Cosmo Monkhouse. 1840-1901. WILLIAM COSMO MONKHOUSE was born in London on the 18th of March, 1840. His father was an English solicitor, and his mother a descendant of the old French family of Delafosse, who were refugees from the Edict of Nantes. He was educated at St. Paul's School, and at the age of seventeen entered the Board of Trade, where he became one of that distinguished little band of littérateurs which seems destined to give to Whitehall a fragrant association oddly similar to that which clings to the traditions of the old India House. He was not long in finding literature, and while still very young contributed verses and stories to Temple Bar, Chambers's Journal, Once a Week, All the Year Round, and other periodicals. In 1865 he published his "Dream of Idleness, and other Poems," from which "The Chief Ringer's Burial," "The Night Express," and "Posthumous" are here reprinted, and in 1868 a novel entitled "A Question of Honour." Since then he has become widely known as an art critic, having written a volume on "The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters;" on Turner, for "The Great Artists" series; on "The Italian Pre-Raphaelites," for the National Gallery; having re-edited Mrs. Heaton's "Concise History of Painting," for Bohn's "Artists" series; contributed a series of biographies of painters to the "Dictionary of National Biography," and continuously written for many of the leading periodicals, especially for The Magazine of Art, The Portfolio, and The Academy. In 1890 Mr. Monkhouse published his "Corn and Poppies," a second volume of verse in which he more than fulfilled the promise of the first. As a whole, however, the volume illustrates more the poet's versatility than his special forte. He has written good sonnets, one especially fine-"To the Sea," a worthy fellow to Hood's "Sonnet to Silence," and Leigh Hunt's "To the Nile," by virtue of a similar massiveness of thought, and a certain generic relationship of mood and manner; but his natural inspiration is towards measures of a freer movement. Of this flexibility, within the bounds of a single composition, his "Sonata" of "Love" is the most striking example, for all the various movements blend into each other with surprising flow, while the still more difficult unity of the whole is unbroken. RICHARD Le Gallienne. Cosmo Monkhouse died on the 20th of July, 1901. THE CHIEF RINGER'S BURIAL. COSMO MONKHOUSE. MUFFLED peal, a muffled peal. A Keep time! With your hands and with your hearts Mind your parts: Ring, toll, chime. Ring as he would wish to hear you, A muffled peal, a muffled peal. Do him honour with your ringing, Sorrow-singing ; Ring, toll, chime. Out of sorrow joy has birth: A muffled peal, a muffled peal. He taught you how to ring a knell; Ring, toll, chime. Ring his knell with solemn beauty; Cast your grief into your duty;- Ring, toll, chime. A muffled peal, a muffled peal. Make the big bells heave and throb; Ring, toll, chime. Make them sob to-day with sorrow, They shall laugh again to-morrow. Ring, toll, chime. THE NIGHT EXPRESS. WITH COSMO MONKHOUSE. three great snorts of strength, Stretching my mighty length, Like some long dragon stirring in his sleep, Into the night I pass, And plunge alone into the silence deep. Little I know or care What be the load I bear, Why thus compell'd, I seek not to divine; I, his stern messenger! Does he his duty well as I do mine? Straight on my silent road, Flank'd by no man's abode, No foe I parley with, no friend I greet; Under the starry sky, Scorning the current of the sluggish street. Onward from South to North, Onward from Thames to Forth, On-like a comet-on, unceasingly; Faster and faster yet On-where far boughs of jet Stretch their wild woof against the pearly sky. |