xt7qjq0stw34_5060 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qjq0stw34/data/mets.xml https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qjq0stw34/data/1997ms474.dao.xml unknown archival material 1997ms474 English University of Kentucky The physical rights to the materials in this collection are held by the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center. Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. W. Hugh Peal manuscript collection Bryan Procter clipped signature, letter, and clippings text 43.94 Cubic Feet 86 boxes, 4 oversize boxes, 22 items Poor-Good Peal accession no. 11453. Bryan Procter clipped signature, letter, and clippings 2017 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qjq0stw34/data/1997ms474/Box_59/Folder_2/Multipage27149.pdf 1851-1874, undated 1874 1851-1874, undated section false xt7qjq0stw34_5060 xt7qjq0stw34 THE LATE “ BARRY CORNWALL.”

The literary world has lost an estimable scholar and writer of
genial poetry, Whose life had indeed been extended far beyond
the time when he desisted from productive authorship.
“ Barry Cornwall” has been during more than ﬁfty years the
assumed publishing name of Mr. Bryan Walter Procter; and
he died last Sunday at his house in Weymouth-street. He was
eighty-six or eighty-seven years of age. At Harrow he was a
schoolfellow of Lord Byron and Sir Robert Peel, both of whom
afterwards spoke of him with friendly remembrance. Procter
was brought up to the law, being ﬁrst articled to a solicitor at
Calne, in VViltshire, and placed afterwards in a conveyancer’s
ofﬁce in town. He practised as a conveyancer, and was called
to the Bar as a member of Gray’s Inn. In 1815 he published a
volume of “Dramatic Sketches.” Five years afterwards he
gained public attention by “ A Sicilian Story,” which was fol-
lowed by “ Marcian Colonna ” and the tragedy of “ Mirandola ;”
this was acted with success by Macready at Covent Garden
Theatre. A series of “English Songs,” composed at a later
eriod, is now more widely known. “ The Sea ” and “The
ine ” are perhaps the most popular of these lyrics. Mr.
Procter married a lady who was connected with the late Mr.
Basil Montagu. He had two sons and four daughters. One of
these, Miss Adelaide Anne Procter, inherited her father’s genius,
and wrote many thoughtful poems. She died several years
ago. Mr. Procter held some time the oﬂice of a Commissioner
of Lunacy. His chief prose works are a biography of Edmund
Kean and memoirs of Charles Lamb, with whom he had been
intimate. He also edited Ben Jonson, and wrote critical notices
of the British poets.
The portrait is from a photograph by Mr. Herbert ‘Watkins.

“Barry Cornwall ” is dead; and his passing away has
evoked a very sympathetic notice from the Times, which
tells us that Mr. Bryan Waller Procter, better known by his
liteiary pseudonym, was born in the year 1787 or in the early
part of 1788. lie would thus have been more than eighty—six
or nearly eightyvsevcn at the time of his death. But the late,
(but .’ the late Mr. J. M. Bellow tells us in his charming coni-
pilation, “l’oets’ Corner,” that Bryan VTalier l‘rccter was
born in 1790. It does not matter at al . The gifted poet and
excellent man who is gone had enjoyed for more than half a
century the very brightest literary fame; and that Curtain
whcse advent at the hand of the Great Anarch was so gloomily
predicted in the “Dunoiad” will indeed “cover all” ere, in
English letters he who told us that “Gama-rm is a dainty
steed,” he who wrote “The Stormy Petrol” and “' he

Admiral,” shall be forgotten. Barry Cornwall was as
essentially a. song writer as that exquisite French lyrist of
whom Ber-anger wrote—

(l'e (lisnis :uix llls d‘Epicure :
“ léveillez par vos joyeux chants
Turny, qui salt do In nature
Cele-bier les plus (loux pent-hunts
hlais les chants qui lajoie inspire
Font place aux regrets superflus :
Pnrny 11’ est plus 1
ll vient i‘l’ expirei' sur sa lyre
l’arny n’est plus !

And l’arny died on the verge of ninety. Anacreon lived, they
say, to be a prodigious age; and I like to hear of patriarchal
poets, because I like to think that the “ Longevrty of man,” about
which Mr. J. W. Thoms is writing, just now, With so much genial
Wisdom, can be promoted by the study and the lore of good and
beautiful things. Mr. Procter-'5 reward from a grateful country
was to be made a. Commissioner in Lunacy; but the post,
although seemingly strange as a guerdon for a poet, was a
lucrative one, and decidedly preferable to Burns’s cxcrsemau-
ship. It 18 odd, moreover, that three most distinguished
English men of 1etters~Bryan Procter, Samuel Warren, and
John Forster—should all have been made Lunacy Commis<
sicners. Can the Government have held that “great wit to
madness nearly 13 allied”? Ambrose Phillips was a Coni<
missroner of Hackney Coaches, Ciﬂ’ord Paymasterrof the Band
of Gentlemen Pensioners, and Wordsworth Stamp Dis-
tributor for W’estmorland. We must take what we can get
and be thankful. “ I have often regretted that you were not
in the IVavy,” wrote a First Lord of the Admiralty, not quite a
lziindrcd years ago, to a provincial journalist who had helped
him in some clectioneering matters.

It is full of such tender writing
as t 11s upon the death of Barry Cornwall :—

In the garden of death, where the singers whose
names are deathless
One with another make music unheard of men,
“There the dead sweet roses fade not of lips long
breathless,
And the fair eyes shine that shall weep not or
change again,
“7110 comes now crowned with the blossom of snow-
white years 3
‘that music is this that the world of the dead men
hears ?

~Beloved of men, whose words on our lips were honey,

\Vhose name in our ears and our fathers' ears Was
sweet,

Like summer gone forth of the land his songs made
sunny,

To the beautiful veiled bright world where the glad

ghosts meet,

Child, father, bridegroom and bride, and anguish and
rest,

N0 soul shall pass of a singer than this more blest.

Blest for the years’ sweet sake that were ﬁlled and
brightened,
As a forest with birds, with the fruit and the flower
of his song;
For the souls’ sake blest that heard, and their cares
were lightened,
For the hearts' sake blcst that have fostered his
name so long ;
By the living and dead lips blest that have loved his
name,
And clothed with their praise and crowned with their
love for fame.

Ah, fair and fragrant his fame as flowers that close
not,
That shrink not by day for heat or for cold by
night,
As a thought in the heart shall increase when the
heart's self knows not,
Shall endure in our ears as a sound, in our eyes as
a light ;
Shall wax with the years that wane and the seasons’
chime,
As a white rose thornless that grows in the garden of
time.

The same year calls, and one goes hence with another,
And men sit sad that were glad for their sweet
songs" sake ;
The same year beckons, and elder with younger
brother
Takes inutely the cup from his hand that we all
shall take.
They pass ere the leaves he past or the snows be come;
And the birds are loud, but the lips that outsantor
them dumb.

Time takes them home that we loved, fair names and
famous,
To the soft long sleep, to the broad sweet bosom of
death ;
But the ﬂower of their souls he shall take not away to
shame us,
Nor the lips lack song for ever that now lack
breath.
For with us shall the music and perfume hat die not
dWell,
Though the dead to our dead bid welcome, and we

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