MISS MITFORD.

IT

T is with some hesitation we include Miss Mitford among the English novelists, inasmuch as she did not produce any specimen of the novel proper, but confined herself to sketches of English rural life, founded upon events and scenes with which she was personally familiar, and her efforts in fiction were confined to a few brief though felicitous tales.

Her principal work, "Our Village," was first published in 1824. Its nature is fully set forth by its second title, "Sketches of Rural Characters and Scenery;" and these sketches are distinguished by an almost photographic fidelity of observation, a genial humour, and a subdued pathos. They were collected, as everybody now knows, in the immediate neighbourhood of Reading, and more especially around Three Mile Cross, a picturesque cluster of cottages on the Basingstoke road, in one of which Miss Mitford resided for many years. The details of the peasant life of England were probably never before rendered with so much truth, vividness, and grace.

Yet, as an acute critic has remarked, so little was the peculiar and original excellence of Miss Mitford's descriptions understood, in the first instance, that, after having been rejected by all the more important periodicals, they were first introduced to the notice of the public in "The Lady's Magazine." The series of rural pictures grew, however, and the venture of collecting them into a separate volume was essayed. The public, continues our authority, began to relish the style, so fresh, yet so finished, to enjoy the delicate humour and the simple pathos of the tales; and the result was, that the popularity of these sketches outgrew that of the works of loftier order proceeding from the same pen; that young writers, English and American, began to imitate so artless and charming a manner of narra

278

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE.

tion; and that an obscure Berkshire hamlet, by the magic of latent and kindly feeling, was converted into a place of resort and interest for not a few of the finest spirits of the age.

Mary Russell Mitford, the daughter of Dr Mitford, an eccentric man of talent, was born in 1789, at Alresford, in Hampshire. In her early years she evinced a warm love of literary pursuits, and while still in her youth, published a volume of miscellaneous poems, and a metrical tale in the style of Scott, entitled, "Christina, the Maid of the South Seas." In 1823 her tragedy of "Julian" was successfully produced, Mr Macready enacting the principal character. In 1824, as already stated, appeared the first series of "Our Village," followed, at intervals between 1825 and 1832, by four other series. The next remarkable compositions were the cabinet pictures, entitled, "Belford Regis," and the powerful and impressive tragedy of "Rienzi ;" the latter displaying a dramatic aptitude of which, it must be confessed, Miss Mitford's prose works, beautiful as they are, give no idea.

In 1838, her literary industry was rewarded with a pension, which materially contributed to the comfort of her declining years. In 1852, she published "Recollections of a Literary Life," a work containing some passages of happy criticism; and in 1854, "Atherstone, and Other Tales."

She closed her blameless and industrious life-the greater portion of which had been marked by sore physical suffering at her residence, Swallowfield Cottage, near Reading, on the 10th of January 1855, aged 69.

THE

TOM CORDERY.*

HERE are certain things and persons that look as if they could never die; things of such vigour and hardiness that they seem constituted for an interminable duration, a sort of immortality. An old pollard-oak of my acquaintance used to give me that impression. Never was tree so gnarled, so knotted, so full of crooked life. Garlanded with ivy and woodbine, almost bending under the weight of its own rich leaves and acorns, tough, vigorous, lusty, concentrating as it were the very spirit of vitality into its own curtailed proportions! Could that tree ever die? I have asked myself twenty times, as I stood looking on the deep water over which it hung, and in which it seemed to live again. Would that strong dwarf ever fall? Alas! the question is answered. Walking by that spot to-day,-this very day,-there it lay prostrate, the ivy still clinging about it, the twigs swelling with sap, and putting forth already the early buds. There it lay, a victim to the taste and skill of some admirer of British woods, who, with the tact of Ugo Foscolo, that prince of amateurs, has discovered in the knots and gnarls of the exterior coat the leopard-like beauty which is concealed within the trunk. There it lies, a type of sylvan instability, fallen like an emperor. Another piece of strong nature in human form used to convey to me exactly the same feeling. And he is gone too! Tom Cordery dead! The words seem almost a contradiction. One is tempted to send for the sexton and the undertaker to undig the grave, to force open the coffin-lid, there must be some mistake. But, alas! it is too true; the typhus fever, that axe which levels the strong as the weak, has hewed him down at a blow. Poor Tom Cordery!

This human oak grew in the wild North-of-Hampshire country, of which I have before made honourable mention, a country of heath, and hill, and forest, partly reclaimed, enclosed, and planted by some of the greater proprietors, but for the most part uncultivated and uncivilised, a

* From "Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery" (edit. London,

1824-26.)

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AN ORIGINAL CHARACTER.

proper refuge for wild animals of every species. Of these the most notable was my friend Tom Cordery, who presented in his own person no unfit emblem of the district in which he lived,-the gentlest of savages, the wildest of civilised men. He was by calling a rat-catcher, hare-finder, and broom-maker, a triad of trades which he had substituted for the one grand profession of poaching, which he had followed in his younger days with unrivalled talent and success, and would, undoubtedly, have pursued till his death, had not the bursting of an overloaded gun unluckily shot off his left hand. As it was, he still continued to mingle a little of his old occupation with his honest callings; was a reference of high authority amongst the young aspirants, an adviser of undoubted honour and secrecy, -suspected, and more than suspected, as being one "who, though he played no more, o'erlooked the cards." Yet he kept to windward of the law, and, indeed, continued to be on such terms of social, and even friendly, intercourse with the guardians of the game on the common, as may be said to prevail between reputed thieves and the myrmidons of justice in the neighbourhood of Bow Street. Indeed, his especial crony, the head-keeper, used sometimes to hint, when Tom, elevated by ale, had provoked him by overcrowing, "that a stump was no bad shield, and that to shoot off a hand and a bit of an arm for a blind, would be nothing to so daring a chap as Tom Cordery." This conjecture, never broached till the keeper was warm with wrath and liquor, and Tom fairly out of hearing, seemed always to me a little super-subtle; but it is certain that Tom's new professions did bear rather a suspicious analogy to the old, and the ferrets, and terriers, and mongrels by whom he was surrounded, "did really look," as the worthy keeper observed, "fitter to find Christian hares and pheasants, than rats and such vermin." So, in good truth, did Tom himself. Never did any human being look more like that sort of sportsman commonly called a poacher. He was a tall, finely-built man, with a prodigious stride, that cleared the ground like a horse, and a power of continuing his slow and steady speed, that seemed nothing less than miraculous. Neither man, nor horse, nor dog, could out-tire him. He had a bold undaunted presence, and an evident strength and power of bone and muscle. You might see by looking at him that he did not know what fear meant. In his youth he had fought more battles than any man in the forest. He was as if born without nerves, totally insen