H. K. W. by a Lady Ode on the late Henry Kirke White, by Juvenis Sonnet, on seeing another, written to Henry Kirke White, in September, 1803, inserted in his "Remains, by Robert Southey," by Arthur Owen Sonnet, in memory of H. K. White, by J. G. Lines suggested on reading the Poem on Solitude, in the ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE OF H. K. WHITE. IT fell to my lot to publish, with the assistance of my friend Mr. Cottle, the first collected edition of the works of Chatterton, in whose history I felt a more than ordinary interest, as being a native of the same city, familiar from my childhood with those great objects of art and nature by which he had been so deeply impressed, and devoted from my childhood with the same ardour to the same pursuits. It is now my fortune to lay before the world some account of one whose early death is not less to be lamented as a loss to English literature, and whose virtues were as admirable as his genius. In the present instance there is nothing to be recorded but what is honourable to himself, and to the age in which he lived; nothing to be regretted, but that one so ripe for heaven. should so soon have been removed from the world. Henry Kirke White, the second son of John and Mary White, was born in Nottingham, March 21st, 1785. His father is a butcher; his mother, whose maiden name was Neville, is of a respectable Staffordshire family. From the years of three till five, Henry learnt to read at the school of a Mrs. Garrington; whose name, unimportant as it may appear, is mentioned, because she had the good sense to perceive his extraordinary capacity, and spoke of what it promised with confidence. She was an excellent woman, and he describes her with affection in his poem upon Childhood. At a very early age his love of reading was decidedly manifested; it was a passion to which every thing else gave way. "I could fancy," says his eldest sister, "I see him in his little chair, with a large book upon his knee, and my mother calling, Henry, my love, come to dinner;' which was repeated so often without being regarded, that she was obliged to change the tone of her voice before she could rouse him." When he was about seven, he would creep unperceived into the kitchen, to teach the servant to read and write; and he continued this for some time before it was discovered that he had been thus laudably employed. He wrote a tale of a Swiss emigrant, which was probably his first composition, and gave it to this servant, being ashamed to show it to his mother. The consciousness of genius is always at first accompanied with this diffidence; it is a sacred solitary feeling. No forward child, however extraordinary the promise of his childhood, ever produced any thing truly great. |