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AN APPEAL.

S our readers will see, from the circular which accompanies this notice, a duty has been laid upon the Century Guild. We need not say that it is a most welcome duty. It has been decided that a memorial shall be raised, somewhere in the Lake District, to the great writers who have made that district famous. Our magazine is the medium through which this good work is to be made public. The proposed memorial is to be no useless monument. It has been suggested that, for poets and men of letters, the most suitable memorial is a library, in which their works may be found, and their busts or their portraits seen. It is our privilege, not only by the magazine to advocate this scheme, but by our labour, to do what we can towards carrying it out practically.

In appealing to our readers, and to the public, for their interest, and their liberal support, we feel sure that our words will not fall upon unwilling ears. We are pleading not for one poet, but for several; and not even for poets only. The memorial is to commemorate all those, be they poets, philosophers, critics, historians, who have sojourned among the Lakes. We have only to name Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and Dr. Arnold, to find an illustrious example in each class that we have enumerated. And besides these there are other writers, in their works less eminent, or in their lives less closely connected with the Lakes, but who, nevertheless, may be appropriately connected with the memorial.

The figure of Wordsworth is, of course, the central, the significant

figure which we connect with the Lakes; but it does not dim the glory of Wordsworth if his friends share this memorial with him. While it is salutary for us to be reminded, as this joint memorial will remind us, how many great writers, and how much good literature, England has received from writers who have lived in Cumberland and Westmorland.

It may be said that the poets need no memorial, that they live in the eternity of their fame. It is true that we can raise to them no adequate memorial. If the whole of the English-speaking race were federated into a single tax-paying community, the entire revenue of that community would not suffice to raise an adequate memorial to one immortal poet :

Quæ tibi, quæ tali reddam pro carmine dona.

A true poet gives his people more than they can ever return to him ; because the poet gives them the priceless gifts of joy, of charm :—

Charm is the glory which makes

Song of the poet divine,

Love is the fountain of charm.

Charm is the poet's alone.

An adequate memorial we can never raise, but that is no reason why we should not try to raise a suitable one. And this form of memorial, we think, is eminently suitable.

To all those, then, who have felt the charm of Wordsworth, we appeal; that through their help others may have both the means and the incitement to feel it too. We cannot repay the joy, the charm, which the poets have conferred on us; but we can help to spread that joy. A memorial which tends to do that is, if not an adequate, yet a suitable memorial; and those who aid in its erection are assuredly working humbly and gratefully with the poets.

THE CENTURY GUILD.

THE MEMORIAL

TO THE MEN OF LETTERS OF THE

LAKE DISTRICT.

T has long been wished that the great men of letters who are connected with the English Lakes should be worthily commemorated by some memorial to them in their own district. This wish was expressed at the final meeting of the Wordsworth Society, which was held on the 7th of June, 1886. It was then pointed out that in such a memorial three things, specially, were desirable:

I.

II. III.

That it should commemorate the illustrious dead in a suitable and practical way.

That it should benefit those among whom it is placed. That it should be interesting, attractive, and stimulating to those visitors to the district who care for its great men. To secure these ends it was suggested that, perhaps, the most suitable Memorial would be a Library and Reading Room; in which the works and lives of these men of letters might be collected, their busts and pictures set up, and literary, personal, or other interesting relics of them be preserved.

The Society was in favour of this scheme, and, that the subject might be more carefully considered, a second meeting was called together, at Burlington House, on Nov. 24th. These ideas were laid before it, and were approved. It was also announced to the

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meeting that the Century Guild of Artists, which is interested in all literary matters, and which is able to help the matter professionally and practically (as it is, now, aiding a Chatterton Memorial, at Bristol), had offered the advocacy of its Magazine to the originators of the scheme. In addition to this, the architectural directors of the Guild promised to submit plans for the approval of the future working Committee, and to give their services, gratuitously, to carry out all architectural work which the Committee may resolve to undertake.

This offer was accepted by the meeting, and the scope and purpose of the Memorial will be set forth in the Christmas number of the Guild Magazine.

The meeting also appointed a General Committee, in order that the scheme might be more publicly and satisfactorily organized. In the coming Spring this Committee will assemble a meeting in London, which it hopes may authoritatively represent all those who are interested in the poets and the great men connected with the Lakes.

The scheme will be fully explained to this meeting; and a working Committee will be appointed to carry it out, and to settle all the further questions which are connected with the erection of the Memorial.

Those who are to be more specially commemorated by this Memorial building, are Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey; but one obvious advantage of this form of Memorial is that all the illustrious and famous writers who are connected with the Lake country may be, at the same time, honoured and kept in memory.

To enumerate all these is unnecessary; but there is one name associated with the Lakes which cannot be omitted: it is the venerated name of Dr. Arnold of Rugby, and of Fox How.

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