succeeded, and brought away some thousands of drawings of the most striking
views from all three Presidencies and from the tropical island. His
appetite for travel continued to grow with what it fed upon; and although
he hated a long sea-voyage, he used seriously to contemplate as possible a
visit to relations in New Zealand. It may safely, however, be averred that
no considerations would have tempted him to visit the Arctic regions.

A hard-working life, checkered by the odd adventures which happen
to the odd and the adventurous and pass over the commonplace; a
career brightened by the high appreciation of unimpeachable
critics; lightened, till of late, by the pleasant society and good
wishes of innumerable friends; saddened by the growing pressure of
ill health and solitude; cheered by his constant trust in the love
and sympathy of those who knew him best, however far away,--such
was the life of Edward Lear.

--_The London Saturday Review,_ Feb. 4, 1888.

Among the writers who have striven with varying success during the last
thirty or forty years to awaken the merriment of the "rising generation" of
the time being, Mr. Edward Lear occupies the first place in seniority, if
not in merit. The parent of modern nonsense-writers, he is distinguished
from all his followers and imitators by the superior consistency with which
he has adhered to his aim,--that of amusing his readers by fantastic
absurdities, as void of vulgarity or cynicism as they are incapable of
being made to harbor any symbolical meaning. He "never deviates into
sense;" but those who appreciate him never feel the need of such deviation.
He has a genius for coining absurd names and words, which, even when they
are suggested by the exigencies of his metre, have a ludicrous
appropriateness to the matter in hand. His verse is, with the exception of