Before coming to the poems themselves, let me quote from the poet's two prefaces, the latter of which is dated from Pulham, St. Mary Magdalen, and so pave the way for the Whur anthology. He thus introduced Village Musings':

The author of the following pages is conscious of possessing but few attractions to recommend himself to public notice; nor does he feel any disposition to impose upon society a false representation, either of his abilities or situation in life. The information which he possesses was acquired in a confined circle-under great disadvantages and with habits of an exceedingly retired character.

To persons of respectability and talent he, however, has had access, and to add to their amusement has sometimes repeated the productions of his own pen. His having done so ultimately led to pressing solicitations to appear in the character which he has here assumed, but it will be to him a source of deep regret if the productions of his leisure hours be the occasion of offence to any, his desire and intention having been to amuse and benefit all-to offend none.

That was in 1837. Eight years later he wrote, on the threshold of ' Gratitude's Offering':

The title which this volume bears was adopted by the author in consequence of the unanticipated patronage he has received the success that attended his former work, Village Musings,' three large editions having been called for in a very short time. No one, he thinks, can have been treated more handsomely. To ladies and gentlemen who adorn the first circles he considers himself under special obligations.

The life of the writer, he may observe, has been rather eventful, and he cannot but say that the encouragement he has received from the Rev. Dr. Hall forms one of the most gratifying circumstances of his history. . . . In conclusion it is necessary only to add that the great diversity in the character of his readers appeared to the author to call for a diversity in his productions; but as none of the pieces, however amusing they may be, are altogether destitute of a moral bearing, a hope is cherished that the work will in some degree meet the taste of society, and afford not only innocent amusement, but perhaps a measure of

consolation.

One discerns in those prefaces a very charming blend of modesty and pardonable vanity. The good Cornelius was very well satisfied with his rhyming gift. He did not rank it high, but he esteemed it, as indeed a really simple honest soul would and must. It is the complex folk who depreciate their wares and shrink from reading or repeating their verses in public. Mr. Whur had no false shame. I like to think of the low-toned, moist-eyed clergyman listening to tales of woe about ladies and gentlemen, amiable wives and intelligent children, and then hurrying off to poetise them, and returning with the effusion all hot for quiet yet effective declamation. We may laugh now, but it was no laughing matter then. I can believe that among the simple East Anglian gentry these little metrical pocket-handkerchiefs (so to speak) helped to dry many a tear, even

if they made new ones first. Tears can wash away tears, as all comforters know. Of Cornelius's pulpit successes no evidence remains, and such specimens of his intellect as are contained in these two volumes are not impressive; but he fulfilled one part of a pastor's duty as it probably has rarely been fulfilled by a cleverer man-he comforted the unhappy.

I cannot do better than begin this examination of his consoling muse by describing the first poem in Mr. Whur's second book, for he deliberately placed it in that proud position, and it illustrates his manner. I will not quote the poem, but the poet's prologue to it-the composition of a prose argument being as dear to his heart as that of verse. For he knew exactly what he wanted to say his mind was perfectly clear; and it was because he wished others to be equally so that he enforced his poetry with proseas wise travellers used to carry a brace of pistols. The poem is entitled 'The Lady's Affecting Tale.'

The following remarkable narrative was put into the author's hands by the lady to whom it refers, and who expresses herself as follows: 'My father was a clergyman of the Church of England, and lived and died at L, in the county of Suffolk. He was twenty-nine years old at the time of his decease. My mother was the only daughter of a gentleman who lived at B- in the county of Essex, where she had been tenderly brought up; she likewise died at Lin her twentyseventh year. They left at their decease three children, all of whom are still living. I, who am the youngest, am in my sixtieth year. My father died three weeks before I was born, and my mother in twelve weeks after. My grandfather, who then took the charge of us, died when I was four years old. We were then received under the care of an uncle and aunt, who also died a few years afterwards, and both in one year. Our principal executor acted most dishonourably, and lived to feel its melancholy result. I have seen him in business and flourishing like the green bay tree' as we read in the thirty-seventh Psalm. His wife, a comely looking woman, was the subject of severe mental affliction for upwards of twenty years, and he himself received relief from the parish for several years before he died; and none of his children prospered in the world. But towards me, unworthy as I am, this scripture hath been fulfilled-'I will be a father to the fatherless.' Such is the lady's affecting tale, and the writer will in conclusion add that she who had been a neglected orphan, was afterwards married to a gentleman who knows her worth, and who seeks her happiness. She is also blessed with two daughters and three sons, all of whom are sources of comfort, and conspire to render the close of her earthly pilgrimage beautiful and serene. Upon several occasions the author was entertained at the residence of this amiable female, and it was by her request that the following lines were written, and occupy their present situation.

The 'Lady's Affecting Tale' is typical; it offered the kind of material that Mr. Whur liked best. You see him here in his glory: the confidential friend with that firm basis for friendly confidence, a series of bereavements. You see him full of sympathy and

gentle deference, visiting the comfortable house. You see the parlour, the antimacassars, the decanter and biscuits, the smelling salts, the gentility. You hear the exchange of texts. Both books have this background. The good Cornelius carried round with him his receptive sympathetic ear and his urgent sympathetic heart as steadily as Mr. Dobson's curé carried his green umbrella case. An inscrutable calamity in the life of a lady or gentleman made him as happy (although genuinely grieving) as a natural phenomenon made the Rev. Gilbert White, or a loose jest the Rev. Laurence Sterne, or a good dinner the Rev. Sydney Smith. He collected misfortunes. His cabinets were full of bodily accidents and spiritual trials, all neatly arranged and preserved in camphor.

Mr. Whur, if not a contemporary of Emmeline Grangerford, was very little before her pensive day. Although the Atlantic rolled between they were kindred souls. You remember the instant correspondence between the tender heart and the muse of that lady so prompt that the saying was it was first the doctor, then Emmeline, and then the undertaker. With Mr. Whur too, the sequence was the same. According to Buck's testimony, it will be remembered

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she could rattle off poetry like nothing. She didn't ever have to stop to think. He said she would slap down a line, and if she couldn't find anything to rhyme with it she would just scratch it out and slap down another one, and go She warn't particular; she could write about anything you choose to give her to write about, just so it was sadful. Every time a man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on hand with her 'tribute' before he was cold. She called them tributes. . . . The undertaker never got in ahead of Emmeline but once, and then she hung fire on a rhyme for the dead person's name, which was Whistler. She warn't ever the same after that; she never complained, but she kind of pined away and did not live long.

...

Sudden death had the same fascination for Cornelius Whur One can see his parishioners waylaying him to tell of the latest case. For the most part Norfolk supplied material enough for this branch of his poetical activity, but once he went as far afield for his example as Mobile in America (Emmeline Grangerford's own land) where Miss Sarah E. Norton of Edgartown, New York, had fallen down dead on the day before her marriage while standing before a looking-glass. Here was a subject made to the hand of Cornelius Whur, for it comprised not only one of his favourite tragedies, but also an object that has always been stimulus and nourishment to the moralist a looking-glass. His knowledge

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of feminine vanity, however, was less profound than his didactic fervour, or he would never have written such a stanza as this:

Her lovely tresses smoothly hung

T'adorn the morrow's bride,

When death's unerring dart was flung,

And Sarah fell, and died.

If I know anything of brides, whether in London or in Edgartown, N.Y., they do not dress their hair the day before the wedding. As a specimen of a tragedy nearer home, let us take this :

AN AWFUL DISPENSATION.

The following lines refer to the death of Mrs. Phebe R. which occurred under the subjoined awfully melancholy circumstances.

The unfortunate woman was in her thirty-fifth year, and had five small children, the youngest of whom was only thirteen weeks old. After the necessary arrangements had been observed, she bade adieu to her family, and having been strongly solicited, ascended a certain vehicle. The animal by which it was drawn becoming restive, poor Phebe, in a state of great excitement, attempted to leap out, and in doing so was killed on the spot. This dreadful occurrence took place within half an hour of her having taken leave of an affectionate husband and five helpless children. The gloomy circumstances were related to the writer, in melancholy detail, by the bereaved husband.

The beautiful baby was wrapped in her arms,

Its sorrow was hushed into rest;

By fostering kindness she quelled its alarms,
And drew the dear child to her breast.

Thus nourished, the babe had a mother's embrace,
And one that arose from the heart;

And leaving her dear in the happiest place
With sorrow proceeded to part.

The parting, though keen, had a dazzling beam—
Hope ever enlightens our way;

Enchanting the heart, like the glow of a dream,
For she said, 'I shall but briefly stay!

And at my returning, thy sweet rosy cheek,
Will give me a hallowed repast!'

It is thus by our fancy we hear Phebe speak,
But the day of her nurture had past.

For Phebe had scarcely retired from her cot,
Her loved ones been left with regret,

Ere she dreadfully fell; and sad was her lot,
Her sun in oblivion set!

What tongue can rehearse what her dear partner felt,
When the tale of her woes had been told?

Like rush of a meteor, the blow had been dealt,
The mystery none can unfold.

Yes! his dearest had fled at meridian hour,
His dearest his children had left.

The innocent babes in the absence of power,
From fostering care had been cleft!

But God, whose designs are a fathomless deep,
'Moves in a mysterious way';

Not ceasing his footsteps in darkness to keep,
Till time and its shadows decay.

At that awful moment, with beamings of light,
He'll over our faculties throw

A power to discover He did what was right,
And that was triumphant below!

That poem is not unworthy to be set beside the ode on the death of Stephen Dowling Bots, thus proving once again how great a book is Huckleberry Finn,' where Emmeline Grangerford is (of course) to be found.

Mr. Whur's faith, it will be seen, was of the most elementary. He believed in this life as a preparation for the next; he believed we were all in the everlasting arms; he believed that affliction should yield to rhetoric, and he had, I fancy, no patience with those troubled ones who could hold out against his facile panaceas. Comfort, when one is as sure as this, and given a tender heart, becomes a simple thing. It resolves itself into the formula of Dr. Pangloss. To the bereaved and poverty-stricken, to the deaf and dumb, to the blind-even (as we shall see) to the armless and legless-the sympathetic Whur, prosperously and briskly exercising all his faculties, had messages of consolation, genuine if automatic. 'Never despond,' he said; 'God will make up to you for this,' he said; Your crown will be the brighter,' said he.

To take an extreme case, a youth who was saved from the wreck in which his father and mother, uncle, and nine brothers and sister: were drowned, was reminded that he himself was saved, and therefore bidden to be of good optimistic cheer:

Dost thou, in wandering there, that scene review ?
And heeding that, canst thou forget the hand
Which was outstretched when trembling rope became
Thine only stay? Deem not thyself preserved

In hour so dark merely to ruminate

On that event from gratitude apart :

For then, when consternation spread around

And none remained thy sinking heart to cheer,

Jehovah's arm, although invisible,

Wafted each billow, and was there to save!

Nor should'st thou cease His wond'rous power to heed,