, and you write for Acker- 
mann, which nobody thinks of reading. In spite of all this, 
you will get a hundred a year from the King, and settle at 
Woodbridge ; in another month, she will find no more flies, 
and set off for Egypt. 

Truly yours, 

J. M. 

How thoroughly the poet enjoyed his visits 
to Benhall may be learned from the following 
stanzas composed in Mr. Mitford's library : 

O ! I methinks could dwell content 

A spell-bound captive here ; 
And find, in such imprisonment, 

Each fleeting moment dear; — 
Dear, not to outward sense alone, 
But thought's most elevated tone. 

The song of birds, the hum of bees, 

Their sweetest music make ; 
The March winds, through the lofty trees, 

Their wilder strains awake; 
Or from the broad magnolia leaves 
A gentler gale its spirit heaves. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 73 

Nor less the eye enraptur'd roves 

O'er turf of freshest green, 
O'er bursting flowers, and budding groves, 

And sky of changeful mien, 
Where sunny glimpses, bright and blue, 
The fleecy clouds are peeping through. 

Thus sooth'd, in every passing mood, 

How sweet each gifted page, 
Rich with the mind's ambrosial food, 

The Muses' brighter age ! 
How sweet, communion here to hold 
With them, the mighty Bards of old ! 

With them — whose master spirits yet 

In deathless numbers dwell, 
Whose works defy us to forget 

Their still-surviving spell ; — 
That spell, which lingers in a name, 
Whose every echo whispers Fame! 

Could aught enhance such hours of bliss, 

It were in converse known 
With him who boasts a scene like this, 

An Eden of his own ; 
Whose taste and talent gave it birth, 
And well can estimate its worth. 

It was Mr. Mitford who sent to a Wood- 
bridge bookseller for a copy of Shelley's " Pro- 
metheus Unbound," and received the answer 
that no copy of " Prometheus " in sheets could 
be obtained ; a misconception which Bernard 
Barton promptly forwarded to London, to 
Charles Lamb's great content. 



74 BERNARD BARTON 



CHAPTER V. 

CHARLES LAMB AND QUAKERISM. 

If genuine love of freedom, testified 

Alike by words and deeds ; if sterling sense, 

Pure taste directed by intelligence, 
And candidly to liberal arts applied ; 
If with such high acquirements, be allied 

A heart replete with true benevolence ; 

Who will assert I have not just pretence 
To call their owner ' Friend,' with honest pride ? 

Sonnet. 

AT the present day it is probable that those 
few persons (outside the Society of Friends) 
who know anything of Bernard Barton, know 
him only by reason of his association with 
Charles Lamb. The two men first met in 
1822, when the Quaker Poet was in his thirty- 
ninth year, and Elia in his forty-eighth, and 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 75 

their friendship, carried on almost exclusively 
by letter, was continued during the next decade. 
Where and when they met is not quite clear. 
According to Canon Ainger it was at one of the 
contributors' dinners given by the proprietors 
of the London Magazine, but other authorities 
think that the intercourse began in writing. 
At their first meeting, says Canon Ainger, 
" Lamb had spoken playfully of the inconsis- 
tency of a Member of the Society of Friends 
writing poetry, and out of a friendly remon- 
strance in reply there arose a correspondence, 
long carried on with the greatest satisfaction to 
both." This certainly is commonly accepted 
as the origin of the correspondence, but in 
Lamb's first letter, dated September nth, 1822, 
he says : "I am, like you, a prisoner at the 
desk," an elementary confession which it is hard 
to believe would not have been stated once for 
all in the preceding conversation, especially 
when one speaker was a man of Bernard 
Barton's frankness. It is however a trifling 
matter, hardly meriting inquiry. The impor- 
tant thing to notice is, that even had he done 
nothing else, Bernard Barton, by thus stimu- 
lating one of England's rarest minds to the 
production of so much good sense, and good 
fun, and good literature, would have earned the 
gratitude of posterity. 

Leaving aside the manner of their acquaint- 
ance, there remains a good story (told also, it 
must be admitted, of other men than Bernard 
Barton) of B.B.'s first visit to Elia at the India 
Office. Lamb being minute of stature was used 



76 BERNARD BARTON 

when at his desk work to sit upon a very high 
stool. There was he perched when Mr. Barton 
was announced. At sight of his visitor, Lamb 
began carefully to climb down, making a cir- 
cuitous descent as he stepped from one cross-bar 
to another, and saying encouragingly the while : 
' 4 1 shall revolve upon you presently, Mr. Barton ; 
I shall revolve upon you presently." 

By the year 1822, the bulk of Lamb's work 
was done. Rosamund Gray, J >h.n WoodviL 
Tales from Shakespeare, Specimens from the 
Dramatic Poeis, and his best poems were 
already published, while the finest of the 
Essays of Ella were written and awaiting pub- 
lication (in 1823) ; henceforth he was to pro- 
duce only the Last Essays and E liana, occa- 
sional verse, the notes to the Garrick plays, 
and many, but not the best, of the letters. He 
was now, as we have seen, in his forty-eighth 
year, a confirmed bachelor, fighting nobly 
against hopeless thoughts and all unprofitable 
— though sadly pleasant — dwellings on what 
might have been. His life was dedicated to 
the service of his afflicted sister. New friends 
he now seldom made, knowing how little of the 
future he could call his own ; and this in itself 
was another cross to a man so eminently fitted 
to love his fellows as was the author of "The 
Old Familiar Faces." 

With Bernard Barton however he made an 
exception : a matter oT surprise to those who 
only know the Quaker Poet as the utterer of 
pious ejaculations. We need not concern our- 
selves with their astonishment that Lamb, the 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 77 

correspondent of Coleridge and Manning, 
should also become the correspondent of Ber- 
nard Barton. It is a vile thing to stir among 
the roots of a friendship between two men to 
dig out the why and wherefore of their attach- 
ment, and it shall not be done here. The 
affinity of true friends defies analysis. All that 
shall be said is, that from his youth Lamb had 
felt a kindness for the unobtrusiveness and 
unwavering rectitude of the drab folk. More 
than once he had entertained the idea of em- 
bracing their simple faith, although something 
always occurred to offend the fastidiousness 
of his sensitive mind. Writing to Coleridge in 
1 797, when twenty-two years old, he says 

Tell Lloyd [Charles Lloyd, the son of the Quaker banker 
and philanthropist of Birmingham] I have had thoughts of 
turning Quaker, and have been reading, or am rather just 
beginning to read, a most capital book, good thoughts in 
good language, William Penn's No Cross, No Crozvn. I 
like it immensely. Unluckily, I went to one of his meet- 
ings, tell him, in St. John Street [at Cambridge] yesterday, 
and saw a man under all the agitations and workings of a 
fanatic, who believed himself under the influence of some 
'inevitable presence.' This cured me of Quakerism. I 
love it in the books of Penn and Woolman ; but I detest 
the vanity of a man thinking he speaks by the Spirit. 

Another link with the Society was his silent 
attachment to a beautiful Quakeress, Hester 
Savory. In March, 1803, he writes to Manning: 
" I send you some verses I have made on the 
death of a young Quaker you may have heard 
me speak of as being in love with for some 
years while I lived at Pentonville, though I had 



78 BERNARD BARTON 

never spoken to her in my life." 1 The poem 
was " Hester," a lyric of such beauty that it 
must be familiar to all the readers of this book. 
Knowing what we do of Lamb's character, it 
is not surprising that the Quaker ideal always 
came short of his desires. He had an outspoken- 
ness, a verbal generosity — almost lavishness — 
in direct variance from the reticence practised in 
the sect at that time. What Lamb felt, he said ; 
the Quakers, he thought, said what they ought 
to have felt. Again, Lamb, although a strict 
liver, and as a rule one of the most self- 
sacrificing of men, was all for the good 
temporal things of this life. In the essay 
on " Imperfect Sympathies " he puts the case 
thus plainly : 

I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. I venerate the 
Quaker principles. It does me good for the rest of the day 
when I meet any of their people in my path. When I am 
ruffled or disturbed by any occurrence, the sight, or quiet 
voice of a Quaker, acts upon me as a ventilator, lightening 
the air, and taking off a lead from the bosom. But I 
cannot like the Quakers (as Desdemona would say) ' to 
live with them.' I am all over sophisticated — with 
humours, fancies, craving hourly sympathy. I must have 
books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, scandal, jokes, ambigui- 
ties, and a thousand whim-whams, which their simple taste 
can do without. I should starve at their primitive banquet. 



I According to a writer in the deceased Essayist and Friends 
Review, Htster was the daughter of Joseph Savory, a goldsmith in the 
Strand. She was born on May 31st. 1777, and was married in 1802 to 
Charles Stoke Dudley, merchant, of Lambeth. She died in less than a 
year after, and was buried at Bunhill Fields. Canon Ainger, who has 
seen a miniature of Hester, calls her's a " bright-eyed gipsy face, such 
as we know so well from the canvas of Reynolds." 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 79 

That primitive banquet is to-day so much 
nearer the sophistication which Lamb needed, 
that were he to return for a while to this sphere 
he would be unlikely to repeat the sentiments 
just quoted, The Society now numbers many 
virtuosi after Elia's own heart : jealous collec- 
tors of old oak, and old blue, and broad- 
margined prints ; slaves of shelf and stall 

" Who hold 
Patched volumes dear, and prize the small 
Rare volume, black with tarnished gold." 

Whim-whams too he would find in abundance. 
Although he came quickly to the conclusion 
that Quakerism was not for him, Lamb's interest 
in the Society never flagged. He admired 
from the outside, read Quaker books with keen 
delight, adopted Quaker plainness of attire, and 
numbered individual Quakers amonghisacquaint- 
ances. References to the Society are manifold 
in his writings. The essay on " A Quakers' 
Meeting," which is known to all, holds another 
tribute to one of the most attractive character- 
istics of Friends. Elia writes — 

Nothing-plotting, nought-caballing, un-mischievous synod ! 
convocation without intrigue ! parliament without debate ! 
what a lesson dost thou read to council and to consistory ! 
if my pen treat of you lightly — as haply it will wander — 
yet my spirit hath gravely felt the wisdom of your custom, 
when, sitting among you in deepest peace, which some out- 
welling tears would rather confirm than disturb, I have 
reverted to the times of your beginnings, and the sowing of 
the seed by Fox and Dewesbury. — I have witnessed that 
which brought before my eyes your heroic tranquillity, 
inflexible to the rude jests and serious violences of the 



80 BERNARD BARTON 

insolent soldiery, republican or royalist, sent to molest you 
— for ye sate betwixt the fires of two persecutions, the 
outcast and off-scouring of church and presbytery. — I have 
seen the reeling sea-ruffian, who had wandered into your 
receptacle with the avowed intention of disturbing your 
quiet, from the very spirit of the place receive in a moment 
a new heart, and presently sit among ye as a lamb amidst 
lambs. And I remember Penn before his accusers, and 
Fox in the bail dock, when he was lifted up in spirit, as he 
tells us, and ' the Judge and the Jury became as dead men 
under his feet.' x 

Lamb's informal Quakerism was indeed one 
of his most noticeable characteristics. " There 
is a primitive simplicity and self-denial about 
his manners," wrote Hazlitt, in The Spirit of the 
Age ; " and a Quakerism in his personal appear- 
ance, which is, however, relieved by a fine 
Titian head, full of dumb eloquence." He had, 
says Canon Ainger, impressed Leigh Hunt, 
when a boy, with his Quaker-like demeanour, 
and Hood carried away from their first meeting 
the impression of having conversed with a 
" Quaker in black." But Lamb's was a 
Quakerism shot through with bright colours. 
A certain spirit of mischief, which sat ever at 
his ear prompting him to revolution, was 
perhaps the chief cause of his independence of 
all sects. It was part of the man's nature to 
differ, whether he meant it or not : conformity 



I Of this passage Lamb writes to Bernard Barton : " I find no such 
words in his journal, and I did not get them from Sewell, and the latter 
sentence I am sure I did not mean to invent. I must have put some 
other Quaker's words into his mouth. Is it a fatality in me, that 
everything I touch turns into ' a lie ' ? " 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 81 

was his bugbear. The author of the " Bridge 
of Sighs " has, of all his contemporaries, painted 
the most sympathetic portrait of Lamb. There- 
in is the following passage bearing upon that 
spirit of mischief to which we have referred : — 

With a Catholic he would probably have called himself 
a Jew ; or amongst Quakers, by way of a set-off against 
their own formality, he would indulge in a little extra levity. 
I well remember his chuckling at having spirited on his 
correspondent, Bernard Barton, to commit some little 
enormities, such as addressing him as C. Lamb, Esquire. 

This brings us again to Bernard Barton, in 
one of his letters to whom Lamb makes the 
confession, " In feelings and matters not dog- 
matical, I hope I am half a Quaker " : a remark 
which lets in quite enough light (though not 
by any means all) upon the attraction that 
Bernard Barton offered to Charles Lamb. 
Briefly (and superficially) Lamb liked Quaker- 
ism in its broader and more genial moods, and 
Bernard Barton personified Quakerism in its 
broader and more genial moods. 



82 BERNARD BARTON 



CHAPTER VI. 

CHARLES LAMB'S LETTERS. 

Delightful author ! unto whom I owe 

Moments and moods of fancy and of feeling, 
Afresh to grateful memory now appealing, 
Fain would I " bless thee — ere I let thee go ! " 
From month to month has the exhaustless flow 
Of thy original mind, its wealth revealing, 
With quaintest humour, and deep pathos healing 
The World's rude wounds, revived Life's early glow : 
And, mixt with this, at times, to earnest thought 

Glimpses of truth, most simple and sublime 
By thy imagination have been brought 

Over my spirit. From the olden time 
Of authorship thy patent should be dated, 
And thou with Marvell, Brown, and Burton mated. 

Sonnet to Elia. 

IN Barry Cornwall's admirable memoir of 
Charles Lamb the following passage occurs, 
which is inserted in this place in order that the 
popular opinion of the relations between the two 
correspondents, herein very clearly expressed, 
may be modified : — 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 83 

I have been much impressed by Lamb's letters to 
Bernard Barton, which are numerous, and which, taken 
altogether, are equal to any which he has written. The 
letters to Coleridge do not exhibit so much care or 
thought ; nor those to Wordsworth or Manning, nor to 
any others of his intellectual equals. These correspon- 
dents could think and speculate for themselves, and they 
were accordingly left to their own resources. ' The Volsces 
have much corn.' But Bernard Barton was in a different 
condition : he was poor. His education had been inferior, 
his range of reading and thinking had been very confined, 
his knowledge of the English drama being limited to Shake- 
speare and Miss Baillie. He seems however to have been 
an amiable man, desirous of cultivating the power, such as 
it was, which he possessed ; and Lamb therefore lavished 
upon him — the poor Quaker clerk of a Suffolk Banker — 
all that his wants or ambition required ; excellent worldly 
counsel; sound thoughts upon literature and art; critical 
advice on his own verses ; letters, which in their actual 
value surpass the wealth of many more celebrated col- 
lections. 

With the best of intentions, the writer has 
been guilty of misrepresentation in the fore- 
going passage. That Bernard Barton was in- 
tellectually Lamb's inferior is not to be denied, 
but he had many compensating qualities whose 
influence may have been as beneficial to Lamb 
in their way as the sage counsels of the essayist 
were to the provincial poet. Mr. Barton was 
simple and undistinguished ; but he was essen- 
tially a cultured gentleman, with broad sym- 
pathies and an innate sweetness such as no 
amount of learning or social intercourse can 
give : here he was the equal of Lamb or of any 



•man 



6a 



84 BERNARD BARTON 

The first letter contains a jest in Elia's own 
manner: "I am, like you, a prisoner to the 
desk. I have been chained to that galley thirty 
years, — a long shot. I have almost grown to 
the wood. If no imaginative poet, I am sure I 
am a figurative one. Do ' Friends' allow puns ? " 
On December 23rd, 1822, he writes — 

I am pleased with your liking John Woodvil [Lamb's 
play], and amused with your knowledge of our drama being 
confined to Shakspeare and Miss Baillie. What a world of 
fine territory between Land's End and Johnny Groat's have 
you missed traversing ! I could almost envy you to have so 
much to read. I feel as if I had read all the books I 
want to read. O to forget Fielding, Steele, etc., and read 
'em new ! 

He goes on to ask for Fox's journal, and 
suggests that Barton should write "a poetical 
account of your old worthies, deducing them 
from Fox to Woolman." He adds: "You 
have no martyrs quite to the fire, I think, among 
you ; but plenty of heroic confessors, spirit- 
martyrs, lamb-lions." He concludes : " The 
' compliments of the time ' to you should end 
my letter ; to a Friend, I suppose, I must say 
the â–  sincerity of the season ' ; I hope they both 
mean the same." 

The next letter (January 9th, 1823) is one 
of the most important. The kind reception of 
his poems by the public, and the growing irk- 
someness of desk-work, now and again caused 
Mr. Barton to think seriously of exchanging 
Woodbridge for London, and adopting the 
profession of letters in place of that of figures. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 85 

Some years before, when the desire had come 
upon him, a letter from Lord Byron had altered 
his purpose. 1 Now he asks counsel of his new 
adviser. Lamb's reply is for all time : 

'Throw yourself on the world without any rational plan 
of support, beyond what the chance employ of booksellers 
would afford you ! ! ! ' 

Throw yourself rather, my dear sir, from the steep 
Tarpeian rock, slap-dash headlong upon iron spikes. If 
you had but five consolatory minutes between the desk 
and the bed, make much of them, and live a century in 
them, rather than turn slave to the booksellers. They are 
Turks and Tartars when they have poor authors at their 
beck. Hitherto you have been at arm's length from 
them. Come not within their grasp. I have known many 
authors for bread, some repining, others envying the blessed 
security of a counting-house, all agreeing they would rather 
have been tailors, weavers — what not, rather than the things 
they were. I have known some starved, some to go mad, 
one dear friend literally dying in a workhouse. You know 
not what a rapacious, dishonest set these booksellers are. 
Ask even Southey, who (a single case almost) has made a 
fortune by book drudgery, what he has found them. Oh, 
you know not (may you never know !) the miseries of sub- 
sisting by authorship. 'Tis a pretty appendage to a situation 
like yours or mine; but a slavery, worse than all slavery, to 
be a bookseller's dependant, to drudge your brains for pots 
of ale and breasts of mutton, to change your free thoughts 
and voluntary numbers for ungracious task work. . . . 
Keep to your bank, and the bank will keep you. Trust not to 
the public; you may hang, starve, drown yourself for anything 
that worthy personage cares. I bless every star that Providence, 
not seeing good to make me independent, has seen it next 



1 See page 162. 



86 BERNARD BARTON 

good to settle me upon the stable foundation of Leadenhall. 
Sit down, good B. B., in the banking-office. What ! is 
there not from six to eleven p.m. six days in the week, and 
is there not all Sunday? Fie, what a superfluity of 
man's time, if you could think so ! — enough for relaxation, 
mirth, converse, poetry, good thoughts, quiet thoughts. Oh 
the corroding, torturing, tormenting thoughts, that disturb 
the brain of the unlucky wight who must draw upon it for 
daily sustenance ! Henceforth I retract all my fond com- 
plaints of mercantile employment ; look upon them as 
lovers' quarrels. I was but half in earnest. Welcome dead 
timber of a desk, that makes me live. A little grumbling is 
a wholesome medicine for the spleen ; but in my inner 
heart do I approve and embrace this our close but un- 
harassing way of life. I am quite serious. 

On February 17th, 1823, Lamb refers to 
the ''ponderous folio of George Fox," which 
Barton had procured for him. " A great 
spiritual man " is Lamb's description of the 
founder of Quakerism ; he adds, ''How I like 
the Quaker phrases, though I think they were 
hardly completed till Woolman. A pretty little 
manual of Quaker language (with an endeavour 
to explain them) might be gathered out of his 
book." On May 3rd, Lamb has become so 
steeped in the Journal and the Doctrinals that 
he says, " If I go on at this rate, the Society 
will be in danger of having two Quaker poets 
to patronise." 

In this year appeared Southey's article 
charging Lamb with infidelity, which drew 
forth one of the most dignified remonstrances 
that exists in the language. The essayist tells 
Bernard Barton of the incident in the following 
words : — 



AND HIS FRIENDS. S7 

Southey has attacked 'Elia' on the score of infidelity, 
in the Quarterly article, ' Progress of Infidelity.' I had not, 
nor have seen the Monthly. He might have spared an old 
friend such a construction of a few careless flights, that 
meant no harm to religion. If all his unguarded expres- 
sions were to be collected — ! But I love and respect 
Southey, and will not retort. I hate his review, and his 
being a reviewer. The hint he has dropped will knock the 
sale of the book on the head, which was almost at a stop 
before. Let it stop, there is corn in Egypt, while there is 
cash at Leadenhall. You and I are something besides 
being writers, thank God ! 

Hitherto the two men have been, as it were, 
making signals of inquiry : henceforth they 
know one another. At least Lamb's letters 
now begin to have more familiarity, and "Dear 
B.B." becomes a regular form of address with 
him. It is greatly to be regretted that none of 
Bernard Barton's letters to his friend have been 
preserved. In September, 1823, Elia writes — 

When you come London-ward you will find me no 
longer in Covent Garden. I have a cottage in Colebrook 
Row, Islington ; a cottage, for it is detached ; a white house, 
with six good rooms ; the New River (rather elderly by this 
time) runs (if a moderate walking pace may so be termed) 
close to the foot of the house ; and behind is a spacious 
garden with vines (I assure you), pears, strawberries, parsnips, 
leeks, carrots, cabbages, to delight the heart of old Alcinous. 
You enter without passage into a cheerful dining-room, all 
studded over and rough with old books : and above all is 
a lightsome drawing-room, three windows, full of choice 
prints. I feel like a great lord, never having had a house 
before. ... I am so taken up with pruning and gardening, 
quite a new sort of occupation to me. I have gathered my 
jargonels, but my Windsor pears are backward. The former 



88 BERNARD BARTON 

were of exquisite raciness. I do now sit under my own vine, 
and contemplate the growth of vegetable nature. I can now 
understand in what sense they speak of father Adam. I 
recognise the paternity while I watch my tulips. I almost 
fell with him, for the first day I turned a drunken gardener 
(as he let in the serpent) into my Eden, and he laid 
about him, lopping off some choice boughs, etc., which 
hung over from a neighbour's garden, and in his blind zeal 
laid waste a shade, which had sheltered their window from 
the gaze of passers-by. The old gentlewoman (fury made 
her not handsome) could scarcely be reconciled by all my 
fine words. There was no buttering her parsnips. She 
talked of the law. What a lapse to commit on the first day 
of my happy ' garden state ' ! 

Bernard Barton more than once accepted 
this invitation. An account of one of his later 
visits to the Islington home is contained in the 
following letter, kindly sent to the author by- 
Mrs. FitzGerald: 

It was rarely my lot to be in town with my dear father, 
but on one memorable occasion we made a call on Charles 
Lamb. It must have been not long after his removal to 
Colebrook Row. We did not see Miss Lamb, and the visit 
must have taken place during one of those sad lapses which 
so often shadowed the lives of the brother and sister. 
Charles Lamb had given my father to understand that his 
house was near the New River — ' rather elderly by this 
time,' he said — and knowing what had happened to his 
short-sighted friend George Dyer, we knew that it could not 
be far off. Having left our omnibus and walked for some 
distance, we were rather at a loss to find our way, but meet- 
ing a postman the house was soon found. Some very high 
and rather narrow steps led up to the door, and our rap was 
answered by the master himself in decidedly morning un- 
dress. The door opened at once into the room in which he 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 89 

was sitting. He had evidently been reading, for a large, old 
volume had been laid aside open on a small table drawn 
close to the fireside. I cannot remember whether his hair 
was grey. I think not ; but there could be no forgetting 
the slight figure and the bright eyes which welcomed us. 
An old portrait hung over the fireplace ; I know it was of 
some noteworthy person, whose name I cannot remember. 

But what chiefly attracted me was a large old bookcase 
full of books ! I could but think how many long walks 
must have been taken to bring them home, for there were 
but few that did not bear the mark of having been bought 
at many a bookstall : brown, dark-looking books, dis- 
tinguished by those white tickets which told how much 
their owner had given for each. Readers of Lamb will 
remember the home-bringing of that long-wished-for copy 
of Beaumont and Fletcher, which, we are told, after long 
consideration of what saving could be hit upon that would 
be an equivalent to the purchase, was dragged home late 
one Saturday night, the happy possessor only 'wishing it 
were more cumbersome.' But when more favourable times 
came, and a set of rare old blue china could be indulged in, 
how touching was the sister's backward look at the old times, 
its trials, and its compensations ! She wishes those times 
would come again ' when we were not quite so rich ; I do 
not mean that I want to be poor, but a thing was worth 
buying then when we felt the money that we paid for it.' 
How beautiful is the brother's loving quickness at ' detecting 
these summer clouds in Bridget.' But I must leave off read- 
ing that essay 1 for my own pleasure, and end my scanty 
memories of that visit. 

I wish I could recall what passed that day ! I only 
remember that the talk was of books, of authors, of Southey 
especially, and of reviews. I cannot remember how long 
we were there. A luncheon of oysters, with its usual 
accompaniments, was brought in ; our hospitable host 

1 See " Old China," in the Essays of Elia. 



90 BERNARD BARTON 

equipped himself for a walk, and went with us until he saw 
us into the right omnibus, and with cordial farewells that 
memorable morning ended. 

I believe that once again I saw that bookcase. I was 
taken by some friends to call on Miss Lamb some little time 
after her brother's death. When I was introduced to her, a 
chair was placed for me close to her own. She took my 
hand, looked intently at me (my dress happened to be 
of blue muslin), and stroked down my skirts once or twice, 
saying, with a look of surprise and perhaps of slight reproach, 
1 Bernard Barton's daughter ! ' But I think she soon for- 
gave my un-Quakerly appearance, for she presently took my 
arm, and led me up to a bookcase, before which we paced 
up and down, now and then stopping to look at it, and even 
to touch it. Surely at that moment we both remembered 
Colebrook Row ! 

On November 22nd, 1823, Lamb writes: 
" Is it possible a letter has miscarried ? Did 
you get one in which I sent you an extract 
from the poems of Lord Stirling? I should 
wonder if you did, for I sent you none 
such. There was an incipient lie strangled in 
the birth. Some people's conscience is so 
tender ! " Then comes some excellent advice 
about brooding over bodily ills, for Mr. Barton 
was at that time a sufferer from a disease 
brought on or aggravated by his sedentary 
life and refusal to take reasonable exercise. 
Says Lamb — 

You are too much apprehensive of your complaint : I 
know many that are always ailing of it, and live on to a 
good old age. I know a merry fellow (you partly know 
him) who, when his medical adviser told him he had drunk 
away all that part, congratulated himself (now his liver 
was gone) that he should be the longest liver of the two 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 91 

The best way in these cases is to keep yourself as ignor- 
ant as you can, as ignorant as the world was before Galen, 
of the entire inner construction of the animal man ; not to 
be conscious of a midriff; to hold kidneys (save of sheep 
and swine) to be an agreeable fiction ; not to know where- 
about the gall grows ; to account the circulation of the 
blood an idle whimsey of Harvey's ; to acknowledge no 
mechanism not visible. For, once fix the seat of your 
disorder, and your fancies flux into it like bad humours. 
Those medical gentries choose each his favourite part ; one 
takes the lungs, another the aforesaid liver, and refer to that 
whatever in the animal economy is amiss. Above all, use 
exercise, take a little more spirituous liquors, learn to smoke, 
continue to keep a good conscience, and avoid tampering 
with hard terms of art — viscosity, scirrhosity, and those bug- 
bears by which simple patients are scared into their graves. 
Believe the general sense of the mercantile world, which 
holds that desks are not deadly. It is the mind, good 
B.B., and not the limbs, that taints by long sitting. Think 
of the patience of tailors ! Think how long the Lord 
Chancellor sits ! Think of the brooding hen ! x 

Only Lamb could have written the letter of 
January 9th, 1824, which shall be quoted entire : 
Dear B.B.,— 

Do you know what it is to succumb under an 
unsurmountable daymare, — ' a whoreson lethargy,' as 
Falstaff calls it, — an indisposition to do anything, or to 
be anything, — a total deadness and distaste, a suspension of 
vitality, — an indifference to locality, — a numb, soporifical, 
good-for-nothingness, — an ossification all over, — an oyster- 
like insensibility to the passing events, — a mind-stupor, — a 
brawny defiance to the needles of a thrusting-in conscience ? 
Did you ever have a very bad cold, with a total irresolution 
to submit to water-gruel processes ? This has been for 

1 See p. 165 for a letter from Southey to the same effect. 



92 BERNARD BARTON 

many weeks my lot and my excuse. My fingers drag 
heavily over this paper, and to my thinking it is three-and- 
twenty furlongs from here to the end of this demi-sheet. I 
have not a thing to say ; nothing is of more importance 
than another ; I am flatter than a denial or a pancake ; 
emptier than Judge Park's wig when the head is in it ; 
duller than a country stage when the actors are off it ; a 
cipher, an O ! I acknowledge life at all, only by an occa- 
sional convulsional cough, and a permanent phlegmatic pain 
in the chest. I am weary of the world ; life is weary of me. 
My day is gone into twilight, and I don't think it worth the 
expense of candles. My wick hath a thief in it, but I can't 
muster courage to snuff it. I inhale suffocation ; I can't 
distinguish veal from mutton ; nothing interests me. Tis 
twelve o'clock, and Thurtell is just now coming out upon 
the New Drop, Jack Ketch alertly tucking up his greasy 
sleeves to do the last office of mortality ; yet cannot I elicit 
a groan or a moral reflection. If you told me the world 
will be at an end to-morrow, I should just say, ' Will it ? ' 
I have not volition enough to dot my i's, much less to comb 
my eyebrows ; my eyes are set in my head ; my brains are 
gone out to see a poor 1 elation in Moorfields, and they did 
not say when they'd come back again ; my skull is a Grub 
Street attic, to let . my hand writes, not I, from 

habit, as chickens run about a little when their heads are 
off. O, for a vigorous fit of gout, cholic, toothache, — an 
earwig in my auditory, a fly in my visual organs ! Pain is 
life — the sharper, the more evidence of life ; but this apathy, 
this death ! Did you ever have an obstinate cold,— a six 
or seven weeks' unintermitting chill and suspension of hope, 
fear, conscience, and everything ? Yet do I try all I can to 
cure it ; I try wine, and spirits, and smoking, and snuff in 
unsparing quantities j but they all only seem to make me 
worse, instead of better. I sleep in a damp room, but it 
does me no good J I come home late o' nights, but do not 
find any visible amendment ! Who shall deliver me from 
the body of this death ? 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 93 

It is just fifteen minutes after twelve. Thurtell is by this 
time a good way on his journey, baiting at Scorpion perhaps ; 
Ketch is bargaining for his cast coat and waistcoat. The 
Jew demurs at first at three half-crowns ; but, on considera- 
tion that he may get somewhat by showing 'em in the town, 
finally closes. C. L. 

Bernard Barton seems to have been dis- 
turbed or puzzled by his friend's somewhat 
violent levity, for in his next letter, two weeks 
after, Lamb expresses contrition. The Essays 
of Ella had just been excluded from the Wood- 
bridge Book Club by a majority of the members, 
some of whom were Friends, and their author 
remarks: "Your account of my blackballing 
amused me. I think, as Quakers, thev did right" 

On February 23rd, 1824, Lamb writes, with 
reference to his laxity as a correspondent — 

And yet I am accounted by some people a good man I 
How cheap that character is acquired ! Pay your debts, 
don't borrow money, nor twist your kitten's neck off, nor 
disturb a congregation, etc., your business is done. I know 
things (thoughts or things, thoughts are things) of myself, 
which would make every friend I have fly me as a plague 
patient. I once * * *, and set a dog upon a crab's leg 
that was shoved out under a mass of seaweeds, — a pretty 
little feeler. Oh pah ! how sick I am of that ! and a lie, 
a mean one, I once told ! — I stink in the midst of respect. 
I am much hypt. The fact is, my head is heavy, but there 
is hope ; or if not, I am better than a poor shell-fish ; not 
morally, when I set the whelp upon it, but have more blood 
and spirits. Things may turn up, and 1 may creep again 
into a decent opinion of myself. Vanity will return with 
the sunshine. Till then, pardon my neglects, and impute 
it to the wintry solstice. 



94 BERNARD BARTON 

In this year (1824) Bernard Barton received 
a thoughtful and magnificent present of ,£1,200, 
collected among his friends in the Society, and 
the members of his family. The chief contribu- 
tors to the testimonial were Joseph John Gurney, 
whose unobtrusive benefactions knew no limit, 
and the Mr. Shewell, of Ipswich, who lent George 
Fox s Journal to Charles Lamb. The Quaker 
poet was at first doubtful about accepting such 
a sum, and wrote to Lamb for guidance. The 
answer is another proof of the sanity of Elia's 
true genius : — 

Dear B.B., — I hasten to say that if my opinion can 
strengthen you in your choice, it is decisive for your 
acceptance of what has been so handsomely offered. I can 
see nothing injurious to your most honourable sense. 
Think that you are called to a poetical Ministry — nothing 
worse ; the Minister is worthy of the hire. The only 
objection I feel is founded on a fear that the acceptance 
may be a temptation to you to let fall the bone (hard as it 
is) which is in your mouth, and must afford tolerable pick- 
ings, for the shadow of independence. You cannot propose 
to become independent on what the low state of interest 
could afford you from such a principal as you mention ; and 
the most graceful excuse for the acceptance would be, that it 
left you free to your voluntary functions. That is the less 
light part of the scruple. It has no darker shade. I put in 
darker because of the ambiguity of the word ' light,' which 
Donne, in his admirable poem on the Metempsychosis, 
has so ingeniously illustrated in his invocation : — 
12 12 

1 Make my dark heavy poem, light and light' 

w,here the two senses of light are opposed to different 
opposites. A trifling criticism. I can see no reason for any 
scruple then but what arises from your own interest ; which 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 95 

is in your own power of course to solve. If you still have 
doubts, read over Sanderson's Cases of Conscience and 
Jeremy Taylor's Ductor Dubitantium ; the first a moderate 
octavo, the latter a folio of 900 close pages j and when 
you have thoroughly digested the admirable reasons pro 
and con which they give for every possible case, you will 

be just as wise as when you began. Every man is 

his own best casuist ; and after all as Ephraim Smooth, 
in the pleasant comedy of Wild Oats has it ' there is no 
harm in a Guinea.' A fortiori there is less in 2000. 

I therefore most sincerely congratulate with you, except- 
ing so far as excepted above. If you have fair prospects of 
adding to the principal, cut the Bank ; but in either case do 
not refuse an honest service. Your heart tells you it is not 
offered to bribe you from any duty, but to a duty which you 
feel to be your vocation. — Farewell heartily. C. L. 

The sum was invested in Mr. Shewell's 
name, its yearly interest being paid to Mr. 
Barton. In 1839, however, much of the prin- 
cipal was employed in the purchase of the 
cottage at Woodbridge, dear to the poet as 
the dwelling-place of his wife's mother, Martha 
Jesup. 

In the next letter (April, 1824J Lamb 
rambles thus : 

Is Sunday, not divinely speaking, but humanly and 
holidaysically, a blessing? Without its institution, would 
our rugged taskmasters have given us a leisure day, so often, 
think you, as once in a month ? or, if it had not been insti- 
tuted, might they not have given us every sixth day? Solve me 
this problem. If we are to go three times a day to church, 
why has Sunday slipped into the notion of a /tol/iday ? A 
HoLYday I grant it. The Puritans, I have read in Southey's 
book, knew the distinction. They made people observe 
Sunday rigorously, would not let a nursery-maid walk out 



96 BERNARD BARTON 

in the fields with children for recreation on that day. But 
then — they gave the people a holiday from all sorts of work 
every second Tuesday. This was giving to the two Caesars 
that which was his respective. Wise, beautiful, thoughtful, 
generous legislators ! 

****** 

I am sitting opposite a person who is making strange 
distortions with the gout, which is not unpleasant — to me at 
least. What is the reason we do not sympathise with pain, 
short of some terrible surgical operation? Hazlitt, who 
boldly says all he feels, avows that not only he does not pity 
sick people, but he hates them. I obscurely recognise his 
meaning. Pain is probably too selfish a consideration, too 
simple a consideration of self-attention. We pity poverty, 
loss of friends, etc.— more complex things, in which the 
sufferer's feelings are associated with others. 

He concludes by suggesting a comic title for 
the Poetic Vigih : 

What do you think of . . . Religio Tremuli? or 
Tremebundi? There is Religio-Medici and Laid. . . . 
While I have space, let me congratulate with you the return 
of Spring : what a summery Spring too ! all those qualms 
about the dog and cray-fish melt before it. I am going to 
be happy and vain again. 

A fine appreciation of Blake is omitted as 
being beside the question, and we pass over 
references to Shelley and Byron. On Septem- 
ber 30th, 1824, Lamb sends the following well- 
known lines for Lucy Barton's album : 

Little book, surnamed of white, 
Clean as yet, and fair to sight, 
Keep thy attribution right. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 97 

Never disproportion'd scrawl, 
Ugly blot (that's worse than all), 
On thy maiden clearness fall ! 

In each letter here design'd, 
Let the reader emblem'd find 
Neatness of the owner's mind. 

Gilded margins count a sin ; 
Let thy leaves attraction win 
By the golden rules within ; 

Sayings fetch'd from sages old ; 
Saws which Holy Writ unfold, 
Worthy to be graved in gold : 

Lighter fancies not excluding ; 
Blameless wit, with nothing rude in, 
Sometimes mildly interluding 

Amid strains of graver measure : 
Virtue's self hath oft her pleasure 
In sweet Muses' groves of leisure. 

Riddles dark, perplexing sense ; 

Darker meanings of offence ; 

What but shades — be banished hence. 

Whitest thoughts, in whitest dress, 
Candid meanings, best express 
Mind of quiet Quakeress. 

The poem is accompanied by this letter : 

Dear B.B.,— 

'I am ill at these numbers;' but if the above be not 
too mean to have a place in thy daughter's sanctum, take them 
with pleasure. I assume that her name is Hannah, because 
it is a pretty Scriptural cognomen. 

I began on another sheet of paper, and just as I had 
penned the second line of stanza two, an ugly blot fell, to 
illustrate my counsel. I am sadly given to blot, and modern 

7 



98 BERNARD BARTON 

blotting-paper gives no redress ; it only smears, and makes 
it worse. The only remedy is scratching out, which gives it 
a clerkish look. The most innocent blots are made with 
red ink, and are rather ornamental. Marry, they are not 
always to be distinguished from the effusions of a cut finger. 
Well, I hope and trust thy tick-doleru, or however you spell 
it, is vanished, for I have frightful impressions of that 
tick, and do altogether hate it, as an unpaid score, or the 
tick of a death watch. I take it to be a species of Vitus's 
dance (I omit the sanctity, writing to ' one of the men 
called Friends '). I knew a young lady who could dance 
no other; she danced it through life, and very queer and 
fantastic were her steps. 

Heaven bless thee from such measures, and keep thee 
from the foul fiend, who delights to lead after false fires in 
the night. Flibbertigibbet, that gives the web and the pin, 
and I forget what else. 

From my den, as Bunyan has it, 30th September, 1824. 

C. L. 

The letters to Bernard Barton are not con- 
spicuous for drolleries, such as Lamb put into 
other communications to be found in Canon 
Ainger's volumes, but he did nothing better 
than the famous Fauntleroy warning, to omit 
which would be a sin unpardonable. The 
passage was written on the day following the 
execution of the defaulting banker, whose 
history need not be obtruded here. 

And now, my dear sir, trifling apart, the gloomy catastrophe 
of yesterday morning prompts a sadder vein. The fate of the 
unfortunate Fauntleroy makes me, whether I will or no, to 
cast reflecting eyes around on such of my friends as, by a 
parity of situation, are exposed to a similarity of temptation. 
My very style seems to myself to become more impressive 
than usual, with the change of theme. Who that standeth, 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 99 

knoweth but he may yet fall ? Your hands, as yet, I am most 
willing to believe, have never deviated into other's property. 
You think it impossible that you could ever commit so heinous 
an offence; but so thought Fauntleroy once; so have thought 
many besides him, who at last have expiated as he hath done. 
You are as yet upright ; but you are a banker, at least the 
next thing to it. I feel the delicacy of the subject ; but 
cash must pass through your hands, sometimes to a great 
amount. If in an unguarded hour — but I will hope better. 
Consider the scandal it will bring upon those of your per- 
suasion. Thousands would go to see a Quaker hanged 
that would be indifferent to the fate of a Presbyterian or an 
Anabaptist. Think of the effect it would have on the sale 
of your poems alone, not to mention higher considerations ! 
I tremble, I am sure, at myself, when I think that so many 
poor victims of the law, at one time of their life, made as 
sure of never being hanged, as I in my presumption am too 
ready to do myself. What are we better than they ? Do 
we come into the world with different necks ? Is there any 
distinctive mark under our left ears ? Are we unstrangulable, 
I ask you ? Think of these things. I am shocked some- 
times at the shape of my own fingers, not for their resem- 
blance to the ape tribe (which is something), but for the 
exquisite adaptation of them to the purposes of picking, 
fingering, etc. No one that is so framed, I maintain it, but 
should tremble. 

On April 6th, 1825, Lamb tells Mr. Barton 
of his emancipation from ledger, desk, and rule : 

I am free, B.B. — free as air ! 

1 The little bird that wings the sky 
Knows no such liberty.' 
I was set free on Tuesday in last week at four o'clock. I 
came home for ever. . . . B.B., I would not serve 
another seven years for seven hundred thousand pounds ! 
I have got ^441 net for life, sanctioned by Act of Parlia- 
ment, with a provision for Mary if she survives me. I will 

7A 



ioo BERNARD BARTON 

live another fifty years j or, if I live but ten, they will be 
thirty, reckoning the quantity of real time in them, i.e., the 
time that is a man's own. 

In August of the same year he has some 
sensible remarks on a certain kind of poetry : 

I did not express myself clearly about what I think a 
false topic insisted on so frequently in consolatory addresses 
on the death of infants. I know something like it is in 
Scripture, but I think humanly spoken. It is a natural 
thought, a sweet fallacy to the survivors, but still a fallacy. 
If it stands on the doctrine of this being a probationary 
state, it is liable to this dilemma. Omniscience, to whom 
possibility must be clear as act, must know of the child, what 
it would hereafter turn out : if good, then the topic is false to 
say it is secured from falling into future wilfulness, vice, etc. ; 
if bad, I do not see how its exemption from certain future 
overt acts, by being snatched away, at all tells in its favour. 
You stop the arm of a murderer, or arrest the finger of a 
pick-purse ; but is not the guilt incurred as much by the 
intent as if never so much acted ? Why children are hurried 
off, and all reprobates of a hundred left, whose trial 
humanly we may think was complete at fifty, is among the 
obscurities of Providence. The very notion of a state of 
probation has darkness in it. The All-knower has no need 
of satisfying His eyes by seeing what we will do, when He 
knows before what we will do. Methinks we might be 
condemned before commission. In these things we grope 
and flounder, and if we can pick up a little human comfort 
that the child taken is snatched from vice (no great com- 
pliment to it, by-the-by), let us take it. And as to where an 
untried child goes, whether to join the assembly of its 
elders who have borne the heat of the day — fire-purified 
martyrs, and torment-sifted confessors — what know we? 
We promise heaven, methinks, too cheaply, and assign 
large revenues to minors incompetent to manage them. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 101 

Epitaphs run upon this topic of consolation, till the very 
frequency induces a cheapness. Tickets for admission into 
Paradise are sculptured out at a penny a letter, twopence a 
syllable, etc. It is all a mystery; and the more I try to 
express my meaning (having none that is clear), the more I 
flounder. Finally, write what your own conscience, which 
to you is the unerring judge, seems best, and be careless 
about the whimsies of such a half-baked notionist as I am. 

In March, 1826, Lamb refers to the hap- 
hazard character of his writing" material : — 

You may know my letters by the paper and the folding- 
For the former, I live on scraps obtained in charity from 
an old friend, whose stationery is a permanent perquisite ; 
for folding, I shall do it neatly when I learn to tie my neck- 
cloths. 

I surprise most of my friends by writing to them on 
ruled paper, as if I had not got past pot-hooks and hangers. 
Sealing-wax, I have none on my establishment j wafers of the 
coarsest bran supply its place. When my epistles come to 
be weighed with Pliny's, however superior to the Roman in 
delicate irony, judicious reflections, etc. ; his gilt post will 
bribe over the judges to him. All the time I was at the 
E. I. H. I never mended a pen, I now cut 'em to the 
stumps, marring rather than mending the primitive goose- 
quill. I cannot bear to pay for articles I used to get for 
nothing. When Adam laid out his first penny upon non- 
pareils at some stall in Mesopotamos, I think it went hard 
with him, reflecting upon his old goodly orchard, where he 
had so many for nothing. 

The letter finishes : — 

We are about to sit down to roast beef, at which we 
could wish A. K. [Anne Knight], B.B., and B.B.'s pleasant 
daughter to be humble partakers. So much for my hint at 
visitors, which was scarcely calculated for droppers-in from 
Woodbridge ; the sky does not drop such larks every day. 



102 BERNARD BARTON 

On May 16th, Lamb complains of the 
treacherous weather : — 

I have had my head and ears stuffed up with the East 
winds : a continual ringing in my brain of bells jangled, or 
the spheres touched by some raw angel. Is it not George 
the Third trying the Hundredth Psalm ? I get my music for 
nothing. But the weather seems to be softening, and will 
thaw my stunnings. Coleridge, writing to me a week or 
two since, begins his note — 'Summer has set in with its 
usual severity.' A cold summer is all I know of disagree- 
able in cold. I do not mind the utmost rigour of real 
winter, but these smiling hypocrites of May's wither me to 
death. My head has been a ringing chaos, like the day the 
winds were made, before they submitted to the discipline of 
a weathercock, before the quarters were made. In the 
street, with the blended noises of life about me, I hear, and 
my head is lightened ; but in a room the hubbub comes 
back, and I am deaf as a sinner. ... I can hardly 
read a book, for I miss that small soft voice which the idea 
of articulated words raises (almost imperceptibly to you) in 
a silent reader. I seem too deaf to see what I read. But 
with a touch or two of returning zephyr my head will melt. 
What lies you poets tell about the May ! It is the most 
ungenial part of the year. Cold crocuses, cold primroses, 
you take your blossoms in ice — a painted sun. 

1 Unmeaning joy around appears, 
And Nature smiles as if she sneers.' 

It is ill with me when I begin to look which way the 
wind sets. Ten years ago, I literally did not know the 
point from the broad end of the vane, which it was that 
indicated the quarter. I hope these ill winds have blown 
over you as they do through me. 

Towards the end of the year 1826, Lamb 
begins a letter thus whimsically : 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 103 

Dear B.B. (the Busy Bee, as Hood after Dr. Watts 
apostrophises thee, and well dost thou deserve it for thy 
labours in the Muses' gardens, wandering over parterres of 
Think-on-mes and Forget-me-nots, to a total impossibility of 
forgetting thee), thy letter was acceptable, thy scruples may 
be dismissed, thou art rectus in curia, not a word more to 
be said, verbum sapienti, and so forth, the matter is decided 
with a white stone, classically, mark me, and the apparitions 
vanish'd which haunted me, only the cramp, Caliban's dis- 
temper, clawing me in the calvish part of my nature, makes 
me ever and anon roar bullishly, squeak cowardlishly, and 
limp cripple-ishly. Do I write Quakerly and simply, 'tis my 
most Master Mathews' like intention to do it. 

In the body of the note is this sentence : 
" Old Christmas is a-coming, to the confu- 
sion of Puritans, Muggletonians, Anabaptists, 
Quakers, and that unwassailing crew." Christ- 
mas came and went, and in the early summer 
of 1827, Lamb sent to B.B. a coloured print of 
a little boy learning to read at his mother's knee. 
To give completeness to the present Lamb 
found an old frame for it, and an uproarious 
evening was spent by himself and Hood in 
fashioning a respectable picture. The frame 
being too large, it was necessary to cover part 
of the glass with an opaque coat. When 
the botchers had finished, Hood said that 
" Barton would be sure to like it, because it 
was broad-brimmed." In the original verses 
which accompanied the gift the last line 
contained this jest : 

And broad-brimmed, as the Owner's Calling, 

but Lamb afterwards apologised for the dis-. 



104 BERNARD BARTON 

respectful nature of the phrase, and " sober" 
was put in its stead. These are the lines : 

When last you left your Woodbridge pretty, 

To stare at sights, and see the City, 

If I your meaning understood, 

You wished a Picture, cheap but good ; 

The colouring ? decent ; clear, not muddy ; 

To suit a Poet's quiet study, 

Where Books and Prints for delectation 

Hang, rather than vain ostentation. 

The subject ? what I pleased, if comely ; 

But something scriptural and homely : 

A sober Piece, not gay or wanton, 

For winter firesides to descant on ; 

The theme so scrupulously handled, 

A Quaker might look on unscandal'd \ 

Such as might satisfy Ann Knight, 

And classic Mitford just not fright. 

Just such a one I've found, and send it; 

If liked, I give — if not, but lend it. 

The moral ? nothing can be sounder. 

The fable ? 'tis its own expounder — 

A Mother teaching to her Chit 

Some good book, and explaining it. 

He, silly urchin, tired of lesson, 

His learning lays no mighty stress on, 

But seems to hear not what he hears ; 

Thrusting his fingers in his ears, 

Like Obstinate, that perverse funny one, 

In honest parable of Bunyan. 

His working Sister, more sedate 

Listens ; but in a kind of state 

The painter meant for steadiness, 

But has a tinge of sullenness ; 

And, at first sight, she seems to brook 

As ill her needle, as he his book. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 105 

This is the Picture. For the Frame — 
Tis not ill suited to the same ; 
Oak-carved, not gilt, for fear of falling ; 
Old-fashion'd ; plain, yet not appalling ; 
And sober, as the Owner's Calling. 

B.B. replied with the following poem 
(published in New Years Eve, 1828), entitled 
M Fireside Quatrains to Charles Lamb " : 

It is a mild and lovely winter night, 

The breeze without is scarcely heard to sigh ; 

The crescent moon and stars of twinkling light 
Are shining calmly in a cloudless sky. 

Within the fire burns clearly : in its rays 

My old oak book-case wears a cheerful smile ; 

Its antique mouldings brighten'd by the blaze 
Might vie with any of more modern style. 

That rural sketch — that scene in Norway's land 
Of rocks and pine trees by the torrent's foam — 

That landscape traced by Gainsborough's youthful hand, 
Which shows how lovely is a peasant's home — 

That Virgin and her Child, with those sweet boys — 
All of the fire-light own the genial gleam ; 

And lovelier far than in day's light and noise 
At this still hour to me their beauties seem. 

One picture more there is, which should not be 
Unhonoured or unsung, because it bears 

In many a lonely hour my thoughts to thee, 
Heightening to fancy every charm it wears— 

A quaint familiar group — a mother mild 

And young and fair, who fain would teach to read 

That urchin, by her patience unbeguiled, 
The volume open on her lap to heed. 



106 BERNARD BARTON 

With fingers thrust into his ears he looks 

As much he wished the weary task were done ; 

And more, far more, of pastime than of books 
Lurks in that arch, dark eye so full of fun. 

Graver, or in the pouts (I know not well 
Which of the twain), his elder sister plies 

Her needle so that it is hard to tell 

What the full meaning of her downcast eyes. 

Dear Charles, if thou shouldst haply chance to know 
Where such a picture hung in days of yore, 

Its highest worth, its deepest charm, to show 
I need not tax my rhymes or fancy more. 

It is not womanhood in all its grace, 

And lovely childhood plead to me alone ; 

Though these each stranger still delights to trace, 
And with congratulating smile to own ; 

No — with all these my feelings fondly blend 
A hidden charm unborrowed from the eye ; 

That wakes the memory of my absent friend, 
And chronicles the pleasant hours gone by. 

On August ioth, 1827, we have this 
passage : 

You have well described your old-fashioned grand 
paternal hall. 1 Is it not odd that every one's earliest 
recollections are of some such place ! I had my Blakes- 
ware (Blakesmoor in the London). Nothing fills a child's 
mind like a large old mansion ; better if un — or partially- 
occupied ; peopled with the spirits of deceased members of 
the county and Justices of the Quorum. Would I were 
buried in the peopled solitude of one, with my feelings at 



1. This reference seems to be to some such description of the 
Tottenham house as that printed on p. 23. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 107 

seven years old ! Those marble busts of the Emperors, 
they seemed as if they were to stand for ever, as they had 
stood from the living days of Rome, in that old marble hall, 
and I to partake of their permanency. Eternity was, while 
I thought not of Time. But he thought of me, and they are 
toppled down, and corn covers the spot of the noble old 
dwelling and its princely gardens. I feel like a grasshopper 
that, chirping about the grounds, escaped his scythe only by 
my littleness. Even now he is whetting one of his smallest 
razors to clean wipe me out, perhaps. Well ! 

From this point the correspondence loses in 

interest. Mary Lamb is becoming more and 

more the victim of her sad complaint, and her 

brother's spirits, though occasionally whipped up 

into exuberance, are giving signs of the strain 
'000 

put upon them. A man cannot devote a life- 
time's deeds and thoughts to the ceaseless care 
of a diseased mind, a man cannot renounce the 
joys of wife and children, and show no scar. In 
thinking of the quiet, uncomplaining heroism of 
Charles Lamb, we are reminded of his words 
about the early Quakers: "You have no 
martyrs quite to the fire, I think, among you ; 
but plenty of . spirit-martyrs." 

The remaining letters that are preserved 
have little of the intimate nature of those that 
precede. But the frolic Lamb skips in now 
and then. In August, 1827, he writes — 

Your taste, I see, is less simple than mine, which the 
difference of our persuasions has doubtless effected. In 
fact, of late you have so Frenchified your style, larding it 
with hors de combats and an desoftoirs, that o' my conscience 
the Foxian blood is quite dried out of you, and the skipping 
Monsieur spirit has been infused. Doth Lucy go to balls ? 



108 BERNARD BARTON 

I must remodel my lines, which I wrote for her. I hope 
A. K. keeps to her primitives. 

At the end of the letter he asks — 

Do you never Londonise again ? I should like to talk 
over old poetry with you of which I have much, and you, 
I think, little. Do your Drummonds [the Alexanders] 
allow no holidays? I would willingly come and work for 
you a three weeks or so, to let you loose. Would I could 
sell or give you some of my leisure ! Positively, the best 
thing a man can have to do is nothing, and next to that 
perhaps — good works. 

In December of the same year, Lamb sends 
an Annual containing " Lucy's verses." He 
attacks the Album with much vigour : " If I go 

to thou art there also, O all-pervading 

Album ! All over the Leeward Islands, in 
Newfoundland, and the Back Settlements, I 
understand there is no other reading. They 
haunt me. I die of Albophobia ! " 

The next letter is critical of Bernard 
Barton's volume, A Widozu's Tale (1827) : 
" Certes, friend B., thy Widow's Tale is too 
horrible, spite of the lenitives of Religion, to 
embody in verse. I hold prose to be the 
appropriate exposition of such atrocities ! No 
offence, but it is a cordial that makes the heart 
sick." He adds, roguishly, " By the by, is the 
widow likely to marry again ? " 

On December 5th, 1828, Lamb acknow- 
ledges the receipt of B.B/s new volume, A 
New Year's Eve, which was dedicated to Charles 
Richard Sumner, Bishop of Winchester. He 
says : — 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 109 

It does me good to see the Dedication to a Christian 
Bishop. I am for a comprehension, as divines call it ; but 
so as that the Church shall go a good deal more than half 
way over to the silent Meeting-house. I have ever said that 
the Quakers are the only professors of Christianity as I read 
it in the Evangiles." 

Then comes a piece of Lamb's mischief : — 

I say professors : marry, as to practice, with their gaudy 
hot types and poetical vanities, they are much at one with 
the sinful." 

On March 25th, 1829, he writes : — 

I have just come from town, where I have been to get 
my bit of quarterly pension ; and have brought home, from 
stalls in Barbican, the old ' Pilgrim's Progress ' with the 
prints — Vanity Fair, etc. — now scarce. Four shillings. 
Cheap. And also one of whom I have oft heard and had 
dreams, but never saw in the flesh — that is in sheepskin — 
' The whole theologic works of 

THOMAS AQUINAS.' 
My arms ached with lugging it a mile to the stage ; but the 
burden was a pleasure, such as old Anchises was to the 
shoulders of ^Eneas, or the Lady to the Lover in old 
romance, who having to carry her to the top of a high 
mountain (the price of obtaining her), clambered with her to 
the top, and fell dead with fatigue. 

' Oh the glorious old Schoolmen ! ' 
There must be something in him. Such great names imply 
greatness. Who hath seen Michael Angelo's things — of us 
that never pilgrimaged to Rome — and yet which of us dis- 
believes his greatness? How I will revel in his cobwebs 
and subtleties, till my brain spins ! 

On July 3rd, 1829, Lamb writes: " I am 
very much grieved indeed for the indisposition 



no BERNARD BARTON 

of poor Lucy. . . . My sister is again 
taken ill, and I am obliged to remove her out 
of the house for many weeks, I fear, before I 
can hope to have her again. I have been very 
desolate indeed." 

Three weeks later comes this jocular preface 
to a sad epistle. 

Enfield Chase Side, Saturday, 
25th of July, a.d. 1829, 11 a.m. 
There ! — a fuller, plumper, juicier date never dropt 
from Idumean palm. Am I in the date-iwe case now ? If 
not, a fig for dates, which is more than a date is worth. 
I never stood much affected to these limitary specialities ; 
least of all, since the date of my superannuation. 
' What have I with time to do ? 
Slaves of desks, 'twas meant for you.' 

The letter follows : 

Your handwriting has conveyed much pleasure to me in 
report of Lucy's restoration. Would I could send you as 
good news of my poor Lucy. But some wearisome weeks I 
must remain lonely yet. I have had the loneliest time, near 
ten weeks, broken by a short apparition of Emma for her 
holidays, whose departure only deepened the returning 
solitude, and by ten days I have past in town. But town, 
with all my native hankering after it, is not what it was. 
The streets, the shops are left ; but all old friends are gone ! 
And in London I was frightfully convinced of this as I 
passed houses and places, empty caskets now. I have 
ceased to care almost about anybody. The bodies I cared 
for are in graves, or dispersed. My old clubs, that lived so 
long and flourished so steadily, are crumbled away. When 
I took leave of our adopted young friend at Charing Cross, 
'twas heavy unfeeling rain, and I had nowhere to go. 

Home have I none, and not a sympathising house to turn 
to in the great city. Never did the waters of heaven pour down 



AND HIS FRIENDS. in 

on a forlorner head. Yet I tried ten days at a sort of friend's 
house, but it was large and straggling, — one of the individuals 
of my old long knot of friends, card-players, pleasant com- 
panions, that have tumbled to pieces, into dust and other 
things ; and I got home on Thursday, convinced that I was 
better to get home to my hole at Enfield, and hide like a 
sick cat in my corner. Less than a month I hope will 
bring home Mary. She is at Fulham, looking better in her 
health than ever, but sadly rambling, and scarce showing 
any pleasure in seeing me, or curiosity when I should come 
again. But the old feelings will come back again, and we 
shall drown old sorrows over a game of picquet again. 
But 'tis a tedious cut out of a life of 64, to lose 12 
or 13 weeks every year or two. And to make me more 
alone, our ill-tempered maid is gone, who, with all her airs, 
was yet a home piece of furniture, a record of better days. 
The young thing that has succeeded her is good and atten- 
tive, but she is nothing. And I have no one here to talk over 
old matters with. Scolding and quarrelling have something of 
familiarity, and a community of interest ; they imply acquaint- 
ance ; they are of resentment, which is of the family of dear- 
ness. . . . 

Could you not write something on Quakerism, for 
Quakers to read, but nominally addressed to Non-Quakers, 
explaining your dogmas— waiting on the Spirit — by the ana- 
logy of human calmness and patient waiting on the judgment ? 
I scarcely know what I mean, but to make Non-Quakers 
reconciled to your doctrines, by showing something like 
them in mere human operations ; but I hardly understand 
myself ; so let it pass for nothing. I pity you for overwork j 
but I assure you, no work is worse. The mind preys on 
itself, the most unwholesome food. I bragged formerly 
that I could not have too much time. I have a surfeit. 
With few years to come, the days are wearisome. But 
weariness is not eternal. Something will shine out to take 
the load off that flags me, which is at present intolerable. I 
have killed an hour or two in this poor scrawl. I am a 



ii2 BERNARD BARTON 

sanguinary murderer of time," and would kill him inch-meal 
just now. But the snake is vital. Well : I shall write 
merrier anon. Tis the present copy of my countenance I 
send, and to complain is a little to alleviate. May you 
enjoy yourself as far as the wicked wood will let you, and 
think that you are not quite alone as I am ! 

The next letter (December 8th, 1829) is 
brighter. " I have the satisfaction to tell you," 
he says, " that we are both in better health and 
spirits than we have been for a year or two 
past." The cause, he adds, is partly due to 
the loss of responsibility, as he and his sister 
have left their house and are boarding at 
Enfield. He goes on — 

We should have done so before, but it is not easy to 
flesh and blood to give up an ancient establishment, to 
discard old Penates, and from house-keepers to turn house- 
sharers. (N.B. — We are not in the workhouse.) Diocletian, 
in his garden, found more repose than on the imperial seat 
of Rome j and the nob of Charles the Fifth ached seldomer 
under a monk's cowl than under the diadem. 

In a note dated February 25th, 1830, Lamb 
writes — 

The more my character comes to be known, the less my 
veracity will come to be suspected. Time every day clears up 
some suspected narrative of Herodotus, Bruce, and others of 
us great travellers. ... A careful observer of life, Bernard, 
has no need to invent. Nature romances it for him. 

On August 30th, 1830, he has this pro- 
foundly sad sentence : " What a beautiful 
Autumn morning this is, if it was but with 
me as in times past when the candle of the 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 113 

Lord shined round me ! " The last letter of 
the correspondence bears the date April 30th, 
1 83 1, and is in Latin. This is a portion : 

^Enigma mihi hoc solvas [says he], et CEdipus fies. 
Qua ratione assimulandus sit equus Tremulo f Quippe cui 
tota communicatio sit per Hay et Neigh, juxta consilium Mud 
Dominicum, ' Fiat omnis communicatio vestra Yea et Nay.' 

Canon Ainger translates : 

Solve me this riddle, and you will be an CEdipus. Why 
is a horse like a Quaker ? Because his whole communica- 
tion is by " Hay " and " Neigh," in accordance with the 
Scriptural injunction ('Yea and Nay'). 

Three-and-a-half years later, Charles Lamb 
died at the age of fifty-nine. A few days 
afterwards Bernard Barton despatched the 
appended letter to a London bookseller. 

Woodbridge, Jan. 4, 1835. 
Dear Keymer, 

Thy account of poor Lamb's death, though it did 
not take me by surprise, for I saw it in The Times the day 
before, could not but deeply interest and painfully affect me. 
I had given him up as a correspondent, after, I think, three 
unanswered letters, from a feeling that the reluctance he 
had often expressed to letter-writing was so increased by 
indulgence, any further efforts to force him into Epistolizing 
would only give him pain, without being very likely to 
obtain any rejoinder; or were such extorted, it would be 
compulsory instead of con amore, — so I had given up all 
hope of hearing from him. Then came thy message, 
through Miss C, which induced me to make one more trial. 
Yet I am glad I did make it, for although the notion may 
be an altogether erroneous one, I cheat myself with the 
thought I might perhaps be his last correspondent, if 

8 



ii 4 BERNARD BARTON 

indeed he ever chanced to open my letter, which perhaps 
he might. If thou can'st give me any further account of 
his last few days, pray do ! for I should like to hear all I 
can of him. Was he at all aware, ere his close, that it was 
drawing nigh? I should like to know how such a man 
would meet death. With all his wit and humour, un- 
rivalled as it was, he was too good, I would hope too rich in 
right feeling, to die jesting, as Hume did. Often as his 
sportive sallies seemed to border on what appeared irre- 
verent, and to some rigid people the verge of profanity, I 
am disposed to acquit him of all intentional offence of that 
kind. He was not heartless, however his playful imagina- 
tion might betray him into frequent improprieties of 
expression. His vast and desultory reading, his constitu- 
tional temperament, his habits of life, his eccentricities of 
manner, all combined to render him the very sort of 
character likely to be completely misunderstood by super- 
ficial observers. A cold philosophical sceptic might have 
set him down as a crack-brained enthusiast ; while with a 
high-flown, formal professor of Orthodoxy, he would have 
passed for an infidel and a scorner. I believe him to have 
been as remote from the one as from the other. But to 
pourtray such a character were a hopeless effort ; Hazlitt, 
in one of his better moods could perhaps have done it as 
well as anyone ; or Leigh Hunt, if he could lay aside his 
jennery-jessamy prettinesses of style and mannerism. Per- 
haps Lamb's own account of himself, as given in the 
prefatory paper to the Last Essays of Elia, is the best 
sketch of him we ever shall have. I should like a copy of 
his tribute to Coleridge, and pray tell me anything in thy 
power about him — his close, and poor Mary, for I feel not a 
little interested in knowing what is to be done with and for 
her. At some time or other I hope to string my own 
thoughts of Lamb in verse, but I have no ability even to 
think of attempting it now. I can only now think and feel 
that I have lost him. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 115 



CHAPTER VII. 

MORE FRIENDS. 

1 Another, and another, still succeeds ! ' 
And one by one are from us called away, 
Friends — valued, loved, and cherish'd many a day, 

For noble thoughts and honourable deeds. 

Yet reckon not that we have leant on reeds, 

Which broke to pierce us, when, without dismay, 
In such we have reposed that trust and stay 

For which, e'en from the grave, their virtue pleads. 

The loved are not the lost ! though gone before ; 
To live in others' hearts is not to die ! 
Worth thus embalm'd by faithful memory, 

As dead— it were ungrateful to deplore ; 

Having outlived the grave is one proof more 
That it was born for immortality ! 

Sonnet on the Death of a Friend. 

AMONG Bernard Barton's friends was a 
Quaker lady whom he never saw, Mrs. 
Mary Sutton, of Cumberland, to whose thought- 
ful kindness he was indebted for the portrait of 
his father. The following beautiful sonnet was 
addressed to Mrs. Sutton : 

8a 



n6 BERNARD BARTON 

Unknown to sight — for more than twenty years 
Have we, by written interchange of thought, 
And feeling, been into communion brought 

Which friend to friend insensibly endears ! 

In various joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, 
Befalling each ; and serious subjects, fraught 
With wider interest, we at times have sought 

To gladden this — yet look to brighter spheres ! 

We never yet have met, and never may, 

Perchance, while pilgrims upon earth we fare ; 
Yet, as we seek each other's load to bear, 

Or lighten, and that law of love obey, 

May we not hope, in heaven's eternal day, 
To meet, and happier intercourse to share ? 

The correspondence touches religious mat- 
ters principally, although now and then B.B. 
is put upon his defence, in a way that sounds 
amusingly to modern ears, for some action 
which Mrs. Sutton, a stricter adherent to the 
letter than himself, considers likely to tend 
to laxity. Thus on one occasion she gently 
suggests that the prefix " Mr." is a vanity, and 
that the pattern of B.B.'s waistcoat, worked for 
him by his daughter, is hardly as sober as 
George Fox would have liked ; to which re- 
proofs the poet first pleads guilty, and then 
proceeds humorously to divest himself of blame. 
Now and then the vindication is more serious 
in tone, as when B.B. justifies his love of 
pictures : 

Thy objections to hanging up such things may be as 
much a matter of conscience with thee as the use of them is 
with me the result of considerable thought. . . . My 
limited leisure and my failing bodily strength do not 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 117 

allow of my being the pedestrian I once was. I often do 
not walk out of the streets for weeks together ; but my love 
of nature, of earth, and sky, and water j of trees, fields, and 
lanes ; and my still deeper love of the human face divine, is 
as intense as ever. As a poet, the use of these is as needful 
to me as my food. I can seldom get out to see the actual 
and the real ; but a vivid transcript of these, combined with 
some little effort of memory and fancy, makes my little 
study full of life, peoples its silent walls with nature's 
cherished charms, and lights up human faces round me — 
dumb, yet eloquent in their human semblance. 

He once even ventures to present his censor 
with a pictorial vanity : — 

I am about to try thy faith, love, and charity to an hair's 
breadth, by sending thee a little print of the interior of my 
study with its pictures on the walls, and — its crucifix on 
the mantel-piece . . . and there is a figure in it meant 
to indicate me ; but about as much like Robinson Crusoe, 
as it is like me. 

The crucifix seems to need some justification, 
for he continues : 

But the crucifix — well, my dear friend, the crucifix — 
It was brought from Germany, I think, by 
a friend of mine, and placed where it now stands, by 
his wife (a true Protestant,) in my absence, the day 
before they left Woodbridge, as a parting memorial; and 
I have simply allowed it to stand there ever since, now, 
I think, three years ! It has called forth, frequently, a kind 
thought of the giver ; now and then I hope not an unkind 
one of our erring fellow Christians who mistake the use of 
such emblems ; and if it have occasionally reminded me of 
the one great propitiatory sacrifice for sin and transgression 
— that I hope is a thought to be reverently cherished, even 
if suggested by what some may superstitiously regard. 



n8 BERNARD BARTON 

Such, my dear friend, is the history of my little crucifix. 
Fare thee well, and try to think of it and me with 
charity. 

It is in his communications to Mrs. Sutton 
that we find the poet's most definite prose utter- 
ances on Quakerism. He gives his opinion on 
such questions as birthright membership, seces- 
sion, and certain internal strife from which the 
Society of Friends suffered in the forties. The 
time to quote these passages has passed, but 
such an avowal as that which now follows is in 
no way out of place at the present day : 

It has long been my belief and conviction that the 
principles of Friends, rightly understood, form the most 
pure, most simple, and most spiritual code of faith and 
doctrine which the Christian world exhibits; and, under this 
belief, I can entertain no fear of the decline or overthrow of 
them. 

Again, he says, also to Mrs. Sutton — 

All that I have heard, seen, or read, only strengthens 
my attachment to old-fashioned Quakerism. I do not 
mean that in every iota of manners, habits, and practice, 
we are bound to follow the example of those who lived 
more than a century and a half ago, when the Society was 
in a very different state. But in all essential points of faith 
and doctrine I am more and more convinced those old 
worthies were substantially sound. 

Writing in 1843, on kindred matters, to Mrs. 
Shawe, he makes a characteristic confession, in 
which we may perhaps learn the secret of the 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 119 

exclusion from the "Annual Monitor" of any 
record of Bernard Barton's sweetly-wholesome 
life: 

The longer I live the more I love and prize Quaker 
principles. But I am well content to love them without 
compassing sea and land [to make proselytes to them, and 
would rather be thought in error for holding them, even by 
those whom I most esteem, than risk any infringement of 
that perfect law of love which is the essence and substance 
of religion itself, by disputing about them. 

This Mrs. Shawe was the wife of Robert 
Newton Shawe, of Kesgrave Hall, Wood- 
bridge, a Suffolk magistrate, and at one time a 
candidate for Parliament. The election went 
against him, and his defeat drew the following 
sonnet from B.B., addressed to Mrs. Shawe : 

Lady, I send this tributary strain 
Not to condole, but to congratulate : 
I would not so insult thy noble mate 

As to suppose defeat could give him pain. 

Not worthless was the struggle, though in vain, 
Which leaves the vanquish'd victor over fate, 
Upbearing still with head and heart elate, 

And with a conscience wholly free from stain. 

The world may shout upon the winning side, 
Yet he who loses not his self-control, 
But stands erect with independent soul, 

Though foil'd has still a better source of pride ; 

And may be envied — seated by thy side, 

First in thy heart, though last upon the poll. 

Mr. and Mrs. Shawe were among the most 
valued of Bernard Barton's friends ; it was 



120 BERNARD BARTON 

to them that the volume of selections from 
his letters and poems was dedicated by his 
daughter. 

Mr. Barton did not often enlarge upon his 
religious beliefs in his correspondence, but one 
of the clearest and most concise expositions of 
Quakerism that exists, is contained in a letter 
written by the poet to John Linnell in 1830. 
That fine painter and stern individualist had 
leanings towards the simple form of worship 
practised by the Society of Friends, and, al- 
though a stranger, he wrote to Mr. Barton, 
asking for some account of the sect and its 
beliefs, and for information whether it was 
admissible and compatible for a Quaker to carry 
on the profession of artist. B.B.'s summary of 
Quaker doctrine must be sought in Mr. Story's 
Life of John Linnell? but here are his remarks 
upon the relations of Quakerism and Art : 

So far as my own taste, feeling, and judgment are com- 
petent to decide the point, I see no irreconcilable hostility 
between the religious principles of Friends and the indul- 
gence of a taste for painting. But I am quite aware that a 
Quaker painter would be a still greater novelty than a 
Quaker poet, and am almost inclined to doubt whether the 
former would not have a still more difficult and delicate task 
to perform than the latter if he hoped to be regarded by the 
Body as orthodox and consistent. Abstractedly there can 
be no necessary hostility between Quakerism and painting, 
because I know of no good reason why it should be more 
unquakerly to draw or paint a beautiful landscape than to 
build a fine house or lay out and embellish its grounds. But 



1 Published by Messrs. Bentley and Son. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 121 

it is easy to theorise on elementary principles, which, when 
put in practice, involve much difficulty and perplexity. My 
own nutshell of a house is as full of prints and pictures as I 
can well hang it ; but my indulgence in this respect is at 
variance with general practice amongst us, and would be 
regarded, I doubt not, as a species of laxity and latitudi- 
narianism by many excellent and worthy members of our 
Society. 

The correspondence between the two men 
was not extensive, and at other times touched 
only matters of art. This extract from a letter 
dated April 22, 1830, contains discriminative 
criticism of William Blake, whose designs for 
the Book of Job had been lent to the poet by- 
Mr. Linnell, and gives an idea of the range of 
B.B.'s sympathies : 

There is a dryness and hardness in Blake's manner of 
engraving which is very apt to be repulsive to print-collectors 
in general — to any, indeed, who have not taste enough to 
appreciate the force and originality of his conceptions, in 
spite of the manner in which he has embodied them. I 
candidly own I am not surprised at this j his style is little 
calculated to take with the admirers of modern engraving. 
It puts me in mind of some old prints I have seen, and 
seems to combine somewhat of old Albert Diirer with 
Bolswert. I cannot but wish he could have clothed his 
imaginative creations in a garb more attractive to ordinary 
mortals, or else given simple outlines of them. The extreme 
beauty, elegance, and grace of several of his marginal accom- 
paniments induce me to think that they would have pleased 
more generally in that state. But his was not a mind to dic- 
tate to ; and what he has done is quite enough to stamp him 
as a genius of the highest order. A still prouder and more 
enduring meed of praise is due to the excellence and sterling 



122 BERNARD BARTON 

worth of the man ; his child-like simplicity, his manly in- 
dependence, his noble aspirations after the purest and loftiest 
of all fame, appear to me to form a singular union of those 
virtues which distinguished the better citizens of Greece and 
Rome with the milder graces which adorned the primitive 
Apostles. 

In June of the same year Mr. Linnell pre- 
sented to the poet a pastoral etching by his 
own hand, and one of Blake's illustrations to 
Dante; and eight years later, in 1838, we find 
B.B. thanking the painter for a copy of Blake's 
Book of Job, and an engraving by the donor. 
He says : — 

I wish I were a man of more leisure, for if I were I 
should gladly run up to town for the sake of giving thee a 
look, and having some talks about Blake — to say nothing of 
the delight I should feel in seeing some of his extraordinary 
drawings. Were I a rich man, I can scarce tell what I 
would not give to be the possessor of one of his imaginary 
portraits — I mean one of those drawn from a supposed 
sitter, famous in the olden time, I forget whether he ever 
drew Guy Fawkes ; he would have been a good subject for 
him. 

Mr. Barton goes on to say that he has re- 
cently seen 

the drawing of Cowper by Romney, done when he was 
Hayley's guest at Eartham. 'Tis in crayons — rough, careless, 
and unfinished — but such a portrait ! . . . It is a 
tremendous portrait, not to be looked at without mingled 
pity and terror ; it haunted me for days after. Such a 
picture will hardly be ever taken taken again, unless a mad 
painter should again have a mad poet for his sitter. Yet, 
painfully powerful as it is, it has no disgusting extravagance ; 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 123 

it is a fearful and vivid reality ; but though, in your admira- 
tion of it, a mournful feeling is the predominant one, you 
can't take your eyes from it, nor do you wish it ; it touches 
a chord of sympathy, in the indulgence of which you find a 
mournful pleasure which neutralises the pain it would other- 
wise inflict. 

In 1838, Mr. Barton addressed a sonnet to 
* 4 Mr. Linnell, of Bayswater," full of praise for 
his kindness to William Blake ; and then the 
intercourse between painter and poet seems to 
have ceased. 

Allan Cunningham, the writer of breezy 
songs and the biographer of British painters, 
was known and loved by the Quaker Poet. 
We find a reference to him in one of B.B.'s 
letters to Mr. Clemesha, a gentleman who 
travelled unceasingly about the country, with 
whom Mr. Barton carried on what he called a 
Bo-peep correspondence : "When I say k Peep' 
at one place," he writes, " thy ' Bo ' comes from 
another." This particular letter, written in 
1843, lets in a bright light on the less prominent 
B.B., and illustrates his fondness for humours, 
and capacity for passive enjoyment : — 

I never fancy to myself that much, if aught, of personal 
identity can hang about folks in London ; that they can 
see, hear, smell, or think, talk, and feel, as people do in the 
country. I can obscurely understand how Cockneys born 
and bred, or such as are even long resident in Cockaigne, 
and therefore native to that strange element, may in course 
of time acquire a sort of borrowed nature, and by virtue of 
it, a kind of artificial individuality ; but I never was in 
London long enough to get at this, and have always seemed, 
when there, not to be myself, but very much as if I were 



i2 4 BERNARD BARTON 

walking in a dream, or like a bit of seaweed blown off some 
cliff or beach, and drifting with the current — one knew not 
why or how. In a coffee-room, up one of those queer long 
dark inn yards, I have felt more like myself ;— there is more 
of quiet ; folks often sit in boxes apart, and talk in a kind 
of under-tone ; or when they do not, the united effect of so 
many voices becomes a sort of indistinct hum or buzz, 
relieved at intervals by the swinging to and fro of the coffee- 
room door, the clatter of plates, the jingle of glasses, or the 
rustle of the newspaper often turned over. I have spent an 
hour or two after my fashion in this way, at the Four Swans, 
Belle Sauvage, Bolt in Tun, Spread Eagle, and other coach 
houses, by no means unpleasantly, seemingly reading the 
paper, and sipping my tea or coffee, wine or toddy, but 
really catching some amusing scraps of the talk going on 
round, and speculating on the characters of the talkers. 

And here we come to Allan Cunningham — 

But the greatest luxury London had to give, is gone with 
my poor old friend Allan Cunningham. It was worth some- 
thing to steal out of the din and hubbub of crowded streets 
into those large, still, cathedral-like rooms of Chantrey's, 
populous with phantom-like statues, or groups of statues as 
large or larger than life ; some tinted with dust and time, 
others of spectral whiteness, but all silent and solemn ; to 
roam about among these, hearing nothing but the distant 
murmur of rolling carriages, now and then the clink of the 
workman's chisel in some of the yards or workshops, but 
chiefly the low, deliberate, often amusing, and always inter- 
esting talk of honest Allan, in broad Scotch. A morning 
of this sort was well worth going up to London on purpose 
for. 1 

This is one of " honest Allan's" invitations, 
dated June 3rd, 1841 — 

I Allan Cunningham was Chantrey's " factor." 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 125 

Come, my dear Friend, and see me on Friday, and 
bring Miss Barton and Major Moor with you ; you will find 
the doors of the sculptor open, and Allan Cunningham 
ready to welcome you. The evils of Life, and to me they 
have been and continue heavy, interpose both in matters ot 
friendship and correspondence; yet they have not altered 
my nature nor hardened my heart ; tho' they have bleached 
my locks and made me, since a severe illness which I had 
last year, reluctant to move. So come and see me, and let 
us 'give one hour's discharge to care.' 

God bless you, says Allan Cunningham. 

Writing for the last time to B.B. on October 
27th, 1842, in answer to a request for his 
portrait, Allan Cunningham says — 

As for my own head prefixed by Virtue to his edition 
[of Burns, which A. C. edited], I hope to be able to give 
you a far superior one to that ere long : it is harsh and hard, 
and — 

' One would not look quite frightful when one's dead ' 

when in the company of a worthy man and a poet like 
thyself. Only see what a sad hand I write ! God bless you. 

In less than a week Allan Cunningham was no 
more. 

Let us round off the present chapter with a 
description by Mr. Barton of an old friend of 
humbler attainments — Thomas Hurd, of Seck- 
ford Hall. The following sympathetic account 
of this worthy is another example of the poet's 
easy and perspicuous prose. Thomas Hurd 
was, says B.B., writing in 1847, 

a hearty old yeoman of about eighty-six — had occupied 
the farm in which he lived and died about fifty-five years. 
Social, hospitable, friendly ; a liberal master to his labourers, 



126 BERNARD BARTON 

a kind neighbour, and a right merry companion ' within the 
limits of becoming mirth.' In politics, a staunch Whig ; in 
his theological creed, as sturdy a Dissenter ; yet with no 
more party spirit in him than a child. He and I belonged 
to the same book club for about forty years. He entered 
it about fifteen years before I came into these parts, and 
was really a pillar in our literary temple. Not that he 
greatly cared about books, or was deeply read in them, but 
he loved to meet his neighbours, and get them round 
him, on any occasion, or no occasion at all. As a fine 
specimen of the true English yeoman, I have met few to 
equal, hardly any to surpass him, and he looked the character 
as well as he acted it, till within a very few years, when the 
strong man was bowed by bodily infirmity. About twenty- 
six years ago, in his dress costume of a blue coat and yellow 
buckskins, a finer sample of John Bullism you would rarely 
see. It was the whole study of his long life to make the 
few who revolved round him in his little orbit, as happy as 
he always seemed to be himself ; yet I was gravely queried 
with, when I happened to say that his children had asked 
me to write a few lines to his memory, whether I could do 
this in keeping with the general tone of my poetry. The 
speaker doubted if he was a decidedly pious character. He 
had at times, in his altitudes, been known to vociferate at 
the top of his voice, a song of which the chorus was certainly 
not teetotalish — 

' Sing old Rose and burn the bellows, 
Drink and drive dull care away.' 

I would not deny the vocal impeachment, for I had 
heard him sing the song myself. ... As for his being 
or not being a decidedly pious character, that depended 
partly on who might be called on to decide the question. 
. . . Take the good old man for all in all, I look 
not to see his like again, for the breed is going out, I fear. 
His fine spirit of humanity was better, methinks, than much of 
that which apes the tone and assumes the form of divinity. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 127 

The Tudor mansion Seckford Hall, the 
home of Thomas Hurd, is only a mile or so out 
of Woodbridge, situated in one of those in- 
sanitary hollows so dear to our forefathers. 
The builder and original owner, it may be 
interesting to note here, was the Thomas 
Seckford whose munificence has done so much, 
and continues to do so much, for the poor of 
Woodbridge. The Hospital endowed by him 
for aged widowers and bachelors, which is 
hardly less comfortable than its kindred haven 
the Charterhouse, relieves the breadwinners of 
the Suffolk town of half the terrors of lonely eld; 
and the good people of Woodbridge have many 
another cause to be glad that Thomas Seckford 
saw fit to settle where he did. Seckford Hall 
is now fallen into decay, only a few rooms 
being used by the resident farmer, but enough 
of the house remains to enable the feeblest 
imagination to recover some of the glories of 
its hospitable past. 



128 BERNARD BARTON 



CHAPTER VIII. 

EDWARD FITZGERALD. 

Thou windest not through scenery which enchants 
The gazer's eye with much of grand or fair ; 
Yet on thy margin many a wandering pair 
Have found that peaceful pleasure Nature grants 
To those who seek her in her humbler haunts, 
And love and prize them, because she is there. 

Sonnet to the Deben. 

PDWARD FITZGERALD, the author of 
-L* the English version of the Rubdiydt of 
Omar Khayyam, was born at Bredfield House, 
near Woodbridge, in 1809. After spending 
some years of childhood in France, he was sent 
to Bury St. Edmund's school, where W. B. 
Donne, of whom we shall anon hear more, and 
James Spedding, the Baconian scholar, were 
among his companions. In 1826, he entered 
at Trinity College, Cambridge, there becoming 
the fast friend of Thackeray, W. H. Thompson, 
afterwards Master of Trinity, and John Allen, 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 129 

afterwards Archdeacon of Salop. The friend- 
ship of these men, together with that of Alfred 
and Frederic Tennyson and the Rev. George 
Crabbe, grandson of his favourite poet, he re- 
tained until death snapped the bonds : fidelity to 
his chosen intimates being one of his strongest 
characteristics. Mr. FitzGerald took his degree 
and left college in 1830, thereafter assuming the 
habit of the scholarly country gentleman. Hav- 
ing comfortable means, reinforced by that rare 
wisdom which teaches that enough is sufficient, 
he adopted no profession, but gave his time 
to study and contemplation, living a life of 
stoical simplicity. At the time of his acquaint- 
ance with Bernard Barton, he dwelt in a little 
cottage at Boulge, a mile from Woodbridge, on 
the edge of his father's park, with no com- 
panions save a parrot and a Skye terrier. 
Those domestic duties to which he did not 
himself attend were performed by an old- 
fashioned Suffolk woman. In one of his 
letters to Mr. Barton he says — 

I believe I should like to live in a small house just 
outside a pleasant English town all the days of my life, 
making myself useful in a humble way, reading my books, 
and playing a rubber of whist at night. But England 
cannot expect long such a reign of inward quiet as to 
suffer men to dwell so easily to themselves. 

Howbeit Edward FitzGerald came very near 
the realisation of this ideal. 

"He had," writes his friend Mr. Aldis 
Wright, " no liking for the conventional 
usages of society, and was therefore somewhat 

9 



ijo BERNARD BARTON 

of a recluse. But he was by no means 
unsocial, and to those whom he admitted 
to his intimacy he was the most delightful 
of companions. His habits were extremely 
simple ; his charity large and generous, but 
always discriminating ; his nature tender and 
affectionate." 1 

Mr. FitzGerald was never so happy as when 
strolling lazily about the lanes and byways of 
his native county, exchanging jests with his 
rustic acquaintances, or listening to some quaint 
tale. It is certain that no man could ever have 
more completely won the love and respect of 
his humble neighbours, and many are the 
stories of his kindly deeds and words. Suffolk 
people and Suffolk scenery were as dear to 
him as a mother is dear to her child ; and, 
thoroughly as he enjoyed his yearly sojourn in 
London with his friends, he ever left the 
country with pangs of regret. In his letters 
written to B. B. from the city, he now and again 
tells of hearing the invitation to the open-air. 
Thus in April, 1844 : 

A cloud comes over Charlotte Street [where he was 
then lodging] and seems as if it were sailing softly on the 
April wind to fall in a blessed shower upon the lilac buds 
and thirsty anemones somewhere in Essex ; or, who knows ? 
perhaps at Boulge. Out will run Mrs. Faiers [his house- 
keeper], and with red arms and face of woe haul in the 
struggling windows of the cottage, and make all tight. 
Beauty Bob [his parrot] will cast a bird's eye out at the 
shower, and bless the useful wet. Mr. Loder [the Wood- 

I From The Dictionary of National Biography. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 131 

bridge bookseller] will observe to the farmer for whom he 
is doing up a dozen of Queen's Heads that it will be of great 
use : and the farmer will agree that his young barleys wanted 
it much. The German Ocean will dimple with innumerable 
pin points, and porpoises rolling near the surface sneeze 
with unusual pellets of fresh water — 

' Can such things be, 

And overcome us like a summer cloud, 

Without our special wonder ? ' 

Again : 

Oh, Barton man ! but I am grilled here. Oh for to sit 
upon the banks of the dear old Deben with the worthy 
collier sloop going forth into the wide world as the sun 
sinks ! I went all over Westminster Abbey yesterday with a 
party of country folks, to see the tombs. I did this to 
vindicate my way of life. 

And again : 

I have cold, headache, and London disgust. Oh that I 
could look on my anemones ! and hear the sighing of my 
Scotch firs. 

One more plaint : 

I was at a party of modern wits last night that made me 
creep into myself, and wish myself away talking to any 
Suffolk old woman in her cottage, while the trees murmured 
without. 

An earlier letter (April, 1838) describes one 
of London's compensations : 

We have had Alfred Tennyson here ; very droll, and very 
wayward : and much sitting up of nights till two and three 
in the morning with pipes in our mouths : at which good 
hour we would get Alfred to give us some of his magic 
music, which he does between growling and smoking ; and 
so to bed. All this has not cured my Influenza as you may 

QA 



i 3 2 BERNARD BARTON 

imagine : but these hours shall be remembered long after 
the Influenza is forgotten. 

There is an allusion to these London days 
in the dedication to Tennyson's Tiresias, which 
begins — 

Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange, 

Where once I tarried for a while, 
Glance at the wheeling Orb of change, 

And greet it with a kindly smile j 
Whom yet I see as there you sit 

Beneath your sheltering garden-tree, 
And watch your doves about you flit, 

And plant on shoulder, hand and knee, 
Or on your head their rosy feet, 

As if they knew your diet spares 
Whatever moved in that full sheet 

Let down to Peter at his prayers J 
Who live on milk and meal and grass. . . . 

and flows onward to the incomparably felicitous 
close, where the poet asks "Fitz" to take the book 

Less for its own than for the sake 
Of one recalling gracious times, 

When, in our younger London days, 
You found some merit in my rhymes, 

And I more pleasure in your praise. 

Mr. FitzGerald had three hobbies — music, 
gardening, and sailing. Although no creator, 
he had the true musician's feeling for all that was 
beautiful in music, and was wont, said his friend 
Archdeacon Groome, to "get such full har- 
monies out of the organ ... as did good 
to the listener." He also composed a little. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 133 

Sailing was perhaps his keenest joy, and in his 
boat " The Scandal " (so named because that 
was the staple product of Woodbridge), which 
always carried a heavy cargo of books, he spent 
some of the wealthiest hours of his life. Now 
and then Mr. Barton was tempted to accom- 
pany him. Of one voyage which they had 
together Mr. FitzGerald wrote : — 

Nor can the present writer forget the last out-of-door 
party he enjoyed with this amiable man. It was in last 
June, down his favourite river Deben to the Sea. Though 
far from well, when once on board he would be cheerful ; 
was as lively and hearty as any at the little inn at which we 
disembarked to regale ourselves ; and had a word of cheery 
salute for every boat or vessel that passed or met us as we 
drifted home again with a dying breeze at close of evening. 

In later life, owing to the death of his favourite 
boatman, Mr. FitzGerald gave up sailing, and 
took to gardening instead, but his love of the 
river and the sea never diminished. 

Edward FitzGerald wrote very little, and 
published less. He had inflexible belief in 
the desirability of putting forth the best, and 
the best only. He writes to B.B. — 

I know that I could write volume after volume as well as 
others of the mob of gentlemen who write with ease ; but I 
think unless a man can do better, he had best not do at all. 

adding kindly, for the Quaker poet's re- 
assurance, — 

With you the case is different, who have so long been a 
follower of the Muse, and who have had a kindly, sober, 
English, wholesome, religious spirit within you that has 
communicated kindred warmth to many honest souls. 



134 BERNARD BARTON 

His first and last published works had relation 
to Suffolk; for the first was the "little dapper 
memoir" (as he called it) of Bernard Barton, 
from which so many extracts have already been 
given ; and the last was Readings in Crabbe, sl 
selection from Tales of the Hall. In the interim 
he translated Sophocles, Calderon, and the Per- 
sian poets Omar Khayyam and J ami ; and he 
did a little original writing. All his work is 
remarkable ; but it is by his marvellous trans- 
lation, or transfusion, as it has been happily 
called, of the Rubdiydt that Edward FitzGerald 
is best known and will be remembered. It is 
difficult to believe that the haunting beauty of 
these limpid quatrains will ever be forgotten 
while books are read at all. 

Edward FitzGerald has another claim on 
our gratitude by reason of his letters, which are 
among the best in the language. They reveal 
the writer as a man of the keenest intelligence 
and shrewd humour, with unerring instinct for 
the best, and a fine scorn for all things con- 
temptible and cheap. They reveal moreover 
a mind noble and charitable, and a heart as 
tender as a woman's. 

The letters to the Quaker poet although not 
the most entertaining, are the only ones with 
which we are concerned. A few selections 
follow. The first of any value which has been 
preserved is dated April, 1838, and ends thus : 

Now I must finish my letter : and a very stupid one it is. 
Here is a sentence of Warburton's that, I think, is very 
wittily expressed : though why I put it in here is not very 
discoverable. * The Church, like the Ark of Noah, is worth 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 135 

saving : not for the sake of the unclean beasts that almost 
filled it, and probably made most noise and clamour in it, 
but for the little corner of rationality, that was as much dis- 
tressed by the stink within, as by the tempest without.' Is 
it not good ? It is out of his letters : and the best thing in 
them. It is also the best thing in mine. 

The next extract (June, 1838) touches paint- 
ing only, a subject frequently dwelt upon in his 
letters to B.B. : " You have often received a 
letter from me on a Sunday, haven't you ? " he 
asks at another time, adding, " I think I used 
to write you an account of the picture purchases 
of the week, that you might have something to 
reflect upon in your silent meeting. (N.B. This 
is very wrong, and I don't mean it.)" Mr. Fitz- 
Gerald, himself no mean artist, was an inde- 
fatigable picture buyer. This is the extract : 

I do not know very much of Salvator : is he not rather 
a melodramatic painter ? No doubt, very fine in his way. 
But Claude and the two Poussins are the great ideal 
painters of Landscape. Nature looks more stedfast in 
them than in other painters : all is wrought up into a 
quietude and harmony that seem eternal. This is also one 
of the mysterious charms in the Holy Families of Raffaelle 
and of the early painters before him : the faces of the 
Madonnas are beyond the discomposure of passion, and 
their very draperies betoken an Elysian atmosphere where 
wind never blew. The best painter of the unideal Christ 
is, I think, Rembrandt : as one may see in his picture at the 
National Gallery, and that most wonderful one of our 
Saviour and the Disciples at Emmaus in the Louvre : there 
they sit at supper as they might have sat. Rubens and the 
Venetian Painters did neither one thing nor the other : 
their holy figures are neither ideal nor real : and it is incon- 
gruous to see one of the Rubens' brawny boors dressed 



i;6 BERNARD BARTON 



o 



up in the ideal red and blue drapery with which the early 
Italians clothed their figures of Christ. But enough of 
all this. 

A year later (July 24, 1839), Mr. FitzGerald 
is at Bedford, the "land of old Bunyan." He 
says whimsically — 

I begin to have dreadful suspicions that this fruitless way 
of life is not looked upon with satisfaction by the open eyes 
above. One really ought to dip for a little misery : perhaps 
however all this ease is only intended to turn sour by and 
bye, and so to poison one by the very nature of self- 
indulgence. Perhaps again as idleness is so very great a 
trial of virtue, the idle man who keeps himself tolerably 
chaste &c, may deserve the highest reward : the more 
idle, the more deserving. Really I don't jest : but I don't 
propound these things as certain. 

There is a fine touch in the next letter 
(October, 1839) : 

Thank you for the picture of my dear old Bredfield 
which you have secured for me : it is most welcome. . . . 
Some of the tall ash-trees about it used to be visible at sea : 
but I think their topmost branches are decayed now. This 
circumstance I put in, because it will tell in your verse 
illustration of the view. From the road before the lawn, 
people used plainly to see the topmasts of the men-of-war 
lying in Hollesley bay during the war. I like the idea of 
this; the old English house holding up its enquiring chim- 
neys and weathercocks (there is great physiognomy in 
weathercocks) toward the far-off seas and the ships upon it. 

Later in the letter we come to this passage, 
wherein a deeper note is struck : 

I have gone through Homer's Iliad — sorry to have 
finished it. The accounts of the Zoolu people, with 
Dingarn, their king, &c, give one a very good idea of the 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 137 

Homeric heroes, who were great brutes : but superior to the 
Gods who governed them : which also has been the case 
with most nations. It is a lucky thing that God made Man, 
and that Man has not to make God : we should fare badly, 
judging by the specimens already produced — Frankenstein 
Monster Gods, formed out of the worst and rottenest scraps 
of humanity — gigantic — and to turn destructively upon their 
Creators — 

' But be ye of good cheer ! I have overcome the world.' 
So speaks a gentle voice. 

When Mr. FitzGerald was in Suffolk the 
correspondence between himself and Mr. Barton 
was, of course, superseded by personal inter- 
course : hence there are sometimes long spaces 
between the letters. In January, 1842, he 
writes — 

You tell my Father you mean to write a Poem about my 
invisibility — and somehow it seems strange to myself that I 
have been so long absent from Woodbridge. It was a toss 
up (as boys say — and perhaps Gods) whether I should go 
now ; — the toss has decided I should not. On the contrary 
I am going to see Donne at Mattishall : a visit, which, hav- 
ing put off a fortnight ago, I am now determined to pay. 
But if I do not see you before I go to London, I shall 
assuredly be down again by the latter part of February : 
when toasted cheese and ale shall again unite our souls. 
You need not however expect that I can return to such 
familiar intercourse as once (in former days) passed between 
us. New honours in society have devolved upon me the 
necessity of a more dignified deportment. A letter has been 
sent from the Secretary of the Ipswich Mechanics' Institu- 
tion asking me to Lecture — any subject but Party Politics 
or Controversial Divinity. On my politely declining, another, 
a fuller, and a more pressing, letter was sent urging me to 
comply with their demand : I answered to the same effect, 



138 BERNARD BARTON 

but with accelerated dignity. I am now awaiting the third 
request in confidence : if you see no symptoms of its being 
mooted, perhaps you will kindly propose it. I have pre- 
pared an answer. 

At the end of a letter from which a quota- 
tion has already been made, dated April 1 1 , 
1844, is this passage : 

Oh this wonderful wonderful world, and we who stand 
in the middle of it are all in a maze, except poor Matthews 
of Bedford, who fixes his eyes upon a wooden Cross and 
has no misgiving whatsoever. When I was at his chapel on 
Good Friday, he called at the end of his grand sermon on 
some of the people to say merely this, that they believed 
Christ had redeemed them : and first one got up and in 
sobs declared she believed it : and then another, and then 
another — I was quite overset :— all poor people : how much 
richer than all who fill the London Churches. Theirs is 
the kingdom of Heaven ! 
This is a sad farrago. Farewell. 

Writing from Leamington in October 1844, 
he says — 

I expect to be here about a week, and I mean to give a 
day to looking over the field of Edgehill, on the top of 
which, I have ascertained, there is a very delightful pot- 
house, commanding a very extensive view. Don't you wish 
to sit at ease in such a high tower, with a pint of porter at 
your side, and to see beneath you the ground that was 
galloped over by Rupert and Cromwell two hundred years 
ago, in one of the richest districts of England, and on one 
of the finest days in October, for such my day is to be ? 

In the meanwhile I cast regretful glances of memory back 
to my garden at Boulge, which I want to see dug up and 
replanted. I have bought anemone roots which in the 
Spring shall blow Tyrian dyes, and Irises of a newer and 
more brilliant prism than Noah saw in the clouds. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 139 

A somewhat similar passage occurs in a 
letter of November 27th : 

We see a fine white frost over the grass this morning ; 
and I suppose you have rubbed your hands and cried, ' Oh 
Lauk, how cold it is ! ' twenty times before I write this. 
Now one's pictures become doubly delightful to one. I 
certainly love winter better than summer. Could one but 
know, as one sits within the tropic latitude of one's fire- 
side, that there was not increased want, cold, and misery, 
beyond it ! 

So much for winter. Spring, when it comes, 
steals, as it always does, all his affections. On 
April 3rd, 1845, ne writes — 

I have been loitering out in the garden here this golden 
day of Spring. The woodpigeons coo in the covert ; the 
frogs croak in the pond ; the bees hum about some thyme : 
and some of my smaller nieces have been busy gathering 
primroses, 'all to make posies suitable to this present month.' 
I cannot but think with a sort of horror of being in London 
now : but I doubt I must be ere long. ... I have 
abjured all Authorship, contented at present with the divine 
Poem which Great Nature is now composing about us. 
These primroses seem more wonderful and delicious 
Annuals than Ackerman ever put forth. I suppose no man 
ever grew so old as not to feel younger in Spring. 

We have no more quotations to make from 
the letters to Mr. Barton. There are how- 
ever others with direct bearing upon his life. 
In 1847, Mr. FitzGerald writes to Samuel 
Laurence about a portrait of Bernard Barton, 
which that artist was to paint, urging him to 
make haste : 

He [B. B.] is now sixty-three ; and it won't do, you 
know, for grand-climacterical people to procrastinate — nay, 



140 BERNARD BARTON 

to proannuate — which is a new, and, for all I see, a very 
bad word. 

Directions follow as to how the painter shall 
get to Woodbridge, and then the words — 

I write thus much because my friends seem anxious ; my 
friend, I mean, Miss Barton : for Barton pretends he dreads 
having his portrait done ; which is ' my eye.' So come 
and do it. He is a generous, worthy, simple-hearted, fellow : 
worth ten thousand better wits. 

The portrait, a beautiful drawing in coloured 
chalks, which now hangs in the place of honour 
in the house of Bernard Barton's daughter, is 
reproduced as the frontispiece to this book. 
During the sittings humorous passages from 
Dickens were read to the poet. 

In February, 1849, Mr. FitzGerald writes 
again to Samuel Laurence — 

Barton is out of health ; some affection of the heart, I 
think, that will never leave him, never let him be what he 
was when you saw him. He is forced to be very abstemious 
. . . but he bears his illness quite as a man ; and looks 
very demurely to the necessary end of all life. 

Edward FitzGerald, who subsequently be- 
came the husband of Lucy Barton, survived 
B.B. by thirty-four years. He died in 1883, 
while on his annual visit to the Rev. George 
Crabbe, the grandson of the poet, at Merton 
Rectory, leaving behind him a memory that 
will long be green and sweet on the country 
side, and one work of art which is never likely 
to be surpassed. Of his death Tennyson 
wrote, in the epilogue to " Tiresias " — 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 141 

Gone into darkness, that full light 

Of friendship ! past, in sleep, away 
By night, into the deeper night ! 

The deeper night ? A clearer day 
Than our poor twilight dawn on earth — 

If night, what barren toil to be ! 
What life, so maim'd by night, were worth 

Our living out ? Not mine to me 
Remembering all the golden hours 

Now silent, and so many dead, 
And him the last ; and laying flowers, 

This wreath, above his honour'd head, 
And praying that, when I from hence 

Shall fade with him into the unknown, 
My close of earth's experience 

May prove as peaceful as his own. 



i 4 2 BERNARD BARTON 



CHAPTER IX. 

FRIENDS OF LATER DAYS. 

And thus our best affections, those which bind 

Heart unto heart by friendship's purest tie, 
Have an internal life, and are enshrined 

Too deeply in our bosoms soon to die. 

Spring's opening bloom and summer's azure sky 
Might lend them animation scarce their own ; 

But when November winds are loud and high, 
And Nature's dirge assumes its deepest tone, 
The joy of social hours in fullest charm is known. 

To a Friend. 

IN later life Mr. Barton found a new friend in 
William Bodham Donne, to whom he was 
introduced by Edward FitzGerald. Mr. Donne 
was then living at Mattishall, in Norfolk, 
whither B.B. occasionally journeyed ; but he 
afterwards exchanged this pleasant home for 
the City, becoming first the Librarian of the 
London Library and afterwards Reader of 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 143 

Plays, a post held by him until his death in 
1882. He was a ripe scholar, and a man of 
sound taste, rich humour, and thoughtful kind- 
liness : "one of the finest gentlemen I know," 
wrote one of his friends. 

Perhaps one of Mr. Donne's greatest at- 
tractions to B.B. was his kinship with Cowper, 
for whom the Quaker poet had a reverence not 
to be exaggerated. Mr. Donne not only was 
himself related to Cowper's mother, herself a 
descendant of John Donne the metaphysical 
poet, but he married a lady whose mother was 
a sister of Cowper's cousin and friend, the Rev. 
John Johnson, " Johnny of Norfolk." Further- 
more, there lived under his roof Mrs. Anne 
Bodham, the widow of the Rev. Thomas Bod- 
ham, of Mattishall, where Cowper had sojourned 
in 1795. Mrs. Bodham, who was the daughter 
of the Rev. Roger Donne, of Catfield, in Nor- 
folk, the poet's uncle, had romped with her 
illustrious cousin when a child. Moreover, in 
later life she gave him the purse which drew 
forth the stanzas beginning — 

My gentle Anne, whom heretofore, 
When I was young, and thou no more 

Than plaything for a nurse, 
I danced and fondled on my knee, 
A kitten both in size and glee . . . 

I thank thee for my purse. 

And she once spent a parson's week, "that is 
to say, about a fortnight and no longer," with 
Cowper and Mrs. Unwin. But — chiefly — it 
was Mrs. Bodham who sent to the poet his 
mother's picture, and by this simple act inspired 



144 BERNARD BARTON 

one of the most beautiful poems in this or any 
language. Bernard Barton's feelings towards 
so sacred a lady can easily be imagined. 
Writing to Mr. Donne in 1840, he says — 

Pray make my very kindest respects to Mrs. Donne, and 
my most reverential ones to Mrs. Bodham. I believe I am 
more proud of having sat on a sofa with her, than of having, 
or being about to have, a ship named after me. The 
• Bernard Barton ' may go to the bottom (though I hope 
better things for her, — how odd it seems to write of myself 
in the feminine gender ! ) and her fate may bring disgrace 
on my name, as having tended to bring about such a 
catastrophe ; but nothing in the unrolled scroll of the future, 
so long as that future is passed by me in this state of being, 
can cheat me out of the remembrance of that bright hour 
or two at Mattishall, and in its environs. There are few in 
my life that I have lived over again with more delight. 

I am finishing my letter, begun three days ago, in my 
own little study, six feet square, at the witching hour of 
night, having just closed two ponderous ledgers brought out 
of the bank, to do lots of figure-work, after working there 
from nine to six. I only wish I had thee in the opposite 
chair, to take a pinch of snuff out of the Royal George 1 , or 
another, as interesting a relic, standing by me on the table — 
a plain wooden box, the original cost of which might be 
2 s. 6d. or 3s.; but to me it has a worth passing show, having 
been the working-box and table-companion of Crabbe the 
poet. It was given me by his son and biographer, and I 
prize it far beyond a handsome silver one, Crabbe's dress 
box, which I think his son told me he gave to Murray. 

This brings us to the Rev. George Crabbe, the 
second of that name, and the son of " Nature's 
sternest painter, yet her best." Mr. Crabbe was 

1 A snuff-box made out of the recovered wood of the ' Royal George.* 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 145 

born in 1785, and was educated by his father and 
at Cambridge. After some years of service as 
a curate, he was presented, in 1834, with the 
livings of Bredfield and Petistree, in Suffolk, and 
at Bredfield he lived until his death in 1857. 
Mr. Barton therefore did not know him until 
comparatively late in life, but they soon became 
the firmest friends, and no visitor was more 
warmly welcomed to the Rectory than the 
Quaker poet. The regard was returned, and 
the amiable Bredfield group would not infre- 
quently gather round B.B.'s tea-table. Mr. 
Crabbe was himself an author, having written 
the life of his father for Mr. Murray, but he 
was a man first. Says Mr. Leslie Stephen : 
" He inherited his fathers humour, was a 
sturdy, old-fashioned gentleman, enjoying long 
walks amidst fine scenery or to objects of 
antiquarian interest, and professing a hearty con- 
tempt for verse, except, apparently, his father's." * 
Although Bredfield is only a short distance 
from Woodbridge, Mr. Barton's opportunities 
for walking thither were not frequent, nor was 
he disposed for much exercise ; consequently 
much of his intercourse with Mr. Crabbe was 
carried on by letter. Here is a note touching 
pedestrianism, written in 1847 : 

Dear C. — 

Thou hast no notion what an effort it is to me to get 
out, or thou wouldst marvel not at my staying at home. 
Did not Solomon say there is a time for going out, and a 
time for staying at home. If he did not, he ought to have 
said it ; and his omission negatives not the fact. 

I From The Dictionary of National Biography. 

IO 



146 BERNARD BARTON 

I yet hope to see Bredfield one day or the other ; but 
the when and the how are hid from me. My walking 
faculties are not what they used to be ; and flying is too 
costly to have recourse to. Besides, my good old friend, 
I can't make out that it is any farther from Bredfield to 
Woodbridge than it is from here to thine; yet I think I 
perform that pious pilgrimage three times to thy one. 
Think of that, and make allowance for my old age and 
growing infirmities. Thine, with love to all the younkers, 
hes and shes, ever truly, Bernardus. 

With these " younkers" Mr. Barton was a 
special favourite, as, in fact, he was with all 
"younkers," and great fun did they have 
together at hospitable Bredfield. Here are 
other extracts from B.B.'s letters to Mr. 
Crabbe : 

Many years ago I wrote some verses for a Child's 
Annual, to accompany a print of Doddridge's mother 
teaching him Bible History from the Dutch tiles round 
their fire-place. I had clean forgotten both the print and 
my verses ; but some one has sent me a child's penny cotton 
handkerchief, on which I find a transcript of that identical 
print, and four of my stanzas printed under it. This hand- 
kerchief celebrity tickles me somewhat. Talk of fame ! is not 
this a fame which comes home, not only to ' men's fastness 
and bosoms J but to children's noses, into the bargain ! Tom 
Churchyard calls it an indignity, an insult, looks scorny 
[this is a good word — a Suffolkism] at it ; and says he would 
cuff any urchin whom he caught blowing his nose on one of 
his sketches ! All this arises from his not knowing the 
complicated nature and texture of all worldly fame. 'Tis 
like the image the Babylonish King dreamt of with its 
golden head, baser metal lower down, and miry clay for 
the feet. It will not do to be fastidious j you must take the 
idol as it is ; its gold sconce, if you can get it ; if not, take 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 147 

the clay feet, or one toe of another foot, and be thankful, 
and make what you can of it. I write verse to be read ! it 
is a matter of comparative indifference to me whether I am 
read from a fine bound book, on a drawing-room table, or 
spelt over from a penny rag of a kerchief by the child of a 
peasant or a weaver. So, honour to the cotton printer, say 
I, whoever he be ; that bit of rag is my patent as a house- 
hold poet. 

A few hours later, the following remarks con- 
cerning letter writing, on which art B.B. was 
no mean authority, were penned and posted : 

My dear Friend, 

Here goes for my second letter to thee this blessed day. 
If that a'nt being a letter-ary character I should like to know 
what is. Some folks make a great fuss about writing letters j 
they pretend to say they can't write a letter j they never know 
what to say ; yet they can talk, an hour by the clock ! as if 
there were any more difficulty in talking on paper than in a 
noisier lingo. I never could understand the difference. 
Not that I should prefer epistolizing with a friend to having 
him tete-a-tete; but no one can carry his friends about with 
him ; and when you are two miles apart you can no more 
hope to make a friend hear you, than if you were twenty or 
two hundred. Then talking on paper seems to me just as 
natural and easy as talking with your tongue ; and so it 
would be to everyone else, if they did not think it necessary 
to write fine letters, and say something smart or striking. 
This lies at the bottom of it. A man cares little, by com- 
parison, what he blurts out, viva voce, he thinks he may say 
a silly think with impunity, it can't stand on record against 
him ; but when he gets a pen in his hand, he fancies, for- 
sooth, he has a character to win, or to keep, for being 
eloquent, witty, or profound ; the natural result is, he 
writes a stupid, unnatural letter ; then says he hates letter- 
writing, and wonders how anybody can like it. Women, 

IOA 



148 BERNARD BARTON 

who act more on impulse than we do, and make fewer 
metaphysical distinctions, and are less conceited, though 
they may have a pretty sprinkling of vanity, beat us out and 
out at letter-writing. A letter with a woman, if she be good 
for anything, is an affair of the heart rather than the head, so 
they put more heart into their letters. 

The subject is not yet exhausted, for four days 
afterwards B.B. says — 

I am inclined to think I did not go far enough in my 
position that it is as easy to write as to talk. I have a great 
notion it is much easier, at least I find I can always give 
utterance to my own thoughts and feelings with more 
readiness, ease, and fluency, on paper than orally — -and I 
cannot conceive why others should not. In company, 
conversation may be going on all round you, and your 
attention is apt to be divided and distracted — even in a 
tete-a-tete you must have two duties to perform, that of 
listener, as well as speaker, and in your desire not to engross 
more than your share of the talk, you are not unlikely to get 
less. In viva voce converse too, how often it happens that 
you cannot think of the very thing you most wanted to say. 
Many a time, after a long and moody discussion of a topic 
with a friend about a subject on which we took opposite views, 
I have called to mind, when too late to be of any use to me, 
some pithy argument which would have blown all his to 
atoms, and which I should have been almost sure to have 
had at my fingers' ends had I been quietly arguing the 
matter on paper in my own study. 

The letter hereafter printed, beginning with 
an inquiry into the mystery of friendship, is 
dated " 8 month, 20, 1846" : 

My dear Friend, 

I was going to begin ' My dear old Friend,' for I 
have sometimes hard work to convince myself that our 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 149 

acquaintance is only of few years' standing. There are 
natures so intrenched in all sorts of artificial outworks, each 
of which must be deliberately carried by siege ere you can 
get at what there is of nature in them, that you had need 
know them, in conventional phraseology, half or a quarter 
of a life, ere you know aught about them. There are 
others whom, by a sort of instinctive free-masonry, you 
seem old friends with at once. The value of the acquisi- 
tion depends not always on the time and labour it costs to 
make it — it is very often clean the contrary ; for it by no 
means unfrequently turns out, that what has cost you much 
time and pains to get at is worth little when obtained. I 
speak not of principles or truths, which you must find out 
for yourself, and this must often be a slow process ; but I 
am talking of those who profess them, and these, methinks, 
ought to be more promptly discernible and discoverable. 
Man would not be such a riddle to man ; did not too many 
of us wear masks, and intrench ourselves in all sorts of 
conventionalities and formalities. I do not think there is 
much of these in either of us ; and that I take it is the 
reason why we have got all the more readily at each 
other. Enough, however, of this long introduction, which 
I have blundered into with design or malice afore- 
thought. 

We come now to the Churchyard family, 
by whom Mr. Barton was always welcomed 
with affectionate warmth. Thomas Church- 
yard was in many ways a remarkable man. 
He was a lawyer with too little love for the 
profession ever to attain eminence in it : he 
was an artist of such ability that had he only had 
right training he might have achieved a fame 
hardly less than that of his great exemplar, 
Constable. As it was, Thomas Churchyard 
remained to the end of his days a lawyer with 



i S p BERNARD BARTON 

a taste for painting. We find Mr. FitzGerald 
writing to Samuel Laurence — 

My Constable has been greatly admired, and is reckoned 
quite genuine by our great judge, Mr. Churchyard. Mr. 
C. paints himself (not in body colours, as you waggishly in- 
sinuate), and nicely, too. He understands Gainsborough, 
Constable, and Old Crome. 

His un-professional industry was amazing. 
He never returned from a country walk with- 
out one or two new sketches in his pocket 
book, while the best part of every day on which 
he did not ramble was spent in his studio. 
What B.B. did for Woodbridge with his pen 
Tom Churchyard did with his brush, and be- 
tween them there cannot be one favoured spot 
within a radius of ten miles of the town uncom- 
memorated in poem or picture. 

The poet and the painter were the most 
intimate cronies : the word crony here being 
taken to mean a friend to whom one resorts in 
gay moments rather than at those times when 
shadows are falling. Many were the cheerful 
evenings which Mr. Barton spent in the 
Churchyards' hospitable home. The Lawyer's 
opinion of the latest pictorial 4< find " was always 
eagerly sought before the public gaze rested 
upon it ; and the two connoisseurs frequently 
exchanged works of art. Now and then the 
poet would send round a barrel of oysters or 
some other delicacy ; such a present being 
gladly received both for itself and for the as- 
surance it carried that the giver would follow 
at evening to share the feast. On other nights 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 151 

the artist would walk over to the bank house. 
At these meetings merriment ran high. Some- 
times Edward FitzGerald was of the party, and 
sometimes he was in his turn the host. Writing 
to Samuel Laurence in 1843, ne savs — 

On Saturday I give supper to B. Barton and Churchyard. 
I wish you could be with us. We are the chief wits of 
Woodbridge, and one man has said that he envies our con- 
versations ! So we flatter each other in the country. 

In 1839, we find the following cheery lines 
addressed by B. B. " To T. C. — at Forty-one," 
a good example of the Quaker Poet's lighter 
vein : 

On the birthday of a King, 

Or a Queen, let Laureates sing ; 

And to recompense their lay, 

Quaff their sack, or pouch their pay ; 

In such odes I see no fun j 

Here's to Tom — at forty-one ! 

If a Poet's wish could tell, 

Doubt not I would wish thee well ; 

Yet what could best wish of mine 

Give — but is already thine ? 

Wife and bairns, surpassed by none— 

These are thine at forty-one ! 

With a good house o'er thy head, 
And a table — amply spread ; 
With a fire-side warm and bright, 
Faces all in smiles bedight ; 
Thus may Life's sands sparkling run 
As they do at forty-one. 



152 BERNARD BARTON 

With good paintings on each wall, 
Holding sense and sight in thrall ; 
Morlands, Constables, and Cromes — 
Good as grace much prouder domes, 
Sip thy wine and bite thy bun, 
And so welcome forty-one ! 

With good pictures of thy own, 
Wearing Nature's tint and tone ; 
And a love for others, too, 
Be they but to Nature true. 
What with brush, and dog and gun, 
Thou'rt still young at forty-one ! 

May old age forbear to mar 
E'en a puff of thy cigar, 
Or impair thine eye or hand, 
Or o'ercloud thy household band ; 
But may every boon be thine 
Friendship's blessing would assign. 
Now my Birthday rhyme is done — 
Good-bye ! Tom ! at forty-one ! 

Thomas Churchyard had three daughters 
who inherited his artistic gift, but were de- 
prived of much of the benefit such a posses- 
sion might have been to them by the loss of 
regular training. They still live in Woodbridge, 
and have many pleasant memories of Bernard 
Barton. When, in 1844, Ellen, the eldest, was 
sent away to Bury St. Edmunds to school, the 
poet was at the pains of writing her a monthly 
letter, wherein were chronicled the news of 
Woodbridge and his own doings, accompanied 
with much good counsel. By Miss Churchyard's 
permission the following extract from the first 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 153 

of the series, dated August 6th, 1844, finds its 
way into print : 

Dear Nelly, 

Should good Mrs. Jay [of Bury St. Edmunds], know- 
ing nothing of my handwriting, manifest the slightest curiosity 
who thy correspondent is,— and I allow it is the duty of ladies 
admitting pupils of thy age, my dear, to know somewhat of 
those who write letters to them, — tell her at once that this 
and any future sheet similarly superscribed, comes from an 
old man of sixty, a Quaker into the bargain, who has written 
heaps of rhymes in his day, and continues to take heaps of 
snuff, and to make long rows of figures, and add 'em up, 
and carry them over from one week to another ; and if, on 
hearing all this, she does not say, ' My dear, Mr. Barton 
may write to you as often as he chooses, you cannot have a 
more unexceptionable correspondent '—or make some pretty 
little speech of the sort ; — why, it will only prove she does 
not yet know me as well as the good folks of Woodbridge. 

Ellen Churchyard has a further interest to 
us in being the ''Very Young Housewife" to 
whom B.B. addressed these graceful stanzas : 

To write a book of household song, 

Without one verse to thee, 
Whom I have known and loved so long, 

Were all unworthy me. 

Have I not seen thy needle plied 

With as much ready glee, 
As if it were thy greatest pride 

A sempstress famed to be ? 

Have I not ate pies, pudding, tarts, 
And bread, thy hands had kneaded, 

All excellent— as if those arts 

Were all that thou hadst heeded ? 



154 BERNARD BARTON 

Have I not seen thy cheerful smile, 

And heard thy voice as gay, 
As if such household cares, the while, 

To thee were sport and play ? 

Yet can thy pencil copy well 

Landscape, or flower, or face ; 
And thou canst waken music's spell 

With simple, natural grace. 

Thus variously to play thy part, 

Before thy teens are spent, 
Honours far more thy head and heart, 

Than mere accomplishment ! 

So wear the wreath thou well hast won ; 

And be it understood 
I frame it not in idle fun 

For girlish womanhood. 

But in it may a lesson lurk, 

Worth teaching now-a-days ; 
That girls may do all household work, 

Nor lose a poet's praise ! 

A year or so after the poet's death, Mr. 
FitzGerald grangerised a copy of the selections 
from his poems and letters, calling in the 
assistance of Mr. Churchyard and two of his 
daughters. A very charming volume was the 
result, rich in water-colour drawings of the 
Barton country, some of them, particularly 
those of the Deben, being of great beauty. 
Mr. Churchyard died in 1865, at the age of 
sixty-seven. He left behind him a large col- 
lection of pictures and sketches, many of which 
have been engraved in publications descriptive 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 155 

of the county. To a patriotic Suffolk man an 
album of his water-colour drawings would be of 
incalculable value. 

Among Bernard Barton's younger friends, 
in whose company he could shake off his years 
as easily as a Newfoundland dog can shake off 
drops of water, were Elizabeth (" Libby") and 
Maria Louisa Charlesworth, the daughters of 
the Rev. John Charlesworth, rector of Flowton, 
in Suffolk. Maria Charlesworth (18 19-1880) 
afterwards became the author of that very 
favourite nursery-book, Ministering Children, 
and many other religious works. To Elizabeth, 
who is now the wife of Professor Cowell, of 
Cambridge, we owe Leaves of Memory. Listen- 
ing with a lingering ear to memories of a full 
and happy past, 

1 And noting ere they fade away 
The little lines of yesterday,' 

her charming book becomes " Leaves of 
Memory " to many others beside the author. 
" Libby" seems to have been a somewhat lax 
correspondent, for we find B.B. on one 
occasion at least chaffing her thus pleasantly : 

I begin to grow sceptical myself, not as to the fact of 
letters being writeable, but as to there being such a person 
as Elizabeth Charlesworth to write them. ... I begin 
to have the oddest and queerest misgivings as to whether that 
migratory life of thine thou hast lived so long, may not 
have attenuated all that was bodily in thee into air, thin 
air ! and when one begins to admit a doubt as to the bodily 
existence of an old correspondent, hosts of thick-coming 
fancies flock in ; if I begin to doubt whether there be now 
a Libby Charlesworth in positive and real substance moving 



156 BERNARD BARTON 

about on this world of ours, what proof have I there ever 
was such a person ? I once read a very ingenious treatise 
written to show that there never was such a person as 
Napoleon ; methinks I could write one full as plausible to 
show that there never was an Elizabeth Charlesworth. 
While I kept on having letters from thee, a sort of vague 
idea that there was some where a somebody, or something, 
corporeal or spiritual, or both, which answered — being so 
addressed or apostrophized, tended to perpetuate the idea 
of thy reality. I could think of thee, as one does of the 
wandering Jew of antiquity, and I had thoughts of address- 
ing thee in verse, with these lines of Wordsworth for my 

motto : 

O, Cuckoo ! shall I call thee bird ? 
Or but a wandering voice ? ' 

But the voice having ceased to make its responses, I am at a 
loss what to think, or to do ; so I just scribble these lines as 
a sort of last resource, a forlorn hope. 

After one of his very uncommon departures 
from Woodbridge, in 1844, ne writes to Maria 
Charlesworth — 

I go out so rarely that I am in a state of bewilderment 
on such occasions, and seem to myself to be as one walking 
in a dream. It can therefore hardly be strange that I should 
have lost thy letter, having at that period lost myself. — Don't 
think it any mark of disrespect to thyself, for had I been 
favoured with one from the queen of Sheba, on the theory 
of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe's Letters from the Dead to the Living, 
it would in all likelihood have fared no better. How should 
a man be a safe keeper of anything, when, a change of 
locality having clean taken him out of himself, he is no 
longer, in fact, himself. I have been home two days, but I 
am not myself yet. It will take a good fortnight ere I shall 
fully regain my personal identity. I keep picking up, in 
lucid intervals, first one and then another of the disjuncta 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 157 

membra of my old self— as children put together a dis- 
sected puzzle, which they have a vague memory of having 
put together before. But enough of this confused babble. 

The following letter to Maria tells its own 
story. A whole carriageful of Bernard Barton's 
friends had one afternoon in 1844 suddenly 
appeared and as suddenly vanished. Almost 
before they could have left Woodbridge behind 
them, B.B. sat down to write — 

Dear Maria, 

Does not this ' look like business ' ? — -as Con- 
stable's men said to my artist friend, when he set up his 
easel behind Flatford Mill, to paint Willy Lott's house. I 
have hardly started thee from our gate, when I am in my 
cabin writing a letter, or letteret, to greet thee at the 
morrow's breakfast table. What I shall find to put into it, 
I will not stop to ask myself. First and foremost, Lucy and 
the monkey 1 send all sorts of kind and cordial greetings, 
which they say must be specially welcome after the absence 
of a whole night. Secondly, we are all of us charmed 
with your flying visit, and should have been still more 
charmed had it been a less flying one, for the whole thing 
was such a whirl, there was not time to group you in 
tableaux, far less to study or contemplate you individually ; 
it was for all the world like a peep into a kaleidoscope, 
before the component items have shaped themselves into 
any symmetrical whole ; and so you keep flitting before 
my vision at this moment. Grandmamma prominent one 
minute, then those Tivetshall girls, then Libby and thee. 

Then come Samuel and the Etonian, and Miss B 

bringing up the rear. It was certainly a thing to be thank- 
ful for, to get such a group together, even to have a 
glimpse of, but one can hardly help regretting it was for a 

1 A pet niece. 



158 BERNARD BARTON 

glimpse only. Old proverbs, 'tis true, say somewhat of 
welcoming the coming and speeding the parting guest. 
But the latter was scarcely necessary when guests speed 
themselves off so rapidly. However, I will not grumble, 
but try and be most thankful for the moment you did 
give us. 

We come lastly to Major Edward Moor. 
In a brief but exquisitely done memoir of 
Bernard Barton, which Mr. FitzGerald wrote for 
a Suffolk paper in 1849, he says — 

Scarce a year has elapsed since the death of one of his 
[B.B.'s] oldest and dearest friends — Major Moor — whose 
praise he justly celebrated in verse. Major Moor was also as 
well known to the public by his books, as much beloved by a 
large circle of friends. These two men were, perhaps, 
of equal abilities, though of a different kind : their virtues 
equal and the same. Long does the memory of such men 
haunt the places of their mortal abode ; stirring within us, 
perhaps, at the close of many a day, as the sun sets over the 
scenes with which they were so long associated. It is 
surely not improper to endeavour to record something to 
the honour of such men in their own neighbourhoods. 
Nay, should we not, if we could, make their histories as 
public as possible? for surely none could honour them 
without loving them, and, perhaps, unconsciously striving 
to follow in their footsteps. 

There is this further testimony to Major 
Moor's sweetness of character in one of Mr. 
FitzGerald's letters to Mrs. E. B. Cowell (Miss 
E. Charlesworth) : 

Also I shall send you dear Major Moor's Oriental Frag- 
ments; an almost worthless Book, I doubt, to those who 
do not know him — which means, love him ! And somehow 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 159 

all of us in our corner of Suffolk knew something of him : 
and so again loved something of him. For there was 
nothing at all about him not to be beloved. 

To such a tribute it is impossible to add any- 
thing but bare fact. Major Edward Moor was an 
Indian officer who, on his retirement, settled at 
Great Bealings, in Suffolk, and interested him- 
self in county affairs. He was the author of a 
glossary of Suffolk words and many pamphlets 
on political and other matters. One of his 
books, describing some mysterious bell-ringing 
at the Major's house, was written for sale at a 
Woodbridge bazaar in 1841 ; and to this work 
B. B. contributed a metrical prologue and 
epilogue, together with a letter to the author 
which contains this passage : 

The crying folly of this utilitarian age, is to have every, 
thing made clear : it is in harmony with its superficia 
impertinence to decry all mystery : to want to have every- 
thing proved by demonstration, and clearly accounted for, 
on philosophical principles. I have small sympathy with 
such shallow philosophy, and am always glad when any- 
thing, however trivial, occurs, which makes such would-be 
knowing ones at fault. If I knew how thy bells were rung, 
methinks I would not tell every one ; though I should like to, 
to be able to gratify thy own rational curiosity. However, 
I am well content it should still remain a mystery. It is 
far more poetical than if it were cleared up. Then the odds 
are, there would be little in it. Now there is somewhat, 
though not much, perhaps, beyond its being incompre- 
hensible ; and that is something now-a-days. . . . We 
are getting as hard as the nether millstone — as dry as ' the 
remainder biscuit after a voyage ' : like old Cutting of Play- 
ford, who used to boast he believed nothing that he heard, 



160 BERNARD BARTON 

and only half of what he saw. I hold not with the Cutting- 
onian Philosophy, but am always willing to take marvels on 
trust, when reported by a lover of truth like thyself. 

The following sonnet was addressed by 
Bernard Barton to Major Moor : 
I pity him who, having wandered long, 

Returns at last o'er Ocean's tossing foam 

A heartless exile to an English home ! 
Who finds no music in his country's song ; 
Whose eye can do her lovely landscapes wrong, — 

And from a lowly cot, or lordly dome, 

Rear'd on his native soil, still sighs to roam, 
Nor finds a friend amid her free-born throng. 
Him I congratulate, who, after years 

Of toil and danger on a distant shore, 

Comes back to love life's early scenes the more, 
And prove, in home's sweet smiles, and pangless tears, 
How absence to an English heart endears 

Her scenery and her manners, laws and lore. 

Major Moor died in 1848, and shortly after 
appeared a ''Brief Memorial" from Bernard 
Barton's pen. 

There were numberless other men and 
women of prominence with whom Mr. Barton 
had shaken hands, but his circumstances and 
disinclination to travel necessarily limited his 
circle of intimate friends to his neighbours. 
In earlier life, at the London Magazine 
dinners, to which he very occasionally went, he 
saw most of the contributors to that excellent 
but short-lived periodical. In 1824, at the 
house of Thomas Clarkson the abolitionist, at 
Playford, he met Southey; and many years later 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 161 

at Mr. Donne's he was once or twice in the 
company of George Borrow, that indescribable 
man — humanist, novelist, linguist, pugilist, 
patriot, traveller, philosopher, and gipsy : in 
short, one of Nature's focuses. In 1844, we 
find B.B. visiting Bishop Sumner, of Winchester, 
to whom he had dedicated A New Years Eve, 
in company with his brother John ; some record 
of which excursion is preserved in the following* 
sonnet : 

My brother, those, methinks, were pleasant hours, 
It was our privilege to spend, erewhile, 
In Farnham's ancient, castellated pile ! 

Lovely the landscape, from its lofty towers 

Beheld at distance ; while its garden bowers, 
Below our feet, wore beauty's softest smile, 
As if those cedars' grandeur to beguile, 

Still looking down on lawns yet gay with flowers. 

Nor lacked the scene within charms all its own, 
To make the few brief hours pass swiftly by ; 
But, far as courteous hospitality 

And genuine kindness could make welcome known, 

Such, unaffectedly, were prompt, and prone 
With each attraction out of doors to vie ! 

In the same year B.B. renewed his acquaint- 
ance with Sir George Airy, whom he had first 
known at Arthur Biddell's when the future 
Astronomer Royal was quite a lad. Then 
they were wont to walk together, discussing the 
last Waverley novel or the merits of modern 
poetry. In 1844, Mr. Barton met his old 
companion at the table of Sir Robert Peel, 
and very pleasantly they recalled those early 
times. Mr. Barton had communicated with Sir 

1 1 



162 BERNARD BARTON 

Robert Peel on the subject of the income tax, 
which seemed to him to press unduly upon 
Bank clerks, and Sir Robert had asked him to 
dine. One result of the correspondence was 
the awakening in the Premier of an interest in 
the Quaker poet, which subsequently bore very 
desirable fruit, for on leaving office in 1846, 
Sir Robert recommended Mr. Barton to the 
Queen, to whom the poet had dedicated his 
Household Verses in 1845, as a subject worthy 
to receive an annual pension of one hundred 
pounds. This the Queen was pleased to grant. 
To the close of his life, says Mr. FitzGerald, 
the poet " continued, after his fashion, to send 
letters and occasional poems to Sir Robert, and 
to receive a few kind words in reply." 

Bernard Barton left a vast quantity of 
correspondence from all kinds of persons, 
eminent and obscure. So numerous were 
they that only the other day was a final 
selection made. Among those notable letters 
which remain are autographs of Sir Walter 
Scott, Southey, Byron, and Jeffrey. Byron 
writes, under the date June, 181 2, with 
reference to the Quaker poet's plan of leaving 
the bank and adopting literature as a profession. 
The letter is as good sense as was ever penned. 
Afterdisposingof a business matter, Byron says — 

I think more highly of your poetical talents than it would 
perhaps gratify you to hear expressed, for I believe, from 
what I observe of your mind, that you are above flattery. 
To come to the point, you deserve success ; but we knew, 
before Addison wrote his Cato, that desert does not always 
command it. But suppose it attained — 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 163 

'You know what ills the author's life assail — 
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.' 

Do not renounce writing, but never trust entirely to author- 
ship. If you have a profession, retain it ; it will be like 
Prior's fellowship, a last and sure resource. Compare Mr. 
Rogers with other authors of the day ; assuredly he is 
among the first of living poets, but is it to that he owes his 
station in society and his intimacy in the best circles ? no, 
it is to his prudence and respectability. The world (a bad 
one, I own) courts him because he has no occasion to court 
it. He is a poet, nor is he less so because he was some- 
thing more. I am not sorry to hear that you are not 
tempted by the vicinity of Capel Lofft, Esq., though if he 
had done for you what he has for the Bloomfields I should 
never have laughed at his rage for patronizing. But a truly 
well constituted mind will ever be independent. That you 
may be so is my sincere wish ; and if others think as well of 
your poetry as I do, you will have no cause to complain of 
your readers.— Believe me, 

Your obliged and obedient Servant, 

Byron. 

B. B.'s connection with his brilliant con- 
temporary did not end there ; for strange, 
almost ludicrous, as it may sound, a copy of 
verses entitled "Madame Lavalette," were, 
says the Quaker Poet in his preface to Poems 6v 
an Amateur, attributed in many quarters to the 
author of " Don Juan " ! 

In a letter, dated 1820, Lord Jeffrey pleads 
guilty to the authorship of an article in the 
nctinburgk Rtvieiv, wherein Quaker traders 
were somewhat severely handled. That the 
body, he concludes, 

has contained many eminent men since the days of Penn 
and Barclay no candid person will dispute. I have myself 

IIA 



1 64 BERNARD BARTON 

the happiness of knowing several. I am well acquainted 
with Mr. Walker of London, and flatter myself I may call 
William Allen my friend. To the philanthropy and calm 
and wise perseverance of the body in all charitable under- 
takings I shall always be ready to do justice. But I trust I 
need make no professions on this subject, nor does it seem 
necessary to discuss further the points of difference between 
us. I suppose you don't expect to make a convert of me, 
and I certainly have not the least desire to shake you in 
your present convictions. There are plenty of topics, I 
hope, on which we may agree, and we need not seek after 
the exceptions. I shall be happy if my opinion of your 
poem can be ranged in the first class. 

Bernard Barton's correspondence with Sir 
Walter Scott related to some documents touch- 
ing Scottish affairs, discovered by the Quaker 
poet among the store of an autograph dealer at 
Ipswich. Mr. Barton however received from 
the Great Magician one note of a more personal 
kind. The Quaker Poet wrote, on behalf of a 
lady, to ask his illustrious brother-in-art for an 
autograph copy of some lines from Marmion. 
Sir Walter replied as follows under the date 
of October 4th, 1824 : 

I have been lazy in sending you the two transcripts. In 
calling back the days of my youth, I was surprised into con- 
fessing what I might have as well kept to myself, that I had 
been guilty of sending persons a bat-hunting to see the 
ruins of Melrose by moonlight, which I never saw myself. 
The fact is rather curious, for as I have often slept nights at 
Melrose, (when I did not reside so near the place,) it is 
singular that I have not seen it by moonlight on some 
chance occasion. However, it so happens that I never did, 
and must (unless I get cold by going on purpose) be 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 165 

contented with supposing that these ruins look very like 
other Gothic buildings which I have seen by the wan light 
of the moon. 

When the accompanying quotation was exam- 
ined, it was found to end not as was expected, 
thus : 

Then go — but go alone the while — - 
Then view St. David's ruin'd pile j 
And home returning, soothly swear 
Was never scene so sad and fair. 

but in this amended form : 

Then go — and meditate with awe 
On scenes the author never saw, 
Who never wandered by the moon 
To see what could be seen by noon. 

Robert Southey sent one or two kindly 
criticisms of B. B.'s poetry, and several com- 
munications having reference to Quakers, whose 
historian he was then thinking to become. In 
1822, at a time when Mr. Barton's health was 
beginning to show signs of the strain of con- 
tinual verse-making and figure work, alleviated 
by too little exercise, Southey tendered the 
following judicious advice : 

I am much pleased with the ' Poet's Lot ' — no, not with 
his lot; but with the verses in which he describes it. But 
let me ask you — are you not pursuing your studies intem- 
perately, and to the danger of your health ? To be ' writing 
long after midnight ' and ' with a miserable headache ' is 
what no man can do with impunity ; and what no pressure 
of business, no ardour of composition, has ever made me 
do. I beseech you, remember the fate of Kirke White ; — 
and remember that if you sacrifice your health (not to say 
your life) in the same manner, you will be held up to your 



1 66 BERNARD BARTON 

own community as a warning — not as an example for 
imitation. The spirit which disturbed poor Scott of Amwell 1 
in his last illness will fasten upon your name ; and your fate 
will be instanced to prove the inconsistency of your pursuits 
with that sobriety and evenness of mind which Quakerism 
requires, and is intended to produce. 

You will take this as it is meant, I am sure. 

My friend, go early to bed ;— and if you eat suppers, 
read afterwards, but never compose, that you may lie down 
with a quiet intellect. There is an intellectual as well as 
a religious peace of mind ; — and without the former, be 
assured there can be no health for a poet. God bless you. 
Yours very truly, 

R. Southev. 



i As the following lines, entitled ' Scott of Amwell,' will show 
Bernard Barton was an admirer of the ill-fated bard : 
In childhood's dawn, in boyhood's later days, 
Dear to my heart the Bard of Amwell's lays : 
Whether his Muse portray'd upon her scroll 
The ever-changing ' Seasons,' as they roll ; 
Or touch'd the heart's more tender sympathies, 
Mourning the rupture of love s sweetest ties ; 
Or whether, with a genuine past'ral grace, 
The simple scenery round her loved to trace, 
And tune her Doric reed, or artless lyre, 
To Amwell's tufted groves, and modest spire ; 
Or, mindless how the world's vain glory frown'd, 
Denounced the martial ' drum's discordant sound ' ; 
Or, true to Nature's social feelings, penn'd 
Sonnets and rhymes to many a distant friend ; — 
Whate'er the theme — truth, tenderness, in all 
Their echo woke, and held my heart in thrall. 

And, even now, in health and strength's decay, 

Ay, on this cheerless, dull November day, 

When moaning winds through trees all leafless sigh, 

And all is sad that greets the ear and eye; 

Now in my heart of hearts, I cherish still 

The lingering throb, the unextinguished thrill, 

Woke by the magic of his verse of yore, 

When new to me the Muse's gentle lore ; 

And gratefully confess the boundless debt 

Due to my boyhood's benefactor yet ; 

Nor boyhood's only — when his page I scan, 

What charm'd the child, si ill fascinates the man, 

And better test of merit none need claim, 

Than thus in youth and age to seem the same. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 167 

Other and more copious correspondents 
were poor Charles Lloyd, the son of the Quaker 
banker and scholar of Birmingham, the pupil 
of Coleridge, and author of metaphysical poems 
which one could not, says Lamb, read standing 
on one leg ; Mrs. Opie, who was as much a 
celebrity in Norfolk as B. B. in Suffolk ; the 
Howitts, William and Mary, those diligent 
makers of readable books ; Bayard Taylor, the 
American poet and traveller ; Mrs. Hemans ; 
and Letitia E. Landon — the beautiful L. E. L. 
— one of whose letters, in response to a present 
of a volume of poetry, gave B.B. a full account 
of a ball that she had just attended, particu- 
larising all the dresses ! Another equally 
inappropriate communication came from James 
Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, asking the Quaker 
poet's assistance in inducing a London theatrical 
manager to accept and present a tragedy "that 
will astonish the world ten times more than the 
'Queen's Wake' has done" — B. B.'s praise of 
which poem had prepared the way for this 
bewildering request — a tragedy with so many 
important characters "that justice cannot be 
done it in Edinburgh." Mr. Barton, who knew 
as little of the production of plays as of the 
movements of the cotillon, called in Capel Lofft, 
the somewhat over-enthusiastic patron of the 
Bloomfields, and he having on hand three un- 
acted tragedies of his own, and an interest in 
others by friends, " of transcendent merit, equal 
to Miss Baillie's," dissuaded Hogg from his 
purpose. Mention of the Bloomfields, the 
Suffolk rustic poets, reminds us that on the 



1 68 BERNARD BARTON 

death of Robert, the author of the " Farmer's 
Boy," and the " Horkey," B. B. wrote some 
graceful memorial verses, of which this is the 
happiest stanza : 

How wise, how noble, was thy choice, 

To be the bard of simple swains ; 
In all their pleasures to rejoice, 

And soothe with sympathy their pains ; 
To sing with feeling in thy strains 

The simple pleasures they discuss, 
And be, though free from classic chains, 
Our own more chaste Theocritus ! 
And here closes the record of Bernard 
Barton's friends. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 169 



CHAPTER X. 

THE QUAKER POET. 

To be remember'd when the face 

Of Nature is most fair ; 
Or when some touch of heavenly grace 

Uplifts the soul in prayer ! 

These are the richest, best reward 

A poet's heart can own, 
And happy is the humblest bard 

Who writes for these alone. 

ALTHOUGH there was a time when Ber- 
nard Barton was literally a Household 
Poet, a designation of which he was justly 
proud, his poetry is to-day unknown. Between 
the years of 1820 and 1840, he had a multi- 
tudinous audience, composed of those readers 
who prefer that the teaching of poetry shall be 
explicit rather than implicit. We have seen 
how eager was B. B. to write : hardly less 
eager was his public to read. His books were 
bought almost as rapidly as they were pub- 
lished, and as his poetic output was large his 
influence was extensively felt. 



i/o BERNARD BARTON 

Bernard Barton's volumes appeared in the 
following order: Metrical Effusions, 1812 ; 
Poems by an Amateur, t8i8 ; Poems, 1820; 
Napoleon, and other Poems (dedicated to George 
IV.), 1822; Poetic Vigils, 1824; Minor Poems, 
1824; Devotional Verses, 1826 ; A Widow 1 *s Tale, 
1827; A New Yeat's Eve, 1828; The Reli- 
quary (by Bernard and Lucy Barton), 1836 ; 
and Household Verses (dedicated to the Queen), 
1845. Besides these there were very many 
annuals, pocket-books, and other publications 
to which he contributed verses, and a great 
number of privately-circulated occasional poems, 
while he left countless manuscripts that never 
have reached print at all. 

In the preface to Napoleon and Other Poems, 
published in 1822, when the poet was in his 
thirty-ninth year, B. B. writes thus frankly of 
his shortcomings as an artist : 

It has not been from indolence that the author has not 
bestowed more elaborate revision on his compositions ; nor 
is it with any affected contempt of refined taste, or in wilful 
disrespect of critical opinion, that he ventures on publishing 
what he does j but, in his judgment, his poetry is not of a 
description which long and laborious revision would essen- 
tially improve : what it might gain in elegance appears to 
him too contingent to be plausibly hoped ; what it might 
lose in simplicity and unstudied earnestness, too probable 
not to be rationally feared. The matter he has been 
desirous of communicating to his readers, has been, in his 
hours of composition, of much more moment to him than 
the manner, provided the last were not positively repulsive. 
Should his prove so to those whose taste may have been 
formed on purer and more classical models, he certainly 
must regret the circumstance ; for he pretends not to 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 171 

undervalue what he is unable to attain : but he has 
endeavoured to do the best which his education, circum- 
stances, and situation have allowed him. 

The above statement puts fault-finding- out 
of court. It is an old device of critics to find 
fault with a dove because it is not an eagle ; 
but when the dove comes with the frank con- 
fession, "I am only a dove : just the plain grey 
bird of the woodside copse — nothing more," the 
ingenuity even of critics is defeated. The pre- 
face continues : 

In conclusion : so far as his poetry is capable of afford- 
ing some degree of instruction, of yielding blameless 
pleasure, and of awakening interest strictly accordant with 
all that is pure, lovely, and of good report, and so far 
only, does the author wish to find favour. 

Such is B. B,'s conception of the function of 
poetry ; — at any rate, of his own poetry. This 
is no place to examine the correctness of that 
conception, or to revive the old controversy 
upon the relationship of art and morals ; for 
however interesting such an inquiry might be, 
the poet has rendered it useless by his pre- 
liminary warning. B. B.'s motto was this 
quotation from Wordsworth : 

The moving accident is not my trade ; 

To freeze the blood I have no ready arts : 
'Tis my delight, alone in summer shade, 
To pipe a simple song for feeling hearts. 

And remembering that, it would be foolish 
to complain because his poetry is not " the best 
words in the best order," nor " the impassioned 
expression which is in the countenance of all 



172 BERNARD BARTON 

science." Rather should we remind ourselves 
that though his work often is fluent to a fault, 
though he never soars and is rarely distin- 
guished, though he is apt to hammer out his 
golden thoughts too thin and spread them over 
too wide a surface, yet Bernard Barton has 
positive poetic virtues such as we oftentimes 
look for in vain in the work of more consider- 
able minds. He is always limpid and always 
lucid ; his verse flows, as good verse should. 
Again, his language is never inflated. "The 
longer I live," he wrote in 1847, "the more I 
love a simple and natural tone of expression, 
and the more I eschew all sorts of Babylonish 
dialects." And Charles Lamb said one night 
in Mr. Patmore's hearing, 4< Barton is dull 
enough, but not nonsensical. He writes 
English, too." If, in short, we consider the 
poems as B.B. wished them to be considered, 
we shall find that he eminently succeeded in 
the task he set himself : to make his 
poetry afford instruction, yield blameless 
pleasure, and awaken interest strictly accordant 
with all that is pure, lovely, and of good 
report. Among his many volumes we shall 
find no poem that is not informed by this 
estimable purpose. And though, as has been 
shown, he never rose to great heights, never 
said anything finally, there is in his works much 
that is happily, nobly and beautifully ex- 
pressed. 

Contemporary criticism was honestly appre- 
ciative of the Quaker poet. Said the Monthly 
Review for August, 1824 — 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 173 

To those who delight in the happy delineation of the 
domestic affections, and all the warmer but calmer feelings 
of the heart, we recommend the verses of Mr. Barton. 
Were we compelled to define the peculiar characteristic of 
his poetry, we should term it the ' poetry of the affections.' 
It is the simple and pleasing effusions of a warm and 
poetical heart poured out in verse eminently suited to the 
expression of tender feelings ; lucid, correct, and har- 
monious. 

In the British Review, No. 40, we find this 
notice, one that must have given peculiar 
pleasure to the author of the verses : 

Modern days have furnished no happier instance of the 
alliance of Poetry with sound Religion. Mr. Barton, with- 
out awakening the passions, has found the means of touch- 
ing the affections : the tear which he produces is chaste 
as the dew of Heaven ; the sympathy which he stirs is such 
as angels may feel ; the joy which he imparts is such 
as the father may share with his daughter — the son with his 
mother. 

And in the Quarterly Review for October, 
1822, in an article on Gregoire's Histoire des 
Seetes Religieuses, Southey made mention of 
Bernard Barton's poems as " equally honour- 
able to the Society [of Friends] and to the 
individual," and followed the encomium by 
quoting " The Pool of Bethesda" in full. 

Mr. FitzGerald, a critic of the keenest per- 
ception, writes thus in the Memoir : 

The Poems, if not written off as easily as the Letters, 
were probably as little elaborated as any that ever were pub- 
lished. Without claiming for them the highest attributes of 
poetry, (which the author never pretended to,) we may 
surely say they abound in genuine feeling and elegant fancy 



174 BERNARD BARTON 

expressed in easy, and often very felicitous, verse. These 
qualities employed in illustrating the religious and domestic 
affections, and the pastoral scenery with which such affec- 
tions are perhaps most generally associated, have made 
Bernard Barton, as he desired to be, a household poet with 
a large class of readers — a class, who, as they may be sup- 
posed to welcome such poetry as being the articulate voice 
of those good feelings yearning in their own bosoms, one 
may hope will continue and increase in England. 

While in many of these Poems it is the spirit within that 
redeems an imperfect form — just as it lights up the irregular 
features of a face into beauty — there are many which will 
surely abide the test of severer criticism. Such are several 
of the Sonnets, which, if they have not (and they do not aim 
at) the power and grandeur, are also free from the pedantic 
stiffness of so many English Sonnets. Surely that one ' To 
My Daughter ' * is very beautiful in all respects. 

Some of the lighter pieces — ' To Joanna,' ' To a Very 
Young Housewife," 2 , &c, partake much of Cowper's playful 
grace. And some on the decline of life, and the religious 
consolations attending it, are very touching. 

Charles Lamb said the verses ' To the Memory of Bloom- 
field' were 'sweet with Doric delicacy.' May not one say the 
same of those 'On Leiston Abbey,' 'Cowper's Rural Walks,' 
on ' Some Pictures,' and others of the shorter descriptive 
pieces ? Indeed, utterly incongruous as at first may seem 
the Quaker clerk and the ancient Greek Idyllist, some of 
these little poems recall to me the inscriptions in the Greek 
Anthology — not in any particular passages, but in their 
general air of simplicity, leisurely elegance, and quiet un- 
impassioned pensiveness. 

Two of the poems singled out by Mr. 
Fitzgerald are here given. This is " Leiston 
Abbey by Moonlight " — 

i See page 186. z See page 153. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 175 

Imposing must have been the sight 

Ere desolation found thee, 
When morning breaking o'er thee bright, 

With new-born glory crowned thee : 

When, rising from the neighbouring deep, 

The eye of day survey'd thee ; 
Aroused thine inmates from their sleep, 

And in his beams array'd thee. 

And net to Fancy's eye alone 

Thine earlier glories glisten ; 
Her ear recovers many a tone 

To which 'tis sweet to listen. 

Methinks I hear the matin song 
From those proud arches pealing ; 

Now in full chorus borne along, 
Now into distance stealing. 

But yet more beautiful by far 

Thy silent ruin sleeping 
In the clear midnight, with that star 

Through yonder archway peeping. 

More beautiful that ivy fringe 

That crests thy turrets hoary, 
Touch'd by the moonbeams with a tinge 

As of departed glory. 

More spirit-stirring is the sound 

Of night-winds softly sighing 
Thy roofless walls and arches round, 

And then in silence dying. 

And this is the poem "On some Illustra- 
tions of Cowper's ' Rural Walks'" — 

Why are these tamer landscapes fraught 

With charms whose meek appeal 
To sensibility and thought 
The heart is glad to feel ? 



i/6 BERNARD BARTON 

Cowper, thy muse's magic skill 
Has made them sacred ground ; 

Thy gentle memory haunts them still, 
And casts a spell around. 

The hoary oak, the peasant's nest, 

The rustic bridge, the grove, 
The turf thy feet have often prest, 

The temple, and alcove ; 

The shrubbery, moss-house, simple urn, 

The elms, the lodge, the hall,— 
Each is thy witness in its turn, 

Thy verse the charm of all. 

Thy verse, no less to nature true 

Than to religion dear, 
O'er every object sheds a hue 

That long must linger here. 

Amid these scenes the hours were spent 

Of which we reap the fruit ; 
And each is now thy monument, 

Since that sweet lyre is mute. 

1 Here, like the nightingale's, were pour'd 

Thy solitary lays,' 
Which sought the glory of the Lord, 

' Nor asked for human praise.' 

Mr. FitzGerald continues his criticism — 

Not only is the fundamental thought of many of them 
very beautiful — as in the poems ■ To a Friend in Distress,' 
'The Deserted Nest,' 'Thought in a Garden,' &c — but 
there are many verses whose melody will linger in the ear, 
and many images that will abide in the memory. Such 
surely are those of men's hearts brightening up at Christmas 
Mike a fire new stirred,' — of the stream that leaps along 



AND HIS FRIENDS, 177 

over the pebbles ' like happy hearts by holiday made light,' 
— of the solitary tomb showing from afar like a lamb in the 
meadow. 1 

Here follow the three poems mentioned in 
the foregoing passage. This is "The Deserted 

Nest"— 

'Twas but a wither'd, worthless heap 

Of dirt, and moss, and hair ; 
Why then should Thought and Fancy keep 

A busy vigil there ? 

Yet for some moments as I stood, 

And on it looked alone, 
I could but think in musing mood, 

Where are its inmates gone ? — 

Perhaps beneath some sunnier sky 

They joyous sing and soar ; 
Perhaps in sad captivity 

Eternally deplore — 

And then, Imagination stirr'd 

Down to its hidden spring, 
Far, far beyond both nest and bird, 

Thought spread her airy wing. 

When from our tenements of clay, 

Where briefly they are shrined, 
Thought, Fancy, Feeling pass away — 

Where flies the deathless Mind ? 

Either, from sin redeem'd, it soars 

On angel wing above, 
And there its gratitude outpours 

In praise and joy and love ; 



See page 64 for ' The Solitary Tomb.' 



12 



178 BERNARD BARTON 

Or, exiled from the eternal source 

Whence such alone can flow, 
It breathes in accents of remorse 

Unutterable woe. 

These are the lines " To a Friend in 
Distress " — 

The waters of Bethesda's pool 
Were to the outward eye as clear, 

And to the outward touch as cool, 
Before the visitant drew near. 

But, while untroubled, they possess'd 
No healing virtue : — gentle friend, 

Is there no fount within the breast 
To which an angel may descend ? 

O, while the soul unruffled lies 

Its mirror only can display, 
However beautiful their dyes, 

The forms of things that pass away. 

But when its troubled waters own 
A Saviour's presence — in the wave 

The healing power of Grace is known, 
And found omnipotent to save. 

A glimpse of glories far more bright 
Than earth can give is mirror'd there ; 

And perfect purity and light 
The presence of its God declare. 

And this is the thought " On a Garden " — 

Enough of Nature's wealth is there 

Lost Eden to recall : 
Enough of human toil and care 

To tell man's hapless fall. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 179 

And Fancy, being once awake, 

Recalls one memory more, 
Of Him who suffer'd for our sake, 

Lost Eden to restore. 

To these is added " The Spiritual Law," 
which " particularly pleased " Charles Lamb. 
" It reminded me," he says, "of Quarles 
and holy Mr. Herbert, as Izaak Walton calls 
him — the two best, if not only, of our devotional 
poets; though" (he adds wickedly) "some prefer 
Watts, and some Tom Moore " — 

Say not the Law Divine 
Is hidden from thee, or afar removed : 

That Law within would shine, 
If there its glorious light were sought and loved. 

Soar not on high, 
Nor ask who thence shall bring it down to earth ; 

That vaulted sky 
Hath no such star, didst thou but know its worth. 

Nor launch thy bark 
In search thereof upon a shoreless sea, 

Which has no ark, 
No dove to bring this olive-branch to thee. 

Then do not roam 
In search of that which wandering cannot win : 

At home, at home 
That word is placed, thy mouth, thy heart within. 

O, seek it there, 
Turn to its teachings with devoted will ; 

Watch unto prayer, 
And in the power of faith this love fulfil. 

Other selections follow, chosen for their 
beauty of form or phrase or thought. Here, 

I2A 



180 BERNARD BARTON 

for instance, is a stanza on children such as 
only a true poet could have written — 

There is a holy, blest companionship 

In the sweet intercourse thus held with those 
Whose tear and smile are guileless ; from whose lip 

The simple dictate of the heart yet flows ; — 

Though even in the yet unfolded rose 
The worm may lurk, and sin blight blooming youth, 

The light born with us long so brightly glows, 
That childhood's first deceits seem almost truth, 
To life's cold after-lie, selfish, and void of ruth. 

And here, from "A Grandsire's Tale," is a 
stanza of exquisite beauty, which drew warmest 
praise from Lamb — 

Though some might deem her pensive, if not sad, 

Yet those who knew her better, best could tell 
How calmly happy and how meekly glad 

Her quiet heart in its own depths did dwell, 

Like to the waters of some crystal well, 
In which the stars of heaven at noon are seen ; 

Fancy might deem on her young spirit fell 
Glimpses of light more glorious and serene 
Than that of life's brief day, so heavenly was her mien. 

In many cases B.B.'s poems would gain 
rather than lose by rigorous curtailment ; but 
now and then we find a lyric of perfect propor- 
tions. What could be simpler or more satisfy- 
ing than "A Stream " ? — 

It flows through flowery meads, 
Gladdening the herds that on its margin browse ; 

In quiet bounty feeds 
The alders that o'ershade it with their boughs. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 181 



Gently it murmurs by 
The village churchyard, with a plaintive tone 

Of dirge-like melody, 
For worth and beauty modest as its own. 

More gaily now it sweeps 
By the small school-house, in the sunshine bright, 

And o'er the pebbles leaps, 
Like happy hearts by holiday made light. 

Had Bernard Barton been painter instead 
of poet he would have given us landscapes 
in the style of Gainsborough, and domestic 
scenes like those of George Morland. Some 
of his descriptive passages are singularly, happy. 
Here are two stanzas from " Napoleon " — 

O come and stand with me upon this ridge, 
That overlooks the sweet secluded vale ; 

Before us is a little rustic bridge, 

A simple plank; and by its side a rail, 
On either hand to guide the footsteps frail 

Of first and second childhood ; while below, 
The murmuring brooklet tells its babbling tale, 

Like a sweet under song, which in its flow 

It chanteth to the flowers that on its margin grow. 



For many a flower does blossom there to bless 
With beauty, and with fragrance to imbue 

The borders — strawberry of the wilderness, 
The starlike daisy, violet deeply blue, 
And cowslip, in whose cup the pearly dew 

Glistens unspent till noontide's languid hour ; 
And, last of all, and fairest to the view, 

The lily of the vale, whose virgin flower 

Trembles at every breeze within its leafy bower. 

The following moonlight scene (from " Re- 



182 BERNARD BARTON 

collections ") has something of the soft beauty 
of night lingering in the verse — 

All round was calm and still ; the noon of night 
Was fast approaching : up the unclouded sky 

The lovely moon pursued her path of light, 
And shed her silvery splendour far and nigh : 
No sound save of the night-wind's gentlest sigh 

Fell on the ear ; and that so softly blew 
It scarcely stirr'd in passing lightly by 

The acacia's airy foliage ; faintly too 

It kiss'd the jasmine stars that at my window grew. 

That Bernard Barton was able to catch the 
very spirit of a scene, these stanzas on " Great 
Bealings Churchyard," written on a summer 
evening, are further proof — 

It is not only while we look upon 

A lovely landscape, that its beauties please; 

In distant days, when we afar are gone 
From such, in fancy's idle reveries, 
Or moods of mind which memory loves to seize, 

It comes in living beauty, fresh as when 
We first beheld it : valley, hill, or trees 

O'ershading unseen brooks; or outstretch'd fen, 

With cattle sprinkled o'er, exist, and charm again. 

Such pictures silently and sweetly glide 

Before my 'mind's eye'; and I welcome them 

The more, because their presence has supplied 
A joy, as pure and stainless, as the gem 
That morning finds on blossom, leaf, or stem 

Of the fair garden's queen, the lovely Rose, 
Ere breeze, or sunbeam, from her diadem, 

Have stol'n one brilliant, and around she throws 

Her perfumes o'er the spot that with her beauty glows. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 18 



j 



Bear witness many a loved and lovely scene. 

Which I no more may visit ; are ye not 
Thus still my own ? Thy groves of shady green. 

Sweet Gosfield ! or thou, wild, romantic spot ! 

Where, by grey craggy cliff, and lonely grot, 
The shallow Dove rolls o'er his rocky bed : 

Ye still remain as fresh, and unforgot, 
As if but yesterday mine eyes had fed 
Upon your charms ; and yet months, years, since then have sped 

Their silent course. And thus it ought to be, 
Should I sojourn far hence in distant years, 

Thou lovely dwelling of the dead ! with thee : 
For there is much about thee that endears 
Thy peaceful landscape ; much the heart reveres, 

Much that it loves, and all it could desire 
In Meditation's haunt, when hopes and fears 

Have been too busy, and we would retire 

E'en from ourselves awhile, yet of ourselves inquire. 

Then art thou such a spot a man might choose 

For still communion : all around is sweet, 
And calm, and soothing ; when the light breeze woos 

The lofty limes that shadow thy retreat, 

Whose interlacing branches, as they meet, 
O'ertop, and almost hide the edifice 

They beautify ; no sound, except the bleat 
Of innocent lambs, or notes which speak the bliss 
Of happy birds unseen. What could a hermit miss 

' Light thickens ' ; and the moon advances ; slow 
Through fleecy clouds with majesty she wheels : 

Yon tower's indented outline, tombstones low 
And mossy grey, her silver light reveals : 
Now quivering through the lime-tree foliage steals ; 

And now each humble, narrow, nameless bed, 
Whose grassy hillock not in vain appeals 

To eyes that pass by epitaphs unread, 

Rise to the view. How still the dwelling of the dead ! 



1 84 BERNARD BARTON 

Directly he took pen in hand Bernard 
Barton seems to have assumed a gravity 
foreign to his natural manner : a change due to 
his belief in the seriousness of poetry. Hence 
among his work there are few exercises in light 
verse, and they are not conspicuously good. 
But he had an easy knack of touching grave 
matters not too seriously, as in these lines on 
"Old Age": 

Old age ! thou art a bitter pill 

For humankind to swallow ; 
Fraught with full many a present ill, 

And fear of worse to follow. 

And yet thou art a medicine good, 

Not to be bought for money ; 
Worse than the worst of nauseous food, 

Yet sweeter far than honey. 

Thy aches and cramps, thy weary groans, 

Infirmities which breed them, 
Might move the very hearts of stones, 

If stones had hearts to heed them. 

But these must come, of course, with thee, 
And none dispute, or doubt them ; 

Such may be borne, and wisest he 
Who pothers least about them. 

Old age ! be what thou wilt, thy reign 

Cannot endure for ever ; 
Feebleness, weariness, and pain 

Are links that soon must sever ! 

And if thy pains the soul recall 

To heavenly truth and warning, 
Who would regret the ruin'd wall 

That lets in such a morning ? 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 185 

At frankly comic verse he did not shine ; 
witness this rhymed address : 

John Major, Bookseller and Printer, 

Who lives in summer as in winter, 

In short, the whole year round complete, 

At Number 50 in Fleet Street ', 

In London's famed and crowded city : 

If not found there, the more's the pity. 

The above doggerel is only given as an excuse 
to introduce the reply, which in addition to 
being of better workmanship is another testi- 
mony to the respect in which Mr. Barton was 
held — and a testimony from a publisher is said 
to be no small thing : 

To Bernard Barton, far-famed writer, 
Poetical and prose inditer, 
Who makes a noise where'er be true folk, 
Yet finds repose at Woodbridge, Suffolk ; 
If not just now about those parts, 
Inquire in all good people's hearts. 

The facility shown by minor poets in the 
composition of the sonnet has been remarked 
upon again and again. Bernard Barton was no 
exception. He seems to have enjoyed as 
keenly as anyone the labour of enclosing a 
sentiment within fourteen ten-syllabled lines, 
and although he produced no transcendent 
example, many of his sonnets are exceedingly 
ofood. Four of the best now follow, The first 
is addressed " To a Grandmother" : 

Old age is dark and unlovely. 

Ossian. 

O say not so ! A bright old age is thine ; 

Calm as the gentle light of summer eves, 



186 BERNARD BARTON 

Ere twilight dim her dusky mantle weaves ; 

Because to thee is given, in thy decline, 

A heart that does not thanklessly repine 

At aught of which the hand of God bereaves, 
Yet all He sends with gratitude receives ; — 

May such a quiet, thankful close be mine ! 
And hence thy fireside chair appears to me 

A peaceful throne — which thou wert form'd to fill ; 

Thy children, ministers who do thy will ; 

And those grandchildren, sporting round thy knee, 
Thy little subjects, looking up to thee 

As one who claims their fond allegiance still. 

!' To My Daughter," is the title of the 
second — 

Sweet pledge of joys departed ! as I lay 

Wrapt in deep slumber, I beheld thee led 

By thy angelic mother, long since dead — 
Methought upon her face such smiles did play 
As gild the summer morning. A bright ray 

Of lambent glory streamed around her head. 

I gazed in rapture ; love had banished dread, 
Even as light the darkness drives away. 

Silent awhile ye stood— I could not move, 
Such sweet delight my senses did o'erpower ; 

When in mild accents of celestial love, 
Thy guardian spoke — ' Cherish this opening flower 
With holy love, that so the future hour 

Shall re-unite our souls in bliss above.' 

The two remaining sonnets were placed by 
B.B. as prefaces to collections of his verse : 

Not in the shades of Academic bowers, 

Nor yet in classic haunts, where every breeze 
Wakes with its whispers music among trees, 

And breathes the fragrance of the unnumber'd flowers, 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 187 

Has it been mine to nurse my minstrel powers. 

Nor have I, lull'd in literary ease, 

Dreamt of ascending, even by slow degrees, 
The glittering steep where Fame's proud temple towers. 
Yet have I been at times a listener 

To them whose hallow'd harps are now suspended 
In silence ! and have ventured to prefer 

A prayer in which both hope and fear were blended, 
That I might rank their fellow-worshipper 

In the esteem of some, when life is ended. 

The springs of life are failing one by one, 

And Age with quicken'd step is drawing nigh ; 

Yet would I heave no discontented sigh, 
Since cause for cold ingratitude is none. 
If slower through my veins life's tide may run, 

The heart's young fountains are not wholly dry ; 

Though evening clouds shadow my noontide sky, 
Night cannot quench the spirit's inward sun ! 
Once more, then, ere the eternal bourn be passed, 

Would I my lyre's rude melody essay ; 

And, while amid the chords my fingers stray, 
Should Fancy sigh — ' These strains may be its last ! ' 
Yet shall not this my mind with gloom o'ercast, 

If my day's work be finished with the day ! 

Bernard Barton's " day's work " meant 
more than might at first sight be supposed. 
Not only did he in his lifetime communicate 
pleasure and comfort to many thousands of 
readers ; but by the publicity he gave to his 
poems he became the pioneer of that Quaker 
culture which for breadth and grace now holds 
its own with the best. It needed no reformer 
to stimulate Quakers to the composition of 
good prose ; for that they have always been 



188 BERNARD BARTON 

able to write. But Bernard Barton was the first 
Friend to come into prominence as a maker of 
literary luxuries. It is not too much to assert 
that had he not done so, the Society would still 
be more or less ignorant of much that is beautiful 
and ennobling in Literature and Art. 

Probably Bernard Barton would be the last 
man to claim the title of revolutionist ; nor do 
we wish to over-estimate his services in the 
promotion of a reform which unobtrusively was 
drawing nearer hour by hour. Like all revolu- 
tionists, George Fox had to strike an exaggerated 
blow ; since excess is imperative where new 
causes are to be established. It is surely not 
unreasonable to suppose that the Founder of 
Quakerism was aware that the Quaker mind, 
being concerned chiefly with simplicity — and 
therefore with the first principle of beauty — 
must inevitably be attracted sooner or later by 
Art of every kind. What we have to remember 
is, that the recognized union of Quakerism and 
Art was hastened by the efforts of the gentle 
bard of Woodbridge. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 189 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE END. 

I feel that I am growing old, 

Nor wish to hide that truth, 
Conscious my heart is not more cold 

Than in my by-gone youth. 

I cannot roam the country round 

As I was wont to do ; 
My feet a scantier circle bound, 

My eyes a dimmer view. 

But on my mental vision rise 

Bright scenes of beauty still, — 
Morn's splendour, evening's glowing skies, 

Valley and grove and hill. 

Nor can infirmities o'erwhelm 

The purer pleasures brought 
From the immortal spirit's realm 

Of feeling and of thought. 

My heart 3 let no dismay or doubt 

In thee an entrance win, 
Thou hast enjoy'd thyself without, 

Now seek the joy within ! 

Lines written in 1845. 

MR. FITZGERALD writes of Bernard 
Barton's declining days in a way that 
leaves little to other pens. He says — 

Mr. Barton had for many years been an ailing man, 
though he never was, I believe, dangerously ill (as it is 



190 BERNARD BARTON 

called) till the last year of his life. He took very little 
care of himself ; laughed at all rules of diet, except temper- 
ance ; and had for nearly forty years, as he said, ' taken 
almost as little exercise as a milestone, and far less fresh 
air.' Some years before his death he had been warned of 
a liability to disease in the heart, an intimation he did not 
regard, as he never felt pain in that region. Nor did he to 
that refer the increased distress he began to feel in exertion 
of any kind, walking fast or going upstairs, a distress which 
he looked upon as the disease of old age, and which he used 
to give vent to in half-humorous groans, that seemed to 
many of his friends rather expressive of his dislike to. 
exercise, than implying any serious inconvenience from it. 
But probably the disease that partly arose from inactivity 
now became the true apology for it. During the last year of 
his life, too, some loss of his little fortune, and some 
perplexity in his affairs, not so distressing because of any 
present inconvenience to himself, as in the prospect of 
future evil to one whom he loved as himself, may have 
increased the disease within him, and hastened its final 
blow. 

Toward the end of 1848 the evil symptoms increased 
much upon him ; and shortly after Christmas it was found 
that the disease was far advanced. He consented to have 
his diet regulated; protesting humorously against the small 
glass of small beer allowed him in place of the temperate 
allowance of generous port, or ale, to which he was 
accustomed. He fulfilled his daily duty in the bank, only 
remitting (as he was peremptorily bid) his attendance there 
after his four o'clock dinner. And though not able to go 
out to his friends, he was glad to see them at his own house 
to the last. 

In a footnote Mr. FitzGerald says that this 
exemption from prolonged office work ["I shall 
go on making figures," B.B. once wrote, "till 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 191 

Death makes me a cipher"] led him to the self- 
designation of "a skulker." His friend con- 
tinues — 

And of late years when the day account of the bank 
had not come right by the usual hour of closing, and it 
seemed necessary to carry on business late into the 
evening, he would sometimes come up wearied to his 
room, saying — 'Well, we've got all right but a shilling, 
and I've left my boys ' (as he called the younger clerks) 
1 to puzzle that out.' But even then he would get up from 
Rob Roy, or the Antiquary, every now and then, and go 
to peep through the curtain of awindow that opens upon the 
back of the bank, and, if he saw the great gas-lamp flaming 
within, announce with a half comical sympathy, that ' they 
were still at it ' ; or, when the lamp was at last extinguished,, 
would return to his chair more happily, now that his partners 
were liberated. 

In earlier years, by the way, in similar circum- 
stances, when Mr. Barton was himself among 
the younkers, he was often heard to express the 
wish that his own pocket, never too full, might 
be allowed to furnish the deficit. 

The end came early in 1849. We quote 
the Memoir for the last time : 

On Monday, February 19, he was unable to get into the 
bank, having past a very unquiet night— the first night of 
distress, he thankfully said, that his illness had caused him. 
He suffered during the day; but welcomed as usual the 
friends who came to see him as he lay on his sofa ; and 
wrote a few notes — for his correspondence must now, as he 
had humorously lamented, become as short-breathed as 
himself. In the evening, at half-past eight, as he was 
yet conversing cheerfully with a friend, he rose up, went 
to his bedroom, and suddenly rang the bell. He was 



192 BERNARD BARTON 

found by his daughter — dying. Assistance was sent for ; 
but all assistance was vain. ' In a few minutes more,' says 
the note despatched from the house of death that night, 
1 all distress was over on his part — and that warm kind heart 
is still for ever.' 

The people of Woodbridge felt the loss of 
their poet very deeply. Bernard Barton was so 
completely an integral part of the town, had so 
long ' 4 radiated good humour" therein, that it 
seemed impossible to realise that no longer 
would he be seen standing in the bank doorway 
signalling greetings to his passing acquaintances, 
nor walking on Sunday mornings to the little 
meeting-house. It is hard to reconcile ourselves 
to the sudden total effacement of a helpful, 
radiant nature. 

The Quaker Poet was laid to rest in the 
burial-ground adjoining the Woodbridge meet- 
ing-house, beneath the acacia which he had 
planted to mark the grave of his wife's mother. 
His tombstone bears the simple inscription — 

BERNARD BARTON 

Died 

19 of 2 mo. 1849, 

Aged 65. 

The following verses, from the pen, it is believed, 

•of Mr. FitzGerald,were printed in aSuffolk paper. 

They come as a fitting conclusion to this book. — 

Lay him gently in the ground, 
The good, the genial, and the wise ; 
While Spring blows forward in the skies 
To breathe new verdure o'er the mound 
Where the kindly Poet lies. 



AND HIS FRIENDS. 193 

Gently lay him in his place, 

While the still Brethren round him stand ; 

The soul indeed is far away, 

But we would reverence the clay 

In which so long she made a stay, — 

Beaming through the friendly face, 

And holding forth the honest hand. 

Thou, that didst so often twine 
For other urns the funeral song, 
One who has known and lov'd thee long, 
Would ere he mingle with the throng, 
Just hang this little wreath on thine. 
1 Farewell, thou spirit kind and true ; 
Old Friend, for evermore Adieu ! ' 



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sorts of Christian workers, and, apart from its great value as a history of a great 
work of God, it is well worth reading on that account alone. For those who wish a 
general view of the Society, nothing could be better. — Methodist Times, 



BOOKS PUBLISHED BY EDWARD HICKS, JUN. 
Demy 8vo. Three Shillings and Sixpence net. With Illustrations. 

Stephen Crisp and his Correspondents, 

By C. FELL SMITH. 



"Asa contribution to our knowledge of the early Quakers (both 
local and general), the book is of high value and interest."— The 
Essex Review. 



Second Edition, 8vo, Cloth. Two Shillings and Sixpence net. 

The Penns and Peningtons of the 
Seventeenth Century. 

Illustrated by Original Family Letters, also Notices of their 
Friend, Thomas Ellwood. 

By MARIA WEBB. 



" The present volume will be found to possess an interest, not only for the readers 
who come fresh to its subject, but for those who have long been conversant with the 
leading facts that cluster round the names of Penn, Penington, and Ellwood. ' — 
The Friend. 



Cheap Edition. Five Shillings net. 

Friends of a Half Century, 

BEING 

Jiftg Memorials, frith portraits, 

Of Members of the Society of Friends, 1840-1890. 

Edited by WILLIAM ROBINSON. 



" ' Friends of a Half-Century' is a monumental book that is likely to find itself 
set up on many a shelf besides those in Quaker libraries." — Chtistian World. 

" The plain and unvarnished record of these pious and heroic lives is very 
impressive. . . . The book is turned out in good style by the publisher, and the 
Ink Photos preceding each of the memoirs are well executed."— Heiefordshire Times, 



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