"Oh, Day, if I squander a wavelet of thee, A mite of my twelve-hours' treasure, The least of thy gazes or glances, (Be they grants thou art bound to, or gifts above measure One of thy choices, or one of thy chances, Be they tasks God imposed thee, or freaks at thy pleasure) Then shame fall on Asolo, mischief on me!" Mr. Browning's next production, in 1842, was a tragedy, entitled 'King Victor and King Charles,' founded on some stirring events in Italian history during the middle of the last century, between Victor Amadeus, first king of Sardinia, and his son Charles Emmanuel, Prince of Piedmont. In 1842 he published his first volume of collected poems, under the title of 'Dramatic Lyrics ;' and it was followed at intervals of three and ten years by his 'Dramatic Romances,' and 'Men and Women,' all of which are now dedicated " to their promptest and staunchest helper," John Forster. In 1843 Mr. Browning produced two acting tragedies of considerable poetic merit-The Return of the Druses,' and 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon.' The latter was represented on the stage of Drury Lane Theatre, but with only moderate success. Then came his play of 'Colombe's Birthday,' dedicated in the following manner to Mr. Bryan Procter:- "No one loves and honours Barry Cornwall more than does Robert Browning; who, having nothing better than this play to give him in proof of it, must say so." The last of Mr. Browning's acting tragedies, 'Luria,' appeared in 1846, dedicated in the plenitude of his enthusiasm, with extravagant eulogy, to Mr. Landor:-" I dedicate this last attempt for the present at dramatic poetry to a Great Dramatic Poet; 'wishing what I write may be read by his light' if a phrase originally addressed, by not the least worthy of his contemporaries, to Shakespeare, may be applied here, by one whose sole privilege is in a grateful admiration to Walter Savage Landor." Two other dramatic poems of less pretension,-' A Soul's Tragedy,' Part First being what was called the Poetry of Chiappino's Life, and Part Second its Prose; and 'In a Balcony, a Scene,'complete the list of Mr. Browning's productions in this branch of poetry. But in 1850 a spirited poem, of between two and three thousand lines, made its appearance, with the title Christmas Eve and Easter Day,' commencing in the following somewhat eccentric style : "Out of the little chapel I flung, Five minutes I waited, held my tongue In the doorway, to escape the rain That drove in gusts down the common's centre, At the edge of which the chapel stands, And left me irresolute, standing sentry No remedy; the rain kept driving." The latest and most singular episode in Mr. Browning's literary career was the publication, in 1852, of a long introductory Essay, accompanying twenty-five letters alleged to be from the pen of Percy Bysshe Shelley, which afterwards proved to be forgeries. Mr. Browning edited the volume in which these letters appeared at the invitation of the late Mr. Moxon, the publisher, who bought them at a sale, and the clever deception was a great annoyance to both. The discovery of the forgery was made accidentally by Mr. Palgrave, while on a visit to Mr. Tennyson. Happening one day to be turning over the pages of a copy of Mr. Moxon's volume that had been sent to the Poet Laureate, Mr. Palgrave suddenly recognized, in a letter set forth as having been written by Shelley from Florence to Godwin, a portion of an article written more than ten years before by his father, Sir Francis Palgrave, for the 'Quarterly Review.' Inquiries were set on foot by a literary detective, most of the letters proved to be of spurious manufacture, and the volume had to be suppressed, along with a similar volume of alleged letters of Byron, which proved also to be forgeries by the same skilful hand. JOHN EDWARD GRAY, PH.D., F.R.S., KEEPER OF THE ZOOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. DR. J. E. GRAY and his ancestors of three generations are identified in no unimportant degree with the progress of the study of natural history in this country. Born at Walsall, in Staffordshire, on the 12th of February, 1800, he is the second son of Samuel Frederick Gray, author of the 'Supplement to the Pharmacopoeia,' including the first well-marked extension and improvement of Ray's method of the Natural Arrangement of Plants, whose father was translator of the Philosophia Botanica,' and whose uncle, grand-uncle of Dr. J. E. Gray, was Dr. Edward Whitaker Gray, Secretary of the Royal Society, and one of the Trustees of the Hunterian Museum, and Curator of the then-called "Natural and Artificial Curiosities" of the British Museum. While assisting his father as a pharmaceutical chemist and surgeon, John Edward Gray formed a strong predilection for his pursuits in natural history. He made frequent excursions into the country to collect and examine animals and plants, and in 1817 was elected by his fellow-pupils to undertake the lectures of a botanical class that had been founded in the neighbourhood by Mr. Salisbury, partner of William Curtis, author of the Flora Londinensis' and founder of the 'Botanical Magazine.' His father being compelled by ill-health to retire from business, Mr. J. E. Gray entered as an assistant, at the age of eighteen, the laboratory of Mr. Willat, chemist, of Fore Street, Cripplegate. Shortly afterwards he commenced a course of medical studies as a pupil of St. Bartholomew's and the Middlesex Hospitals, and at the private school of Mr. Taunton, in Hatton Garden and Maze Pond, |