Through the Year With Famous Authors Part 51

How little know they life's divinest bliss, That know not to possess and yet refrain!

Let the young Psyche roam, a fleeting kiss; Grasp it--a few poor grains of dust remain.

--_Owen Meredith_.

EDWARD ROBERT BULWER, EARL OF LYTTON ("OWEN MEREDITH"), an English poet and novelist of great fame, was born in London, November 8, 1831, and died in Paris, November 24, 1891. His writings include: "The Wanderer,"

"Clytemnestra, the Earl's Return, and Other Poems," "Fables in Song,"

"Glenaveril," "King Poppy," "The Ring of Amasis," and his famous novel in verse, "Lucile."

Such and so various are the tastes of men.

"Pleasures of the Imagination," Book iii, Line 567.--_Mark Akenside_.

MARK AKENSIDE, a noted English poet, was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne, November 9, 1721, and died in London, June 23, 1770. His most famous work, "Pleasures of the Imagination," won for him great fame.

Emotional effusions are like licorice root. When you take your first suck at it, it doesn't seem so bad but it leaves a very bad taste in the mouth afterward.

--_Turgenev_.

IVAN SERGEYEVITCH TURGENEV, a celebrated Russian novelist, was born in Orel, November 9, 1818, and died in Bougival, near Paris, September 3, 1883. Among his numerous works may be mentioned: "Improvidence,"

"Poems," "The Conversation," "Two Friends," "Quiet Life," "First Love,"

"On the Eve," "Hamlet and Don Quixote," "Fathers and Children,"

"Visions," "The Brigadier," "A Strange Tale," "The Watch," "Some One Knocks," "The Dream," "Song of Triumphant Love," "The Old Portraits," "A House of Gentlefolk," "Poems in Prose," etc., etc.

Every great book is an action, and every great action is a book.

--_Luther_.

MARTIN LUTHER, the ill.u.s.trious church reformer, was born at Eisleben, in Saxony, November 10, 1483, and died there, February 18, 1546. Among his works may be mentioned: "The Babylonian Captivity of the Church," "The Slave Will," "Letters," "Table Talk," and the treatise, "Against Henry, King of England."

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth acc.u.mulates, and men decay.

Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,-- A breath can make them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroy'd, can never be supplied.

"The Deserted Village," Line 51,--_Oliver Goldsmith_.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH, the renowned English-Irish poet, novelist, and dramatist, was born in Pallas, County Longford, Ireland, November 10, 1728, and died at London, April 4, 1774. Among his celebrated works may be mentioned: "The Traveller," "The Citizen of the World," "The Good-Natured Man," "She Stoops to Conquer," "The Deserted Village," and "The Vicar of Wakefield."

Against stupidity the very G.o.ds Themselves contend in vain.

"The Maid of Orleans," Act III, Sc. 6,--_Schiller_.

JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER, the great German poet and dramatist, was born in Marbach on the Neckar, November 10, 1759, and died at Weimar, May 9, 1805. His greatest works are: "Inquiry into the Connection Between the Animal and Spiritual Nature of Man," "Don Carlos," "The Robbers," "Fiesco," "History of the Revolt of the Netherlands from Spanish Rule," "History of the Thirty Years' War," "The Ghost Seer," "Love and Intrigue," "The Piccolomini," "Maria Stuart,"

"The Bride of Messina," "The Maid of Orleans," "William Tell," etc.

Where did you come from, baby dear?

Out of the everywhere into the here.

"Baby" (Song in "At the Back of the North Wind")--_George Macdonald_.

GEORGE MACDONALD, a famous Scottish poet and novelist, was born at Huntley, November 10, 1824, and died in 1905. Besides his numerous poems, he has written: "Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood," "Robert Falconer," "David Elginbrod," "Wilfred c.u.mbermede," "Malcolm," "Sir Gibbie," "What's Mine's Mine," "Lilith," "Unspoken Sermons"; also, "The Princess and the Goblin," "At the Back of the North Wind," etc.

I saw the lightning's gleaming rod Reach forth and write upon the sky The awful autograph of G.o.d.

"The s.h.i.+p in the Desert,"--_Cincinnatus Heine Miller_.

CINCINNATUS HEINE MILLER (JOAQUIN MILLER), a noted American poet, was born in Wabash District, Ind., November 10, 1841, and died in 1912.

Among his works are: "The Baroness of New York," "The Danites," "Songs of the Soul," "Songs of Mexican Seas," "Collected Poems," "'49, or the Gold Seekers of the Sierras," etc.

Men have dulled their eyes with sin, And dimmed the light of heaven with doubt, And built their temple-walls to shut thee in, And framed their iron creeds to shut thee out.

"G.o.d of the Open Air,"--_Henry Van d.y.k.e_.

HENRY VAN d.y.k.e, a distinguished Presbyterian clergyman and diplomat, was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, November 10, 1852. Among his numerous works are: "The Story of the Psalms," "The Poetry of Tennyson," "The Christ Child in Art," "The Friendly Year," "The Ruling Pa.s.sion," "The Blue Flower," "The Open Door," "Select Poems of Tennyson," "Music and Other Poems," "Out of Doors in the Holy Land," "The Spirit of America,"

"The Story of the Other Wise Man," "Poems in War Times," "The Red Flower," "Collected Poems," "The Sad Shepherd," "The Mansion," "The Unknown Quant.i.ty," "The Grand Canyon and Other Poems," "The Lost Boy,"

etc.

The rattling, battering Irishman, The stamping, ramping, swaggering, staggering, lathering, swash of an Irishman.

The Irishman and the Lady, st. I, 3,--_William Maginn_.

WILLIAM MAGINN, a famous Irish scholar, poet and journalist, was born at Cork, November 11, 1793, and died at Walton on Thames, August 20, 1842.

With Hugh Fraser, he founded _Fraser's Magazine_ in 1830. A partial collection of his writings is found in "Miscellanies" (1855-57), edited by R. Shelton Mackenzie. His best stories are "Bob Burke's Duel with Ensign Brady" and "The City of Demons."

As all the perfumes of the vanished day Rise from the earth still moistened with the dew So from my chastened soul beneath thy ray Old love is born anew.

"Remembrance," translated by George Murray,--_Alfred de Musset_.

LOUIS CHARLES ALFRED DE MUSSET, one of the greatest of French poets, was born in Paris, November 11, 1810, and died there, May 1, 1857. Among his writings are: "Tales of Spain and Italy," "A Night of May," "A Night of December," "A Night of August," "A Night of October," "Letter to Lamartine," "Hope in G.o.d," "Nights," "Emmeline," "t.i.tian's Son,"

"Frederick and Bernerette," "A Play in an Arm-Chair," etc.

The Angel of Death is the invisible Angel of Life.

"A Study of Death,"--_Henry Mills Alden_.

HENRY MILLS ALDEN, a celebrated American editor, poet, and prose-writer, was born at Mt. Tabor, Vt., November 11, 1836, and died October 7, 1919.

Among his works are: "G.o.d in His World," "The Ancient Lay of Sorrow," "A Study of Death," "Magazine Writing and the New Literature," and "Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War" (with A. H. Guernsey).