" long continued and strong heat. The cobalt is thus again reduced to the metallic form, and if any iron be contained in the calx, it is left behind in the scoria. The metal finely pulverized is spread thinly on dishes, and roasted two or three times at a low red heat. By this operation, it usually gains 25 to 30 per cent. Such is the process by which, until within a few years, all the blues used in the earthenware manufacture were prepared. It has been my sole occupation; and I have every reason to believe it is now for the first time made public. It is however, now already becoming obsolete, and will probably be in the end entirely abandoned for one practised extensively in Birmingham, by the refiners of nickel for the manufacture of German silver. I shall conclude by a very brief sketch of the process by which this purification is effected. It may be found described in the passage which I am about to quote from Leopold Gmelin's "Hand Book of Chemistry," and which, if it be not an exact transcript of the process adopted, at least approximates very nearly to it. The Hungarian speiss, containing 6 per cent. of nickel, and 3 per cent. of cobalt, is first fused with chalk and fluor spar, the slag thrown away, and the fused product ground to powder, and roasted in a reverberatory furnace till no more fumes of arsenic are given off. The roasted product then dissolves almost completely in hydrochloric acid. The solution is diluted with water, mixed with chloride of lime to convert the iron into sesqui oxide, and with milk of lime to precipitate that oxide together with the arsenic. The precipitate which is of no further use is then washed, and sulphuretted hydrogen passed through the clear liquid until a filtered sample gives a black precipitate on the addition of ammonia. The precipitated sulphates which are likewise of no further use having been washed with water, the solution is next heated with chloride of lime to precipitate the cobalt, and then with milk of lime to throw down the nickel. The cobalt precipitate is converted either into sesqui oxide by gentle ignition, or into protoxide by strong ignition, and sold in one of those forms. The precipitated nickel is reduced by charcoal, and sold to the manufacturers of German silver. It is a curious circumstance, and one which I cannot help mentioning in connection with this subject, that the first application of cobalt to the purpose of printing blue upon earthenware, was made in Liverpool. The ware was sent down from Staffordshire in what is called the biscuit or unglazed state, and after having been printed, glazed, and fired, was returned to the manufacturers in the potteries. The curious in topography, may perhaps feel some interest in visiting the spot, which is up a gateway on Shaw's Brow, and not probably two hundred yards distant from where we are at present assembled. I cannot but regret my inability to enter into more scientific details. My intention has been merely indeed to afford you a faithful record of a process, which as I before observed has never previously been published, and which on that account, and the circumstance of being eminently a practical one, may not be devoid of a certain amount of interest. Even though abandoned, as it probably will be at no distant period for the acid process of which I have given you a slight sketch, it may not be uninteresting to trace the progress of the manufacture through its earlier and ruder stages. We are the better enabled to appreciate excellence by a review of the slow and frequently toilsome process by which excellence in science or art has been obtained, as the traveller who climbs the mountain to admire an extensive and beautiful landscape, enhances his pleasure by turning round to review the steep and laborious ascent by which he has gained its summit. COWLEY, AND THE POETS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. (READ DECEMBER 14TH, 1854.) I may be somewhat singular in my opinion, and in any other place than the calm arena of literary research it might provoke a war of words as hot as was the strife of swords between Cavalier and Roundhead, but I do hold, most sincerely and firmly, that few brighter days ever dawned for English literature than that which was so soon and sadly overcast by the troubles of the "Great Rebellion," The two periods which are generally regarded as the most illustrious in our literary history are the reigns of Elizabeth and Anne—the latter half of the sixteenth and the earlier portion of the eighteenth centuries. My D vocation to night is to vindicate the seventeenth. That, in some particulars, the Elizabethan age is entitled to a pre-eminence over it, I am as willing to admit, as I am prepared to deny the superiority of the other, later, period. In many respects the seventeenth century stands second to none, notwithstanding the disturbing causes of political strife, and social convulsion, which were so long and so fatally at work. Who will venture to place in any inferior rank, an age which counts among its worthies such men as Usher, and Laud, and Jeremy Taylor; Bishops Bull, Hall, and Bedell; Hammond, Isaac Barrow, Prideaux, Chillingworth, Fuller, Hales of Eton, Selden, Sir Thomas Browne, Sir Kenelm Digby, Izaak Walton, John Evelyn, Lord Clarendon, and Sir Matthew Hale; and then, in the particular province of our present enquiry, Milton, Cowley, Dryden, Waller, Denham, Wither, Crashaw, Herrick, and the author of "Hudibras?" Cowley himself has remarked that "a warlike, various, and tragical age is best to write of, but worst to write in." Of the vast number of writers, whose names have come down to our own days, the circumstances of those unhappy times must have repressed and stunted the genius of many among them, diverted to different pursuits the talents of others, and harassed and embittered the lives of almost all. But if the early promise of King Charles' reign could have been fulfilled, there is little doubt that it would have been illustrated, in every department, by genius as gifted, and works as imperishable, as the happier reign of Elizabeth can boast. † Preface to Works, p. iv. + "The accession of Charles the First," says a writer, to whom no suspicion of partiality can attach, " seemed an auspicious event for the cause of literature and the arts. The Sovereign himself was a prince of much learning, and of a refined and elevated taste. To him this nation is indebted for the acquisition of the Cartoons of Raphael; he invited Vandyke, Rubens, Bernini, and other foreign artists to this country; was the liberal patron of Ben Jonson, Inigo Jones, and other native poets and artists; and amongst the crimes with which he was charged by his enemies was one which, at the present day, we cannot judge to be quite unpardonable, namely, that the volumes of Shakspeare were his companions day and night. The poets who flourished in his reign, in addition to those who survived the reigns of his predecessors, although they possessed not the commanding genius, and the wonderful creative powers of the Bards of the Elizabethan age, for there were giants on the earth in those days, were yet among the most polished and elegant writers which the nation has produced. The sweetness of their versification was not of that tame and cloying nature which the imitators of Pope afterwards introduced into our literature-smooth to the exclusion of every bold and original thought. The favourite amusement of this period was the dramatic entertainments called masques." Of those produced at Court, "Ben Jonson commonly wrote the poetry, Lawes composed the music, and Inigo Jones designed the decorations. Had Charles long continued to sway the English sceptre there is no doubt that literature and the arts, but especially the latter, would have been materially advanced."-Neele's Lectures on English Poetry, pp. 16-18. * It is a curious and very noticeable historical fact, that ever since the revival of learning, our literary history has exhibited a constant succession of alternations-first eminence, then mediocrity-first brightness, and then gloom. "When sun is set, the little stars do shine." The most striking proof of this is seen in the contrast between the successive reigns of Elizabeth and James-of Anne, and the first two Georges. As in mining, when you have worked out one rich lode, you must dig through a mass of rubbish before you can find another remunerative vein as the coldness and sterility of Winter ever follow the sunny glow of Summer, and the glad luxuriance of Autumn; and these must be endured ere the hopefulness and cheering of another Spring can revisit us and as a night of darkness separates the dying day from the approaching morrow, so is it in our literary history. And yet another illustration occurs to me, which, for its aptness, I hope may be excused. The distance between any two of those epochs which we delight to dwell upon, and the interval of common-place which divides them, remind me of the great squares of the metropolis. Go through that in which our own noble president resides, and which gives a colloquial designation to the district. The dwellings are palaces, and their inhabitants are the rulers of the land. Further on is another square of the same class. The backs of the houses of each meet, and together form a line of-stables, called locally a mews. And you can no more pass from one bright period of literary glory to another, without that dreary inter-space of mediocrity, than you can get from Belgrave-square to Eaton, without making that unpoetical passage of the stables. The reign of James I. was one of these intervals. It had little or no poetic excellence properly its own. All the brightness which adorned those times was either the twilight of the day which had made glorious the reign of Elizabeth, or the coming dawn of that which was to break in social storm and political convulsion afterwards. Not forgetting the names of Donne, and Sir Henry Wotton, and Bishop Henry King, it may justly be said that the characteristic of that epoch was mediocrity; and that, in comparison with the one which followed it, and still more with that which preceded it, it shrinks into littleness and insignificance. Of all the poets of the Caroline era, Cowley was unquestionably the most popular, and-Milton alone excepted-he was the best and most highly gifted amongst them. Milton's own wish for himself was that he might "fit audience find, though few;" but his contemporary was more fortunate than even this: he had the applause of congenial minds, but not of these alone. To the commendation of the critic was added the admiration of the multitude. Dr. Johnson says, "He was in his own time considered as of unrivalled excellence." Clarendon represents him as having taken a flight beyond all that went before him; and Milton is said to have declared that "the three greatest English poets were Spenser, Shakspeare, and Cowley."* Wordsworth mentions, in proof of his popularity, that his own folio copy of Cowley's works is the seventh edition, dated 1681.† This was only fourteen years after the poet's death. In 1693 another folio edition was published, a copy of which is before you; and Mr. Craik also mentions that a twelfth edition was issued by Tonson, in 1721, of the collection made by Cowley himself. On his decease, King Charles declared that he "had not left a better man behind him in England."|| Sir John Denham penned an elegy, on his interment in Westminster Abbey, and Bishop Sprat wrote his life—the same which is prefixed to his works, and which has furnished the materials for every subsequent biography. But his popularity did not last long. Other great and living names arose, before which that of the departed Cowley might well grow dim. In the year of his death, "Paradise Lost" appeared-the work which its author had contemplated in his early manhood as that "something" which he should leave "to after times," "so written" "as that they should not willingly let it die." In the same year Dryden published his Annus Mirabilis, and thence we may date that public life of the author of " Absalom and Achitophel," in which, like his own Zimri, he was Everything by turns, and nothing long ;" pouring forth the odes of the laureate, the licentious plays of the popular dramatist, the stinging satires of the partisan and polemic, and the more polished works of the ripe scholar, with a profusion, and a general, though not unexceptionable, excellence, which make his life an epoch in * Johnson's Lives of the Poets, vol. i.-Cowley. Life, by Bishop Sprat. § Against Prelacy, A.D. 1642. |