abuses the Radicals; when the power of wealth seems dominant everywhere and in unholy league with rampant militarism; in such a time the temperance forces have maintained their ranks unbroken, their principles intact, and their faith in righteousness unimpaired. I can speak for the North of England; the temperance party is the backbone of the party of progress, and shows every sign of increasing numbers and rallying hope. It is the same in Scotland and in Wales. We all feel that we are nearing another tremendous struggle with the liquor traffic. The manifest alliance between the liquor interest and the party of reaction will precipitate the crisis. It will be brought to a head, perhaps, more certainly by the action and Report of Lord Peel than by the eloquence of Messrs. Rowntree and Sherwell's pages. The conversion of Lord Peel is a significant event: he is the type of tens of thousands of perfectly disinterested and upright Englishmen, who only need to know the right in order to do it. The striking publicity which has been given to the opinions of the Commission is a proof of the intense public interest felt in the question. We are already assured that Lord Peel and his friends-for the recommendations of the majority, being dictated by self-interest, will carry no weight in the country-make very much the same recommendations as are contained in the volume before us, save only (and it is a significant omission) that they say nothing about municipalisation. There is to be no compensation; there is to be wholesale diminution of licences and large powers of local restriction; there is to be the power of Local Veto, at least in Scotland and Wales. Any party or leader that will take up Lord Peel's recommendations and force them forward in a Bill may be assured of a large and enthusiastic following.

But in truth we need not trouble ourselves overmuch about detailed schemes, nor be too anxious about ultimate plans of temperance reform. The great struggle will be at the outset, and it will be fought on "Compensation.' "Compensation." The "Trade" will bitterly resent the claim of the public to deal with it at discretion; it will plead imaginary vested interests, it will appeal ad misericordiam, it will exhaust every artifice of intrigue, every mode of misrepresentation, every power of obstruction. But it will be beaten hopelessly, and that first victory will nerve reformers of all shades to further efforts.

"So let it be in God's own might

We gird us for the coming fight;

And, strong in Him whose cause is ours,

In conflict with unholy powers,

We grasp the weapons He has given,

The Light, the Truth, the Love of Heaven."

EDWARD LEE HICKS.

LAMB AND KEATS.*

IN

N offering to the fine library and literary institution in which we meet to-day the medallion portraits in bronze of Charles Lamb and of John Keats, the founder has still further enlarged his noble gift, and has added to the people of Edmonton a new claim on their grateful acknowledgments. This handsome foundation is but one of many scores of others which will long record to our descendants the name of Passmore Edwards.

These nurseries of thought and culture which will bear his name (as churches in Rome are so proudly and vainly inscribed-ex munificentia Sexti, or Pauli) are the munificent gifts to his fellow citizens of one who is himself a member of the literary order and the founder of a new era in journalism. It is an example of public spirit which is far more common in the United States than in Europe. In England our magnates of high rank and vast possessions think that they can best gratify their fellow citizens by exhibiting their own magnificence, and can best advance the public taste by occasionally admitting them to view their galleries or their racehorses. The wealthy citizens of America are more wont to devote their abundance to the public, and have given a large part of the universities, libraries, museums, and observatories in the States. I remember writing for an American Review a little essay on "The Uses of Rich Men in the Commonwealth"; and I described the public gifts common at Athens and at Rome. The Athenians called them Leiturgies, and most of the immortal dramas of Athens, and many of the exquisite remains of architecture that we see to-day, were the free gifts to their fellow citizens of rich and patriotic patrons, such as was Herodes

* An Address on the unveiling of the portraits of Lamb and Keats at the Passmore Edwards Free Library at Edmonton.

Atticus in the time of the empire. The example is too rare in England-almost unknown in London-where men of wealth are often willing to subscribe to a hospital or an institution, but where we seldom find any man willing to devote a large fortune to some truly munificent institution. Let us hope that in course of time the south of England and its capital may receive such benefactions as are common in America, and not unknown in our northern counties, and that London, too, may count its Passmore Edwardses to follow the example of the Herodes Attici of old.

We are about to unveil the bronze images of Lamb and Keats, whose memory is kept green in this place. Charles Lamb passed the close of his life and died in a cottage hard by this spot-a cottage happily still untouched in its primitive simplicity. He is buried in the parish churchyard within a few minutes' walk, and a gravestone over his coffin and a marble monument in the church record his life in the parish. John Keats, born in London, and living his short life in the northern suburbs, passed some time in a house still standing unaltered within a few yards of the cottage of Lamb, and then went to live at Hampstead, within a short walk of this spot. He is buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome, beneath the shadow of her ancient walls, where lies the heart of Shelley-cor cordium.

Both Lamb and Keats toiled and dreamed, knew intense joy and acute sorrow, in the early years of this nineteenth century, in the reign of George III. Three and even four generations have come and gone since their time. Keats died at twenty-five, before the birth of most of us here to-day. Charles Lamb died at fifty-nine, within my own lifetime, and is still remembered by old men yet alive. Nearly a century bas passed since the early work of Lamb, and some eighty years since that of Keats. Yet to-day the fame of both stands higher than it stood in their lifetime or at any time since their deaths. It will be for the twentieth century to judge, at the centenaries of their death in 1934 and 1921 respectively, what will be their ultimate rank in English prose and poetry. It is too soon, perhaps, for us to dogmatise with confidence. For in general it is a good rule to observe that, when a hundred years have come and gone since a writer inscribed Finis in the book of his earthly life, the time has come when he can be judged fairly and finally in the roll of English letters-all his own friends and his own enemies removed, the novelty of his own gifts faded away, the fashions and prejudices of the day long changed, and a strong presumption established that, if he be still lively in the memory of a fourth and a fifth generation after his own, it must be due to some real originality and power. We will not attempt to anticipate the verdict of posterity, and to-day let us avoid all hyperboles and eulogiums. Two men of genius have been associated with the traditions of this district. Living men have known them here. And

we testify to-day that those who dwell here and who love letters have not forgotten them nor the thoughts they left to the ages to come.

Both Lamb and Keats will be remembered (amidst all the differences which separate the humorist from the morbid poet), each for his peculiar, fascinating gift-Lamb for an inimitable genius of light and airy criticism, Keats for an inexhaustible spring of melodious and perfumed song. There is no second Lamb in prose; no second Keats in verse. Each has a hall-mark of his own on every product of his mint: unmistakable, incomparable, native; which no man can imitate, none can parody, no man can pirate, yet which could no more be repeated in English literature than we could turn out a new "Vicar of Wakefield" or a second "Lycidas."

I am not comparing Lamb to Oliver Goldsmith nor Keats to Milton. I say no more than this, that Elia has his own rare charm just as dear old "Goldie" had his special charm; that Keats has an inimitable lyric spell, as inimitable in its own way as was ever that of Milton himself. Let us avoid all trace of exaggeration in our praise. The true genius needs no such excess, gains nothing by it, and would scorn to receive it. It is too much the fashion when a memorial is set up, or a biography is issued, to use about the object of this honour the tone of extravagant eulogy, as if our history or our literature contained no other name so great. Those whose task it is to "inaugurate" (as the newspapers affect to call it) a monument to a dead worthy too often speak as if it were their bounden duty "to lie like a tombstone." This is not true reverence. It dishonours our dead worthy. We will not lie like a tombstone, nor even like a funeral sermon, which is sometimes hardly more veracious. Let us utter nothing but words of truth and soberness.

Neither Lamb nor Keats can claim a place in the very foremost ranks of our writers or poets. It would be untrue and unreal to pretend that they do. They have unique gifts: Lamb, as a delightful humorist, the very Ariel of critics, with a wonderful instinct for the older drama; Keats, as having an unrivalled gift of sensuous lyric. We do not assert that Lamb is one of the master-spirits of English thought, one of the fountain-heads of our literature. Nor is Keats, indeed, among the inmost circle of the blessed poets whose thrones are grouped round Shakespeare. Yet these two hold their own. There is no second Lamb; there is no other Keats.

In these days of so much hysterical enthusiasm in things of taste, of so much combative paradox, it may be as well to make it plainer in what sense I hesitate to claim for either the first rank. The first rank in prose, as in verse, is reserved for those who have embalmed great and virile thoughts in perfect form, who have a vast range of ideas, and have pierced to the roots of varied phases of nature and of life, who have given to after ages whole masses of immortal work,

and who fire the brain and the heart of many millions, past, present, and to come. That is to say, the supreme seats are for work, wherein the thought is superior, or at least equal, to the form, wherein the thought is profound, large, various; where there is mass and volume of splendid achievement, power over vast numbers, all ages, races, and sympathies. This is eminently true of the Shakespeares, Dantes, Homers, and is more or less true of such men as Bacon, Milton, Chaucer, Fielding, Goethe, and Scott. In all of them we find profound insight, mighty imagination, vast range of experience and sympathy, mass of work, world-wide, universal glory and influence.

It would be ridiculous to claim anything of the kind for Keats or for Lamb. The vein of each is a simple streak of fine ore, of narrow limit and without pretension to inspire generations of men. Mass of work, variety of gift, profundity, wide knowledge of man and the world belong not to either. We could no more compare Keats with Shakespeare than we could compare Mont Blanc with one of its own snowy pinnacles, and we can no more go to Lamb for what we get from Bacon than we could expect to find the contents of a good library in a single volume. Now, if Lamb and Keats are worthy of the foremost rank, what rank do we reserve for Bacon and for Shakespeare ? And mass of work, brain power, influence over ages and races belong to Spenser, to Chaucer, to Wordsworth, to Burns; yea, to Byron and Shelley amongst poets, as they do to Swift, Johnson, Goldsmith, Scott, Thackeray and Macaulay, in prose. And brain power, range of work, influence over mankind outweigh wit, fancy, and the mirth of the most airy and curious sympathy, as they certainly outweigh the most melodious poetry, where conception is lost and overpowered in music and passionate rapture.

These are the grounds whereon it would be criminal to indulge in shallow enthusiasms, and mischievous to exalt enchanting qualities of mere form over abiding contributions to the great literature of all time. We are perilously near to that decadence down to the "silver age," which seems to be the senility of all great epochs of literature, when delight in form supersedes the substance of prose or verse; when fashion dogmatises about style; when the fascination found in the way in which a thought is said, blinds some weak votaries to the thing that is said and even to the meaning of what is said. Tennyson's exquisite graces have made us all so sensitive to "precious" phrases, and Stevenson's subtle enamels in prose have given such vogue to artful modulations, that we are all apt to talk as if some lovely lines on a rosebud, or an ode on "the first swallow," could place their author on a level with Shakespeare's " Sonnets" and Milton's " Lyrics," though no one imagines that their writer could have conceived a "Hamlet" or a "Paradise Lost." Or, again, we talk as if some