M. C. CLARKE.-R. COBBOLD, M.A. (REV.)

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MARY COWDEN CLARKE.

THIS lady, a daughter of Mr. Vincent Novello, was born in 1809, and married in 1828 Mr. Charles Cowden Clarke, who is illustrious for his friendships with Lamb, Hazlitt, and Keats. Amongst women she will ever be remarkable, and by admirers of Shakspeare she will ever be respected, for the persevering energy with which she devoted sixteen years of her life to the composition of her "Complete Concordance to Shakspeare." Besides this great task, for which her principal reward we are afraid will be unsubstantial commendation, she published in 1848, "The Adventures of Kit Bam, Mariner;" in 1850, "The Girlhood of Shakspeare's Heroines;" and in 1854, a novel of no ordinary merit, entitled "The Iron Cousin."

RICHARD COBBOLD, M.A. (REV.)

THIS very zealous and kind-hearted clergyman, a native of Ipswich, Suffolk, amongst the traders of which populous and wealthy borough his family have for many years been of importance, is a voluminous and well-meaning writer. He made, we believe, his first appearance as an author thirty years ago, when he published "Valentine Verses," a collection of rhymes and doggrel that were well enough to please a circle of friends in private, but became eminently absurd when offered as an intellectual entertainment to the public. Since that time, Mr. Cobbold has frequently committed himself to the care of publishers, and the tender mercies of critics; so that the list of his productions, in sermons, poems, lectures, and novels, is a long one. His best novel is "The History of Margaret Catchpole; a Suffolk Tale." It is needless to say that the heroine of this

story, was no creation of the author's imagination; in Suffolk she loved her smuggler, scrubbed her bricks, and stole a horse. We should say that Australia could furnish many histories similar to her adventurous one; of the multitudes of young women who made their acquaintance with that country through being sent to the penal settlements, there must be many who have married respectably, and done well, after the termination of their periods of punishment. Still the incidents in the career of Margaret Catchpole were striking and offered an admirable field for the display of a novelist's ingenuity, and Mr. Cobbold made such good use of his materials, that he produced a story, entertaining and impressive, notwithstanding many defects which are attributable rather to the author's imagination, than to his historic fidelity. Compared with "Paul Clifford," Eugene Aram," and other equally famous biographies of culprits, it is a tedious, but perfectly innocuous book.

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Since the appearance of "Margaret Catchpole," Mr. Cobbold has favoured the world with the "History of Mary Ann Wellington," " Courtland," "Freston Tower," "Zenon the Martyr" &c. &c., but these later novels have not sustained the reputation which the history of the "Suffolk Girl" procured for him.

HENRY COKE (THE HON.)

Ir is long since men and women of rank began to dabble in authorship, but it is a feature peculiar to the present generation, its being deemed respectable and honourable in them to do so. When the members of the beau monde, first condescended to gratify their vanity by displaying their wit, or want of it, in print, they almost invariably shrouded themselves under some polite fiction of writing to amuse their

own immediate friends, or to form the manners of a beloved son, or else they indemnified themselves for their sense of degradation in using the quill like "the herd of beggarly scribblers," by showering angry impertinences and vulgar contempt on all who were authors by profession--that is for a livelihood. Horace Walpole could never allude to a man of letters sustaining himself by his pen without an expression of disdain. The conduct of the patrons of literature to authors is well exemplified by the neglect and subsequent recognition of Johnson by Lord Chesterfield. Lady Mary Wortley Montague classed hackney writers in the same category with hackney coachmen. And Byron, who at the commencement of his career, had scruples of dignity about receiving money from his publisher, lost much, as Major Pendennis reminded his nephew, in the estimation of society by mixing himself up with literary

men.

But now all that is changed. It is generally felt in the highest and most exclusive circles that the reputation of being able to write a smart book, or tell a clever story, is about the best possible trinket, the most graceful plume, with which to adorn wealth and noble lineage. The number of noble or aristocratic authors is daily increasing; season after season they publish their trips to the Mediterranean, missionary excursions to the Pope, pilgrimages to Jerusalem, rambles through the back-woods of Australia, journeyings over Canadian wilds, yacht-voyages in all latitudes, and three-volume novels. Some of these writers are men, some ladies; but fair and stalwart alike, they are proud to avow their connection with the guild of bookmakers-and to measure their sport and prowess by the number of royal heads, stamped on good current gold, that they have bagged.

A title is a great thing to go into the bookmarket with. To a writer of fashionable novels-a depictor of high life

upstairs-it is an invaluable possession. The author who can write Lord before his name on the title page is sure of a sale for his work; the presence of that brief word in that spot is worth more than Dukes and Earls sprinkled broadcast through the rest of the volumes; it is a guarantee that the descriptions of high life are genuine, a surety that since the imperious countess in the book says to the family solicitor-"now that this business is transacted, you are at liberty to withdraw "- imperious countesses in May-fair and Belgravian palaces, and in moated castles of feudal antiquity, do really and truly so address their legal advisers. Whereas when we take up plain Mr. Brown's or simple Mr. Robinson's novel, what security have we (the public) that some ignoble plebeian charlatan (audaciously thinking that at heart and in the marrow of their natures, a merchant's wife and a peer's lady are much alike, and that they make love, intrigue, quarrel with their husbands, bully their children, run in debt, and squabble with their friends much in one and the same fashion) is not passing off upon us the miserable ambitions and airs of his trumpery connections, (in fact, connections no better than our own) as those of distinguished, and illustrious, and noble-not to say royalcircles? Mary-le-bone loves a lord, and when it goes to Mudie's it has preference for a lord's book over a commoner's, and rightly too, for if the book is a good one, Mary-le-bone (who is really a very intelligent creature) is agreeably surprised, and if it is nonsense, as every now and then by some accident a noble author's book is, still is it not a lord's nonsense, and of the best style of insipidity? and in reading it does not Mary-le-bone get a taste of May-fair?

Of the many gentlemen, members of aristocratic families, who from time to time present the world with a book that can never be said to be really forgotten because it is never altogether heard of, the Honourable Henry Coke is a favourite specimen. In any previous age his novels would

have created a sensation; but now so plentifully do polished, elegant, and adroit writers abound, they only cause him to be known in the clubs and cliques as a gentleman of refinement, education, pleasant humour, and lively wit; a reputation that is doubtless an agreeable and useful addition to the éclat that surrounds him as the Earl of Liecester's brother.

Mr. Coke's works are "Vienna in 1848," "A Ride over the Rocky Mountains of Oregon and California,” “High and Low" a novel, and "A Will and A Way" a novel.

WILKIE COLLINS.

THE distinguished son and biographer of William Collins, R. A., was born in London in 1825. Besides his excellent life of his father he has produced "Antonina, or the Fall of Rome. A Romance of the fifth century,' "Rambles beyond Railways," "Bazil; a story of modern life," "Mr. Wray's Cash Box," "Hide and Seek," and "After Dark," &c. &c. He is also the author of two very remarkable dramas, "The Lighthouse" and "The Frozen Deep," which have been performed several times by Mr. Charles Dickens's amateur theatrical corps. "The Lighthouse" has also been put on the stage with success at the Olympic Theatre.

It is needless to say that Mr. Wilkie Collins is generally regarded as a man of commanding genius, and one destined to occupy a principal place in the republic of letters. For some time past his writings would lead one to think him as morbidly enamoured of the horrible and revolting as Edgar A. Poe, but we believe that in composing his terrible stories of crime and passion he is only passing through a phase of mental existence, that will be followed by the production of far nobler works than any that have as yet come from his pen.