in-Ordinary to his Majesty Charles the First. We know more about Lovelace than Carew, but very little of his parentage. His grandfather, William Lovelace, was a Sergeant-at-Law, and a member of the Honorable Society of Gray's Inn. His father, Sir William Lovelace, is thought to have served with distinction in Holland, and to have fallen at the Gryll. His mother, Lady Ann, was the daughter and heir of Sir William Barnes, of Woolwich.

The family of Sir John Suckling was respectable, but not eminent. His father, Sir John Suckling, was principal secretary of state and comptroller of the household. to James the First; his mother was sister to Sir Lionel Cranfield, afterwards Earl of Middlesex and Lord Treasurer. She is said to have been a woman of wit and vivacity, and her husband a dull fellow. He may have been, but he was a gentleman whom his sovereign trusted, and whom he pensioned. He wrote verse in a small way, to the extent of a sonnet, which appears with other lumber of the same sort in that farrago of nonsense, Coryat's Crudities. His best writing is a passage in his Will. It is the bequest of the portrait of his wife, who died in her thirty-fifth year, and is as follows: "Item. I give to my loving brother in lawe, the Earl of Middlesex, my picture of my late dear wife, hanging in my country house, amongst other pictures, in the little roome next the great hall: for the love he bare to my late deare wife, his most loveinge sister."

While these courtly gentlemen were flirting with the Muse in their elegant, gallant way, there was a vicar down in Devonshire upon whom the Muses beamed. What Anacreon was to Greek poetry, and Horace and Catullus to Latin poetry, this jovial parson was to English lyric verse. He is said

to have descended from one of those ancient and honorable families of which we have been hearing, and which, or a branch of which, was now in trade, his father being a jeweler in Cheapside. All that is known of the jeweler is that he was in good circumstances, and that he died in consequence of injuries received in falling from an upper window of his house into the street. As his Will happened to have been made two days before this event, the biographers charitably insinuate that the fall was probably not accidental! His widow was left with three children, the youngest of whom, our poet, was a little over a year old. His name was Robert Herrick.

Fifteen or twenty years before Herrick stretched his baby hands towards the garden of the Hesperides, there was born to another London merchant a poetic son. There was literary blood in the family on his mother's side, who was descended from Sir Thomas More, and was related to Hayward, the epigrammatist. The name of this second merchant's son was John Donne. Forty or fifty years later another London merchant, a grocer, had a poetical son, or would have had, if he had lived, for he died before the child was born. The education of the boy fell to his widowed mother, who procured him a scholarship at Westminister. It is to her,-if it be not to consider it too. curiously, that we owe his poetry. He has left on record that it was a copy of Spenser's Faerie Queene which used to lie in her parlor, and which he read through before he was twelve years old, that made him a poet. She lived to see him thought the most famous poet of the time. Posterity has not ratified the verdict, though here and there a man of old fashioned taste thinks kindly of the verse, and highly of the prose, of Abraham Cowley.

NOT one of the neighbors knew where she had come from-that was the mystery, and it was doubly a mystery because the people at Grantley, who were mostly rough, busy men and women, generally knew each other's business pretty thoroughly. But this woman,-Phillis Denham her name, foiled them utterly, and remained a mystery in spite of the efforts of the most curious. She had appeared among them at the Mills one Spring morning (Grantley | was a village of mill-hands), and those who lived on one of the most respectable of the narrow streets had seen her come out of a small house which had the day before been unoccupied. And this was all they knew, beyond the later discovery that the cottage was scantily furnished, and yet had an air of neatness not usually seen in Grantley houses, and that Phillis Denham lived alone, and was either a 'Quaker' or a 'Methody.'

'Oo isna our loike, at onyrate," said one of the wise ones. "'Oo minces her words loike one o' th' quality, if 'oo does 'thee' and 'thou.'

She was a young woman, too, and, in a strange, cold, saintly way, a beauty. She had the face of the Madonna, without its soft warmth and tenderness. Her fine eyes were a little hard for the eyes of a woman; her fine mouth had a severe curve; her manner was grave and reserved.

"A woman of stone, my dear," said the good old rector to his wife, after his first parochial call upon the new arrival. "A woman with an injury, I should say, or a woman not easy to understand."

"It was kind of thee to come," Phillis had said to him; "but I am not one of thy people. I belong to the Society of Friends." And even at the end of her visit he had learned not a whit more of her history.

She lived a quiet life, and was a very regular worker. She left her cottage at a certain hour in the early morning, and reentered it as regularly each evening, never far deviating from her accustomed time. She gained no friends, and made no enemies. Her home was as neat and trim as herself, and she was the perfection of simple, almost severe, neatness.

"How are we to ca' thee, lass?" asked one of the boldest of her fellow workers. Art tha wed or single?"

"Thee may call me Phillis Denham," she said, a flickering color touching her fine, white skin; "that is my name."

So they felt it wiser to ask no more questions, and she was called Phillis Denham and left to herself. She had been living this sort of life for three months when there came to the mills a new hand, a handsome woman a year or two older than herself,a woman of a class widely set apart from her,—a woman whose early fading beauty was a shame, and who rebelled against the world and tried to flaunt boldly, despite the haggard misery slowly creeping upon her. They knew her at the Mills. The overseer himself knew her, and greeted her with rough familiarity when she appeared at the offices and demanded work almost as if she had the right to expect it.

"What!" said he. "Back again! Going to try work for a while, are you? Well, I suppose we shall have to give you a place. There, go along and behave yourself." And then he turned to the owner's eldest son who stood by, and spoke to him half apologetically. "She's a rough enough customer," he said, "but she can do work that few of them are up to, and if she was steady we should be glad enough to keep her at good wages. She has worked here, off and on, ever since she was a girl; and a handsome girl she was, too,-too handsome for her own good, as it turned out."

The woman was not in Phillis Denham's room, and in the crowd that passed out of the iron gates, at the ringing of the great bell at meal times, it chanced that for several days each was hidden from the other. But at the end of the week, in going alone down the stairs one evening, Phillis found herself face to face with the new-comer. The woman started back, with something like an oath upon her lips, a flush, half anger, half shame, reddening her cheeks. Phillis whitened perceptibly, and drew back also, straightening her fine, slight form, and holding aside the folds of her dress with an unconscious gesture which spoke worlds.

66

Thee-Janet Ayres?" she said.

The woman laughed a laugh whose angry, scornful sound had yet an undertone of miserable humiliation.

"Aye," she answered, "it's me, Janet Ayres! Has tha owt to say agen it?

If tha has, say it, an' be done wi' it,though I dunnot see how tha can help thysen agen my bein' here."

"Nor I," said Phillis, and she looked down at the creature with a sudden, sharp indrawing of her breath, a wild light leaping into her cold eyes for one instant, then dying out. "Wilt thou let me pass?" she said, in a curious, low voice. "I do not wish to harm thee."

Janet Ayres drew back quickly, and almost unconsciously glanced over her shoulder at the great depth of steps below them. Harm her! For that instant the pure, self-righteous woman had actually looked as if her last words might have held a desperate double meaning. And it would have been easy enough to harm her, with that flight of stairs below. A touch would have done it almost. And less deeply wronged women had revenged themselves in such ways before. But the light had died out of Phillis Denham's eyes, and she passed down the staircase without another word.

She was even unusually pale and silent the next day. The women who worked near her noticed, indeed one of them reremembered afterward, that she only spoke once during all the hours of labor, and this once was on hearing the name of Janet Ayres from the lips of the woman at the loom next to her own.

"Th' mesters ha' no reet to tak' such loike nowts," said the speaker, roughly. "If it were na for th' choild, poor little wench

66

Phillis looked up with a slight start. "Friend," said she, do I understand thee to say the woman has a child?"

"Aye,' was the answer, "as pratty a little lass as any honester woman might wish fur-th' Lord help it! Three year owd, or theerabout. Th' parish owt to tak' it to save it fro' goin' its mother's gate."

But though the matter dropped for the time being, this was not the end of it. On her way home that evening Phillis met with a little adventure. One of the luxuries she allowed herself was a weekly bouquet of common flowers, and she was passing down a narrow street, with a handful of roses and sweet peas, just purchased, when a small hand, thrust through a fence, plucked at her gown, and the sound of a child's voice stopped her.

"Ooman," said the sweet, shrill little pipe; "ooman, gi' us a posy."

She stopped and looked down. She did not often notice children, but the voice of this one, and the soft touch of the small, bold, detaining hand gave her a queer, new feeling. Children did not often notice her, either; she was not the sort of woman to attract a child. The tiny hand plucked at her dress again. "Gi' us a posy!

Gi' us a posy!"

But for a moment or so Phillis did not answer, though it was not the prettiness of the dirty, dimpled face she was looking at so fixedly. It was something else that held her silent-something in the summer blue eyes that struck her with a hard pang.

When she could speak she separated a rose from her flowers and bent down, but the hand with which she offered the blossom trembled, and her voice was strangely unsteady.

"What is thy name?" she asked.

The child fell back a little, regarding her almost distrustfully-the handsome face was so hard for a baby to read.

"Will thee not tell me thy name?" Phillis repeated. "See, here is a rose for thee."

The dimpled hand crept out for the flowers, and then the pretty boldness came back.

"Jenny," said the child. "Ooman, did ta gi' Jenny a posy?" Phillis stood up.

"Yes," she said, in a tone curious enough to use in speaking to a child; "I gave thee a posy."

That was all. She did not stop to caress the little creature. She passed on, with the rest of her flowers in her cold hand, and left it peering through the fence at her. This was the child-the child, and its blue eyes had stabbed again the one rankling wound of her life. The little house had never seemed so quiet as it did when she unlocked the door and entered it; the stillness was like the stillness of death. But Phillis did not feel it. She laid her flowers upon the table, went to the fire, stirred the coals, and sat down. The flame shot up, and, lighting up the room, glowed upon her face, but had not glow enough to flush its pallor.

"It is the child," she said. "Her child has lived, while mine

Her lips closed, as if in stern resolve. It was part of her creed to force herself to silence. If she had suffered, she had not rebelled by word or deed,—she had not rebelled, even if, in her severe struggle to be

ening in her voice. "Wilt thou give me the child, and keep the man?"

"Th' mon!" cried the woman, with a fierce sneer. "I want neither th' mon nor child. Tha may tak' both."

'Nay, but I will not take them both," answered Phillis, a shrill tone breaking from her, quiet as she tried to seem; “I will not take them both. William Henders chose between me and thee, and he chose thee, and he may stick to thee. He is naught to me, but the child I want; and if thee has woman's blood in thy body, thou canst not say me nay. Thee knows what thy own life has been; does thee want that little one's to be like it? has fed her with thy own strength-unless such as thee are different from other women; dost thou want to make her curse thee? Nay, but thou hast even a blacker soul than I fancied, if thou dost."

Thee

Then Janet Ayres laughed a laugh even scornful of the stainless, righteous, injured woman, who so scorned and taunted her.

"Tha art a good Christian, Phillis Henders," she said; "aye, but tha art a good Christian; religion and such loike were bred i' thy bones and comes out i' thy flesh. I never knew a Methody yet as didn't show th' breed, an' I never saw a safe soul yet as would na' gi' a lost one a help down th' hill. Look here," her voice shrilling and her face flushing scarlet, “I'm one of th' lost ones mysen, but I never gave a push to either lost or saved yet; an' so help me God,-if God has owt to do with such loike as me,-if I could hurt an' humble thee, even thee, with thy hard words an' thy pride,-if I could crush an' humble thee before my face this minute, in raisin' my finger, I would na raise it; nay, I would na." And she dropped her head upon her arms again, her excitement ending in a passionate burst of sobs and tears. "Tak' th' child," she cried, "tak' her an' keep her! Teach her what her mother is, an' train her up to point her finger at her! Aye, I would be willin' fur that, if that would save her-aye, an' thank th' God as has nowt to do with such as me." Surely some pang of conscience smote her judge. Her pale face grew paler, and her eye was not so steady as it had been. Some fine instinct at work within her made her shrink, for she faltered as she spoke. "He may have to do with such as thee if thou would repent," she said. "There is time for thee yet."

"Repent!" said Janet Ayres. "Repent thysen. Hast tha nowt to repent on? No, such as thee never has; tha'rt on the narrow path fro' first to last; it wur made fur such as thee. Dunnot tell me to repent."

Phillis's hand trembled a little. That sense of discomfort grew upon her strongly, and it was this lost creature's words that stung her.

"I did not come here to contend with thee," she said. "I came to plead for the child."

"Will Henders's child," put in the woman, with a miserable effort at a taunt.

"Will Henders's child," said Phillis, without a change in her voice. "Will thee give it up to me?"

Janet Ayres lifted her face with a strange irony in her smile.

"Tha art na askin' much," she said. "I ask thee for a human soul," answered Phillis.

"Aye," said Janet Ayres, "but such as me dunnot know much about that theer. Tha art askin' me fur all as I've gotten i' th' earth-thee as niver had a child o' thy own."

"Thou art mistaken," said Phillis, "I had a child who died."

"Tha!" exclaimed Janet.

But Phillis stopped her with a gesture. "It died," she said, "and it belongedpoor little one!-to a past that is all over. But this child of thine is not so safe."

"If that is true I can trust thee better," said the woman, "not but what I believe tha'd do reet by th' little un, hard as tha Its thy way to do reet."

art.

There was a pause for a moment, and then she looked up.

"I do not see what sent thee here to tempt me to-neet," she said. "I have often thowt o' this, but I niver thowt as I've done to-neet. I niver thowt as I were thinkin' when tha' came in. Aye Janie, little wench-Janie!" with a gush of tears. "Come wi' me," she said abruptly to Phillis, rising and taking the lamp from the table.

Phillis followed her across the room to the shaded corner where the child's cot stood, and there they paused.

"Look," said Janet Ayres, holding the light over the pink, flushed baby face.

Phillis did not speak; the eyes that had mocked her so were closed; but it was not easy to forget the pang they had given her.

"If I gi' her up to thee," said Janet, “I shall gi' her up foriver. Her way will not