EBENEZER JONES.—Can any of your corre-

spondents supply me with particulars of the life

of the above-named Chartist? He published a

volume in 1843, entitled Studies of Sensation and

Event — a very striking book, but long since out

of print.

I hope Mr. Gledstanes-Waugh may receive

from other sources a more complete account than

I can give of this remarkable poet, who affords

nearly the most striking instance of neglected

genius in our modern school of poetry. This is a

more important fact about him than his being a

Chartist, which however he was, at any rate for

a time. I met him only once in my life, I believe

in 1848, at which time he was about thirty, and

would hardly talk on any subject but Chartism.

His poems (the Studies of Sensation and Event)

had been published some five years before my

meeting him, and are full of vivid disorderly

power. I was little more than a lad at the time

I first chanced on them, but they struck me

greatly, though I was not blind to their glaring

defects and even to the ludicrous side of their

wilful “newness”; attempting, as they do, to

deal recklessly with those almost inaccessible

combinations in nature and feeling which only in-

tense and oft-renewed effort may perhaps at last

approach. For all this, these “Studies” should

be, and one day will be, disinterred from the

heaps of verse deservedly buried.

Some years after meeting Jones, I was much

pleased to hear the great poet Robert Browning

speak in warm terms of the merit of his work;

and I have understood that Monckton Milnes (Lord

Houghton) admired the “Studies” and interested

himself on their author's behalf. The only other

recognition of this poet which I have observed is

the appearance of a short but admirable lyric by

him in the collection called Nightingale Valley,

edited by William Allingham. I believe that

some of Jones's unpublished MSS. are still in

the possession of his friend Mr. J. Linton, the

eminent wood-engraver, now residing in New

York, who could no doubt furnish more facts

about him than anyone else. It is fully time

that attention should be called to this poet's

name, which is a noteworthy one. It may not be

out of place to mention here a much earlier and

still more striking instance of poetic genius which

has hitherto failed of due recognition. I allude

to Charles J. Wells, the author of the blank verse

scriptural drama of Joseph and his Brethren,

published under the pseudonym of “Howard” in

1824, and of Stories after Nature (in prose, but

of a highly poetic cast), published anonymously in

1822. This poet was a friend of Keats, who ad-

dressed to him one of the sonnets to be found in

his works—“On receiving a present of roses.”

Wells's writings—youthful as they are—deserve

to stand beside any poetry, even of that time, for

original genius, and, I may add, for native struc-

tural power, though in this latter respect they

bear marks of haste and neglect. Their time will

come yet.

In the Royal Academy Catalogue this year the

following lines are used as epigraph to No. 492:

• “By this shore a plot of ground
• Clips a ruin'd chapel round,
• Buttress'd with a grassy mound,
• Where day and night and day go by,
• And bring no touch of human sound.”

Can you inform me where the quotation comes

from?

“By this Shore a Plot of Ground,” etc.

(4 ^th S. v. 534.)—The noble lyric in which these

lines occur is called The Ruined Chapel, and

is by an excellent living poet, William Allingham,

whose writings I should have supposed to be

more universally known than such a query seems

to imply.