And again : "Though all's vain to keep him warm, But the Were it our intention to write a critique on Clare, we might quote other passages, written in a similar impersonal strain. labouring classes have now ceased to think thus of their poverty. Impatient of quickly recurring sufferings to which they can perceive no end, and partially enlightened by the dissemination of a species of education, which, though imperfect and erroneous, has led them to think, they begin to spurn the goad, and clamour for an amelioration of their social condition. No longer ignorant of their strength, they have determined to participate in the plenty of which they are the producers, and to demand something better in reward for their toil than prospective starvation. Nor do such views become a whit less significant when we find the wisest among their supporters trusting, not in the employment of physical force, but in the irresistible influence of Genius and Intelligence; both of which are now largely enlisted on their behalf. Erewhile the poor man required some one else to plead for him; but now, from among his own class, arise men to whom the faculty of strong speech is not denied; and one of these is JOHN CRITCHLEY PRINCE, a Manchester mechanic, who has just published a small volume of poems, to a somewhat elaborate analysis of which we shall devote the present article. In their versification, Mr. Prince's poems are frequently energetic, and always polished; indeed, so polished, that, from a mere perusal, it would scarcely be inferred that they were the outpourings of a self-educated artisan. In this, as in many other respects, his poetry stands in perfect contrast to that of Clare, whose productions are often disfigured by ungrammatical construction and disagreeable provincialisms. The events of Mr. Prince's life form the best possible commentary on the sentiments conveyed in his verses. He has endured all the distresses to which the hard lot of the mechanic could subject him. Much of privation and wretchedness has he seen-often in danger of starvation, and for months residing in a garret, destitute of nearly the common necessaries of life. He is a native of Wigan, in Lancashire, and was born on the 21st of June, 1808. His father, a reed-maker for weavers, having a family of several children, was unable to send the subject of our present notice to school. It would appear, however, that he gained a very imperfect knowledge of reading and writing, at a Baptist chapel in the neighbourhood; but being put at the early age of nine years to learn his father's trade, every indication of a love of books became, in the eyes of his parents, a crime. Distress and embarrassment, in 1821, compelled Prince's father to leave Wigan, and proceed to Manchester. From thence he went to Stockport, where, not succeeding to his wish, he once more returned to Man chester, and was employed by Messrs. Sharp and Roberts, then of Toll-lane, Deansgate. We cannot do better than give the remainder of our poet's history in the words of the interesting and unostentatious "Sketch" prefixed to his little book. Pecuniary difficulties once more compelled the father to quit Manchester, and take up his abode at Hyde, a village about eight miles from thence. Here young Prince dragged on a miserable sort of life, made so by a combination of circumstances which it is not necessary here to explain. In the hope of making a happier home for himself, he entered into the matrimonial noose with a pretty and interesting young woman of his own rank of life, a neebor lassie' of Hyde, in the latter end of 1826, or beginning of 1827, when he was yet under nineteen years of age. He had not at this time obtained the necessary proficiency in his trade, and he had still to work for his father. Under these circumstances his income was extremely limited, and when offspring began to come, the joint endeavours of both parents were barely sufficient to keep the machine of life agoing. Things dragged on thus heavily until 1830, when his hopes were excited by tales held out to him of the want of English artisans in France, and those of his craft especially. With this view he set off for St. Quentin, in Picardy, leaving his wife to provide by her labour for his three children and herself, until he should procure employment, and such a remuneration for it as he had been led to expect. When he arrived in London he heard of the Revolution in Paris, and the flight of Charles X. Not reflecting on the necessary stagnation which this must occasion to manufactures, he determined that, having proceeded so far, he would venture onwards. Arrived at Calais, he had to remain some days, until news was brought that Louis Philippe was elected King of the French. He now proceeded up the country to St. Quentin. Here he was doomed to disappointment; the Revolution had paralyzed everything. Business was at a stand-still, and no employment for him was to be had. He knew not now what to do; whether to return home, his hopes frustrated and money wasted, or to proceed to the great seat of manufacture, Mulhausen, on the Upper Rhine. He chose the latter course, and accordingly wended his way thitherwards, by the way of Paris, where he staid eight days, in which time he visited the Theatres, the Church of Nôtre Dame, Père la Chaise, the Palais Royal, the Luxembourg, the Tuileries, the Gallery of the Louvre, ascended the column in the Place Vendôme, and viewed other lions' of the French metropolis, till at length, finding his viaticum, so small at the beginning, dwindling to a most diminutive bulk, he proceeded forward, through the province of Champagne, to his destination. "On arriving at Mulhausen, he found trade little better than at St. Quentin. Many manufactories were shut up, and the people in great distress. His means were completely exhausted. In a land of strangers, ignorant of the language, with the exception of the few words he had picked up on the road, he was indeed forlorn. Without the means to return, and in the hope of a revival in trade, he remained here five months in a state of comparative starvation; sometimes being two entire days without food. During this time some trifling relief was afforded him by the generous kindness of Mr. Andrew Kechlin, a manufacturer, the mayor of the town. "Finding that his hopes were fruitless, and the desire of again seeing his wife and children becoming insupportable, he at length determined to undertake the task of walking home, through a stranger land, for many hundred miles, without a guide, and without money. Accordingly, in the middle of a severe winter, (January, 1831,) with an ill-furnished knapsack on his back, and ten sous in his pocket, he set off from Mulhausen to return to Hyde, in Lancashire, with a heart light as the treasure in his exchequer. His wants, his privations, damped not the ardour of his soul; his poetic enthusiasm, while it drove him into those difficulties a more prudent and less sanguine temperament would have made him avoid, yet served to sustain the buoyancy of his spirits under the troubles which environed him, and which it had superinduced. "For a few days he kept along the beautiful and romantic banks of the Rhine, exploring its ruined castles, and visiting every scene of legendary lore that came in his path, exclaiming in the words of his favourite poet, Goldsmith, Creation's heir, the world, the world is mine!' He journeyed through Strasburg, and admired its splendid cathedral; through Nancy, Verdun, Rheims, Luneville, Chalons, and most of the principal cities, &c. that lay near his route, till he reached Calais once more; obtained from the British Consul a passage across the Channel, and again set his foot on his native soil. During this toilsome journey he subsisted on the charity of the few English residents whom he found on his way. He lay in four different hospitals for the night, but not once in the open air, as he did afterwards in his own country. The first night after his arrival he applied for food and shelter at a workhouse in Kent, and was thrust into a miserable garret, with the roof sloping to the floor, where he was incarcerated along with twelve others-eight men and four women, chiefly Irishthe lame, the halt, and the blind. Some had bad legs, which emitted. a horrible stench; some were in a high state of fever, and were raving for drink, which was denied to them; for the door was locked, and those outside, like the bare walls within, were deaf to their cries. Weary and wayworn he lay down on the only vacant place amid this mass of misery-in a sleeping chamber for the unfortunate child of woe, the hapless vagrant in Christian England-at the back of an old who appeared to be in a dying state; but he could get no rest for the groans of the wretched around him, and the crawling vermin, which, quitting his companions, crept up and down his limbs, exciting in him the most horrid loathing. Joyfully did he indeed hail the first beam of morning that broke through the crannies of this chamber of famine and disease; and when the keeper came to let him out, his bedfellow was dead-had quitted her mortal coil, unshrived, unwept, unpitied, and unknown! woman, "Released from this lazar-house, he proceeded onward, pennyless and shoeless, towards London, begging in the day-time, and lying in the open fields at night. When he reached London he had been the whole day without food. To allay the dreadful, but to him then fami liar, cravings of hunger, he went to Rag Fair, and taking off his waistcoat, sold it for eight-pence. With the proceeds of this sale he bought a penny loaf to mitigate his hunger, and four penny-worth of writing paper, with which he entered a tavern, and, calling for a pint of porter, proceeded to the writing of as much of his own poetry as his paper would contain, and this amid the riot and noise of a number of coal-heavers and others. "As soon as he had done his task, he went round to a number of booksellers, hoping to sell his manuscript for a shilling or two; but the hope was, alas! vain. The appearance and manners of the famishing bard to these mercantile men were against him-he could not succeed in finding taste for his poetry, or sympathy for his sufferings. "He stayed in London during two days, wandering by day, foodless, through its magnificent and wealth-fraught streets; and pacing about, or lying on the cold stones in gateways, or on the bare steps of the affluent, by night. In despair, on the third day, he left the metropolis of the land of his birth, where he was a greater stranger, and less cared for, than in a foreign land, and wended his way homeward, first applying for relief to the overseer of 'merry Islington,' where, urged by the stings of famine, he was importunate when denied assistance, and was, therefore, for his temerity, thrust into the street to starve. A youthful and unabused constitution, however, saved him from what might have followed to a less healthful frame and a less buoyant heart. "At length, by untiring perseverance, he reached Hyde, having slept by the way in barns, vagrant offices, under hay-stacks, and in miserable lodging-houses with ballad-singers, match-sellers, and mendicants, fully realizing the adage of Shakspere, that 'misery makes a man acquainted with strange bed-fellows.' On his route from London, he ground corn at Birmingham, sung ballads at Leicester, lay under the trees in Sherwood-forest, near Nottingham, lodged in a vagrant office at Derby, made his bivouac at Bakewell, in Derbyshire, in a 'lock-up,' and finally reached Hyde, but found, alas! it contained for him a home no longer. "Whilst poverty had thus brought suffering upon him when in quest of better means to provide for his family, it had also brought woe and privation upon his wife and babes! Unable to provide for her children by her labour, she had been compelled to apply for parish aid, and was, in consequence, removed to the poor-house of Wigan. After a night's rest Prince hurried off to that town, and brought them back to Manchester, where he took a garret, without food and clothes, without bed and furniture, or an article of use of any description. On a bundle of straw did this wretched family of man, and wife, and three children, lay for several months. "During all this time Mr. Prince was unable, but at very long intervals, to obtain even very insufficiently rewarded employment; and had it not been for the labour of his wife, who is a power-loom weaver, and withal a most industrious and striving creature, they would have starved outright. At this period of severe privation, their youngest child died, and before they could raise the means to defray the cost of its interment, decay had almost reduced it to a putrid mass of flesh. Ah! little indeed do the rich and middle classes know of the wretchedness and misery that are endured by thousands of the indigent in this land of high civilization,-this boasted emporium of the commerce of the world. "Let it be borne in mind that Mr. Prince would have worked at any kind of employment, no matter how laborious and servile; but his threadbare garb, and extremely care-worn and wretched appearance, seemed to make against him everywhere, as though misfortune was the result of crime; constant employment, however ill remunerated, notwithstanding unwearied exertions to procure it, was, therefore, denied to him. "A continued wandering to and fro occupied his time, until at length he got employment at Ashton-under-Lyne as a reed-maker. He subsequently returned to Hyde, and obtained a situation in a cotton-mill, where he has since remained. His labour is of a very heavy and harassing kind, and but poorly rewarded, not yielding him more than eighteen shillings per week when fully employed. Those who have families to maintain by hard labour and on scant means will know that the poet has not yet obtained leisure and comfort." Poetry written by a man thus struggling with the world, could not fail of being deeply tinged by the character of the contest; and no doubt the passionate utterances of Mr. Prince have been repeated by thousands, suffering, like him, under "The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." Indeed, one of the chief merits of his productions lies in their being so faithful a transcript of the feelings and sentiments cherished by the class of men to which he belongs. Mr. Prince's strains evidently proceed from the heart, and not from the head: they are eminently the effusions of a poor man, deeply coloured by the circumstances around. Mr. Prince's life is a full justification of all his poetry; and indeed, had he written in any other spirit than this, we should have half suspected him of the cant of the worldling and the hypo crite. While Let not, however, what we have said of our poet be mistaken. His poems are one and all the products of a sound and healthy mind; equally free from moody misanthropy or pining discontent. His illsuccess in life has soured neither his temper nor his verses. pleading the rights of the poor, he does not forget the respect due to those of the rich; and accordingly, no harsh hatred of those superior to him in station is to be found in his pages. The regeneration for which he longs is perfectly compatible with the permanence of existing institutions; and no man anathematizes more strongly than himself, the popular demagogues, who, for the attainment of their own lawless and diabolical ends, would disturb the peace of society, and remorselessly involve the nation in ruin and bloodshed. We quote the following poem, not only for its intrinsic beauty and nervous phraseology, but because it records the author's detestation of such wickedly reckless councils :— |