if we may judge him by his writings. He comes into Lord Houghton's "Life
and Letters of Keats" very early (vol. i. p. 30). We find the poet
writing to him in the April of 1817, from the Isle of Wight. "I shall
forthwith begin my 'Endymion,' which I hope I shall have got some way
with before you come, when we will read our verses in a delightful place
I have set my heart upon, near the castle." Keats ends "your sincere
friend," and a man to whom Keats was a sincere friend had some occasion
for pride.

About Reynolds's life neither time nor space permits me to say very much,
if I knew very much, which I don't. He was the son of a master in one of
our large schools. He went to the Bar. He married a sister of Thomas
Hood. He wrote, like Hood, in the _London Magazine_. With Hood for
ally, he published "Odes and Addresses to Great People;" the third
edition, which I have here, is of 1826. The late relations of the
brothers-in-law were less happy; possibly the ladies of their families
quarrelled; that is usually the way of the belligerent sex.

Reynolds died in the enjoyment of a judicial office in the Isle of Wight,
some thirty years later than his famous friend, the author of "Endymion."
"It is to be lamented," says Lord Houghton, "that Mr. Reynolds's own
remarkable verse is not better known." Let us try to know it a little
better.

I have not succeeded in getting Reynolds's first volume of poems, which
was published before "Endymion." It contained some Oriental melodies,
and won a careless good word from Byron. The earliest work of his I can
lay my hand on is "The Fancy, a Selection from the Poetical Remains of
the late Peter Corcoran, of Gray's Inn, Student at Law, with a brief
memoir of his Life." There is a motto from Wordsworth: