1787, Born, November 21st, in London.—1800, circa, A scholar at Harrow.—1815, Contributes poems to the London Literary Gazette.—1816, Comes into possession of property, upon the death of his father.—1819, Publishes “Dramatic Scenes.”—1820, Publishes “A Sicilian Story,” and “Marcian Colonna.”—1821, His tragedy of “Mirandola,” performed at Covent Garden Theatre.—1823, Publishes “The Flood of Thessaly,” and other poems.—1824, Marries Miss Skepper.—1831, Called to the bar. Publishes “English Songs.”—1832, Appointed Commissioner of Lunacy. Publishes second edition of “English Songs.”—1835, Publishes the “Life of Edmund Kean.”—1861, Resigns his office of Commissioner.—1866, Publishes “Charles Lamb, a Biography.”—1874, Dies, October 4th.

Personal

  Well, Byron is gone, and ——— is now the best poet in England. Fill up the gap to your fancy. Barry Cornwall has at last carried the pretty A. S. They are just in the treacle moon. Hope it won’t clog his wings—gaum we used to say at school.

  He is a slender, rough-faced, palish, gentle, languid-looking man, of three or four and thirty. There is a dreamy mildness in his eye; he is kind and good in his manners, and I understand in his conduct. He is a poet by the ear and the fancy, but his heart and intellect are not strong. He is a small poet.

  I left Procter writing, more for the Edinburgh, New Monthly, & retrospective, I fear, than for the drama; he is locked up every morning from 10 till ¹/₂ p. 1 by his wife with ¹/₂ a quire of foolscap & a quill.

  Mr. Procter—for you know that is the real name of Barry Cornwall—is about forty-two or forty-five, and is a conveyancer by profession. His days are spent in the toilsome study of abstracts of titles; and when I saw him last Sunday, at his house, he was poring over one which press of business had compelled him to take home. He is a small, thin man, with a very dull countenance, in which, nevertheless,—knowing what he has written,—I can detect the “poetical frenzy.” His manner is gentle and quiet, and his voice low. He thought if he could live life over again he would be a gardener.

  There are three or four individuals who used to form part of those pleasant symposii, to whom the nature of these Recollections calls upon me to refer more particularly than in a passing paragraph. The most distinguished of these was the amiable and gifted poet, so universally known to the reading world under the name of Barry Cornwall. This gentleman used but seldom to grace our simple feasts (“of reason,” or of folly, as the case might be); but when he did look in by accident, or was induced by Hazlitt’s request to come, everything went off the better for his presence; for, besides the fact of Hazlitt’s being fond of his society, and, at the same time, thinking so highly of his talents as always to talk his best when he (P——r) was a partaker in the talk, there is an endearing something in the personal manner of that exquisite writer, an appearance of gentle and genial sympathy with the feelings of those with whom he talks, which has the effect of exciting towards him that personal interest from which it seems itself to spring, and in the absence of which the better feelings and mental characteristics incident to social converse are seldom if ever called forth. In P——r Hazlitt always found a man of fine and delicate intellectual pretensions, who was nevertheless eager and pleased to listen, with attention and interest, to all the little insignificant details of his daily life.

  Barry Cornwall, Mr. Procter, called on me a week or more ago, but I happened not to be in the office. Saturday last he called again, and as I had crossed to Rock Park he followed me thither. A plain, middle-sized, English-looking gentleman, elderly, with short white hair, and particularly quiet in his manners. He talks in a somewhat low tone without emphasis, scarcely distinct…. His head has a good outline, and would look well in marble. I liked him very well. He talked unaffectedly, showing an author’s regard to his reputation, and was evidently pleased to hear of his American celebrity. He said that in his younger days he was a scientific pugilist, and once took a journey to have a sparring encounter with the Game-Chicken. Certainly, no one would have looked for a pugilist in this subdued old gentleman. He is now Commissioner of Lunacy, and makes periodical circuits through the country, attending to the business of his office. He is slightly deaf, and this may be the cause of his unaccented utterance,—owing to his not being able to regulate his voice exactly by his own ear…. He is a good man, and much better expressed by his real name, Procter, than by his poetical one, Barry Cornwall…. He took my hand in both of his at parting.

  I breakfasted with Barry Cornwall and Browning. Dear old Barry! I loved him from the first minute. He is reputed silent, but he opened his heart to me like an uncle. He showed me all his MSS., lots of unpublished poems, etc., and talked out of the abundance of his golden nature.

  A decidedly rather pretty little fellow Procter, bodily and spiritually; manners prepossessing, slightly London-elegant, not unpleasant; clear judgment in him, though of narrow field; a sound honourable morality, and airy friendly ways; of slight, neat figure, vigorous for his size; fine genially rugged little face, fine head; something curiously dreamy in the eyes of him, lids drooping at the outer ends into a cordially meditative and drooping expression.

  It is impossible for those who did not know him personally to have any adequate idea of the charm of the man. “Everybody loves him,” wrote Crabb Robinson in 1866, and having, as he told me, “no politics,” he throughout life was on good terms with men of all parties. One of his most conspicuous characteristics to the last was his chivalrous courtesy to women, reminding one of the unparagoned high breeding of the late Duke of Beaufort, George Grote, Samuel Rogers (when he liked the lady!), and the late John Stuart Mill. The nearest living approach to them in this respect is Robert Browning. It was the half-playful, protecting deference of the old school, almost unknown to this generation.

  Who that ever came habitually into his presence can forget the tones of his voice, the tenderness in his gray retrospective eyes, or the touch of his sympathic hand laid on the shoulder of a friend! The elements were indeed so kindly mixed in him that no bitterness, or rancor, or jealousy had part or lot in his composition. No distinguished person was ever more ready to help forward the rising and as yet nameless literary man or woman who asked his counsel and warm-hearted suffrage. His mere presence was sunshine and courage to a new-comer into the growing world of letters and criticism. Indeed, to be human only entitled any one who came near him to receive the gracious bounty of his goodness and courtesy. He made it the happiness of his life never to miss, whenever opportunity occurred, the chance of conferring pleasure and gladness on those who needed kind words and substantial aid…. The poet’s figure was short and full, and his voice had a low, veiled tone habitually in it, which made it sometimes difficult to hear distinctly what he was saying. When he spoke in conversation, he liked to be very near his listener, and thus stand, as it were, on confidential ground with him. His turn of thought was apt to be cheerful among his friends, and he proceeded readily into a vein of wit and nimble expression. Verbal felicity seemed natural to him, and his epithets, evidently unprepared, were always perfect. He disliked cant and hard ways of judging character. He praised easily. He had no wish to stand in any body’s shoes but his own, and he said there is no literary vice of a darker shade than envy…. He impressed every one who came near him as a born gentleman, chivalrous and generous in a marked degree, and it was a habit of all who knew him to have an affection for him.

  No one who has passed an hour in the company of Charles Lamb’s “dear boy” can ever lose the impression made upon him by that simple, sincere, shy, and delicate soul. His small figure, his head, not remarkable for much besides its expression of intelligent and warm good-will, and its singular likeness to that of Sir Walter Scott; his conversation, which had little decision or “point” in the ordinary sense, and often dwelt on truths which a novelty-loving society banishes from its repertory as truisms, never disturbed the effect, in any assemblage, of his real distinction. His silence seemed wiser, his simplicity subtler, his shyness more courageous than the wit, philosophy, and assurance of others. When such a man expressed himself more or less faithfully in a series of gracious poems, of which he alone, of all his circle, did not seem proud, it naturally followed that all who knew him were eager to declare and extend the credit and honor to which he had aspired with so much simplicity, and which he bore with so entire an absence of self-assertion.

  He had a modest—nay, shy—manner in company (1821); heightened by a singular nervous affection, a kind of sudden twitch or contraction, that spasmodically flitted athwart his face as he conversed upon any lofty theme, or argued on some high-thoughted topic.

  He was short of stature with little evidence of energy, but with a peculiarly gentle and contemplative countenance, such as usually begets liking rather than the loftier tributes poets receive from those who venerate the vocation of the bard.

  Mrs. Procter was for the larger part of a century one of the most brilliant women in London society. Dickens said of her that, no matter how brilliant the men were who surrounded her—and they were all that London had of the best—she always gave the last and wittiest rejoinder. Her social powers of endurance were wonderful. The last time I had the pleasure of seeing her she had long passed her eightieth birthday. She has “assisted” in the morning at a marriage in the family of Lord Houghton; she had lunched in company; she was holding a reception at her own house, and, in speaking with a young lady who was taking leave, I heard her say: “But I shall see you this evening!” “No,” said the young lady; “I am rather tired after our day, and I shall not go out again.” “Nonsense, my child,” answered the old soldier. “Why, I am going to dine out first, and go to the reception afterward. What is the matter with you young people?” When she passed away, a few years ago, the world lost almost the last person acquainted nearly and socially with the brilliant group of poets who made the first quarter of the century an epoch in English literature.

General

  If it be the peculiar province of poetry to give delight, this author should rank very high among our poets: and, in spite of his neglect of the terrible passions, he does rank very high in our estimation. He has a beautiful fancy and a beautiful diction—and a fine ear for the music of verse, and great tenderness and delicacy of feeling. He seems, moreover, to be altogether free from any tincture of bitterness, rancour or jealousy; and never shocks us with atrocity, or stiffens us with horror, or confounds us with the dreadful sublimities of demoniacal energy. His soul, on the contrary, seems filled to overflowing with images of love and beauty, and gentle sorrows, and tender pity, and mild and holy resignation. The character of his poetry is to soothe and melt and delight: to make us kind and thoughtful and imaginative—to purge away the dregs of our earthly passions, by the refining fires of a pure imagination, and to lap us up from the eating cares of life, in visions so soft and bright, as to sink like morning dreams on our senses, and at the same time so distinct and truly fashioned upon the eternal patterns of nature, as to hold them before our eyes long after they have again been opened on the dimmer scenes of the world.

  A gentleman of the name of Cornwall, who has lately published a volume of “Dramatic Scenes,” has met with a very different reception, but I cannot say that he has deserved it. He has made no sacrifice at the shrine of fashionable affectation or false glitter. There is nothing common-place in his style to soothe the complacency of dullness, nothing extravagant to startle the grossness of ignorance. He writes with simplicity, delicacy, and fervour; continues a scene from Shakspeare, or works out a hint from Boccacio, in the spirit of his originals, and though he bows with reverence at the altar of those great masters, he keeps an eye curiously intent on nature, and a mind awake to the admonitions of his own heart. As he has begun, so let him proceed. Any one who will turn to the glowing and richly-coloured conclusion of “The Falcon,” will, I think, agree with me in this wish!

  I just see, by the papers of Galignani, that there is a new tragedy of great expectation, by Barry Cornwall. Of what I have read of his works I liked the “Dramatic Sketches,” but thought his “Sicilian Story” and “Marcian Colonna,” in rhyme, quite spoilt, by I know not what affectation of Wordsworth, and Moore, and myself, all mixed up into a kind of chaos. I think him very likely to produce a good tragedy, if he keep to a natural style, and not play tricks to form harlequinades for an audience.

  I saw Barry Cornwall’s tragedy the first night. It succeeded well, and has some exceedingly deep things, but he has not experienced enough to compose his materials for the best effect…. The subject of Procter’s tragedy is dreadful. A father marries a young creature his son loved, without knowing it, and the girl marries him under the belief that the son is dead. His letters informing her that he was alive were intercepted by under characters, and when he returns he finds her married to his father! His interview with her is very fine and torturing; and with his father also, but then comes a third regular set interview which weakens the effect of the others and of all…. This is the most striking thing I have seen on the stage. I do not like such subjects…. But Procter is a man of exquisite and tender genius, and will yet do more beautiful things.

  Feeling,—strong, vehement, rushing feeling,—which clutches at illustrations speaking to the ear and sensibility rather than the imagination, is the inspiration of much of his poetry. Occasionally his verse splits on the rocks of obscurity and rant. But there is a breadth of passion in some of his poems, which, whether it is expressed in vast and vague metaphors, or simmers and gleams in radiant fancies, or is poured out on his page in one hot gush, or leaps deliriously down the “dark, deep, thundering river” of his style, has ever a kindling effect on sensibility. There never was a poet more honest in the expression of his nature. His songs are the reflections of all moods of his mind, and he cares not if the sentiment of one contradicts that of another. In grief, or love, or fear, or despair, at the festive board or the bed of sickness, wherever and whenever the spirit of song comes to him, it takes the color of the emotion which animates or saddens the moment. He is a large-hearted and most lovable man; and his poetry is admired because it is the expression of his character.

  There is a healthy, active vigor about all the latter writings of Barry Cornwall, that show that he has never yet fairly and fully developed his whole power. His reputation is of the first class, but every one feels, in reading one of his lyrics, that he would not surprise us now to come forth with some high and stirring drama of real life, that would stamp him as a true tragic poet. The elements of this lie everywhere in his poems. There is a clear and decided dramatic tact and cast of thought. Pathos and indignation against wrong live equally and vividly in him. His thoughts and feelings are put forth with a genuineness and a perspicuous life, that tell at once on the reader, making him feel how real and how earnest is his spirit.

  The “Dramatic Scenes,” his earliest, is in several respects still his best work; for they were evident overflowings from his feelings and fancy, and are written con amore. Besides this, they had the charm of novelty, and bewitched all finer sensibilities by their being so thoroughly tinctured with “Elysian beauty, melancholy grace.”

  They are almost the only real songs in the language; that is, lyrics that have the pulsation of music in them. The Germans and the Spaniards have so many, and we so few, particularly of late.

  A variety of detached poems, of various merit, and many of them of the highest, constitute the claims of this most amiable and accomplished man to literary reputation.

  An elegant poet, and a reproducer, in the form of fragments, of many of the excellencies of the Elizabethan dramatists. Graceful, tender, finished, and with the true spirit of a high-class gentleman in all he writes and does, there are few pleasanter books than Barry Cornwall’s “Songs and Dramatic Scenes.”

  Among the last agreeable visits I made to the old poet was one with reference to a proposition of his own to omit several songs and other short poems from a new issue of his works then in press. I stoutly opposed the ignoring of certain old favorites of mine, and the poet’s wife joined with me in deciding against the author in his proposal to cast aside so many beautiful songs—songs as well worth saving as any in the volume. Procter argued that, being past seventy, he had now reached to years of discretion, and that his judgment ought to be followed without a murmur. I held out firm to the end of our discussion, and we settled the matter with this compromise: he was to expunge whatever he chose from the English edition, but I was to have my own way with the American one. So to this day the American reprint is the only complete collection of Barry Cornwall’s earliest pieces, for I held on to all the old lyrics, without discarding a single line.

  To freedom and melody he adds more refinement than any song-writer of his time…. His stanzaic poems have, in fact, the rare merit of uniting the grace and imagery of the lyric to the music and fashion of song…. The Songs of Barry Cornwall, beyond those of any other modern, have an excellence of “mode” which renders them akin to the melodies of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Heywood, Fletcher, and to the choicer treasures of Davison, and of the composers, Byrd, Wilbye, and Weelkes. They are, at once, delightful to poets and dear to the singing commonalty. I refer, of course, to their pervading character. It may be that none are so absolutely flawless as the “Bugle-Song” of Tennyson. The melody and dying fall of that lyric are almost without comparison this side of Amiens’ ditties in “As You Like It” and Ariel’s in “The Tempest.” But how few there are of Procter’s numerous songs which stand lower than the nearest place beneath it!… The fact that Procter’s genius was essentially dramatic finally gave him a position independent of Keats, and, against external restrictions, drew him in advance of Hunt, who—whatever he may have been as critic and essayist—was in some respects the lesser poet. Nevertheless, those restrictions compelled Procter, as Landor was compelled, to forego the work at which he would have been greatest, and to exercise his gift only in a fragmentary or lyrical manner.

  We remember that in our young days Barry Cornwall’s songs were commonly to be found in school-boys’ desks, and many a man of middle-age may trace his first feeling for lyric verse to the charm of those sweet strains. That they are now greatly neglected and forgotten seems owing to the fact that we are a less musical people than the Germans, and that our weakness is chiefly on the side of simple song.

  The poetry of Barry Cornwall is the record of the extravagances of one who was habitually sober, the audacities of one who was habitually cautious, the eloquence of one who was habitually reserved. And yet there is no inconsistency, the contrasted elements heighten and sustain each other.

  One cannot fail to trace in it [“Autobiography”] the tenderness and gentleness of heart, the tolerant temper, generous impulses, and simple sincerity that endeared him to his family and friends; the clear, well-balanced intellect which, having been formed by a long course of legal and official experience, gave weight to all his estimates of men and things; the dainty fancy and refined taste for all that is beautiful in nature, art, and life, that are his chief credentials as a poet; and the old-fashioned grace and courtesy of manner, partly native and partly acquired from his fortunate associations, which are the uniform note of his style whether in verse or prose.

  A poet never attaining the first rank, yet reaching a gentle eminence on which his name, more than his work, perhaps, is still fully known…. His shorter lyrics, many of them very melodious and graceful, are what has lasted longest.

  His dramatic scenes, his songs, and his narrative and descriptive poems form a body of verse of no inconsiderable bulk and variety,—in bulk exceeding that of the poetic works of Collins, Gray, and Campbell combined. It cannot be said that any portions of his writings can claim to elude criticism on the ground that they were youthful productions. In 1815, when the name of “Barry Cornwall” first became known by his occasional contributions to the “Literary Gazette,” he was three years older than Keats was when he died…. Taking his works as a whole, the one criticism to be made upon them is that their apparent substance, estimated by the number of printed pages they occupy, is disproportioned to their real substance, estimated by the amount of thought, imagination, knowledge, experience, and passion they convey. We have to pick and cull, sift and reject, when we come to distinguish between the faculties which the poet displays and the matter on which they are exercised…. After making all proper deductions, however, from the mass of Procter’s poetry, we find that what remains is a solid addition to the poetical literature of the century.

  He was the author of two or three poetical works, of no particular merit, but especially of a volume of English songs, which had been received with a chorus of jubilation by all the critics of the day, though it has long since passed into the limbo that is the ultimate destination of all mediocre books, especially of mediocrities in rhyme.

  He was, under the pseudonym of “Barry Cornwall,” a fluent verse writer of the so-called cockney school, and had not a little reputation, especially for songs about the sea and things in general. They still, occasionally from critics who are not generally under the bondage of traditional opinion, receive high praise, which the present writer is totally unable to echo.

  Procter wrote some spirited songs, but his poetry, notwithstanding the laudations which his friends were pleased to lavish on it as a matter of compliment, is of the thinnest and poorest quality. Lamb characterized it as redundant, like the wen which once appeared on the author’s neck.

  Two things distinguish him as a poet: his fine ear for melody, for a tone which must touch the heart, and his deep sense of the miseries of life. As a writer of songs, he takes an honourable place by the side of Tennyson and Moore.