THOMAS NOON, an English dramatic poet and popular barrister and judge, was born at Reading in Berkshire, January 26, 1795. His parents were respectable dissenters of the middle class; his father a brewer in Reading, and his mother the daughter of a dissenting minister, the Rev. Thomas Noon. A certain puritanical strictness environed the early days of Talfoord, "a crabbed sectarianism (as he himself termed it), at once active and stern," which, for a time at least, "cradled the thoughts of childhood." He was only permitted to look on the world of literature through the network of sincere but exclusive opinions. One book, however, was open to him which afforded peculiar enjoyment. This was the Sacred Dramas of Hannah More, from which he derived his first idea of dramatic action. His preceptor, Dr Valpy, of the Reading Grammar School, also inspired him with a taste for classic literature, especially the Greek tragic drama; and this noble field of poetry and passion, grace and majesty, it was ever afterwards his highest delight and ambition to study and imitate. From his childhood Talfoord was a writer of verses,—the form in which literary talent generally makes its first manifestations,—and he obtained some local celebrity as a contributor to the columns of the Reading newspaper. It was necessary, however, that he should be put to a profession, and he selected that of the law. In his eighteenth year he proceeded to London, and placed himself under Mr Chitty, the eminent pleader. He was a diligent student, and in after years, when he published his dramas, he could honestly prefix to them the declaration of Pope—

"I left no calling for this idle trade, No duty broke."

But jealous as the goddess Themis is acknowledged to be, the closest votary of law has his hours of recreation. Talfoord occasionally frequented the theatre, and studied the poetry of Wordsworth. He has described in his preface to Ion the delight with which, for the first time, he saw the curtain of Covent Garden Theatre raised for the representation of Cato—the Roman Stoic being personated in rigid grandeur by John Kemble—and he was haunted by the wish to write a tragedy. But his taste and feeling, he says, underwent an entire change on his becoming acquainted with the works of Wordsworth, introduced to him by his friend Mr Barron Field. He was possessed with a love of contemplative poetry; "he pondered over the resources of the profoundest emotions," and at a time when Byron was the object of the national idolatry, he unhesitatingly proclaimed Wordsworth to be the greatest poet of his age. At this period Talfoord contributed essays and criticism to the magazines, and we believe was an occasional reporter for the daily press. In 1821 he was called to the bar, and joined the Oxford circuit. Next year he was married to Miss Rutt, daughter of Mr John T. Rutt of Clapton, to whom he was tenderly attached. More than twenty years afterwards, he dedicated his Recollections of a First Visit to the Alps to his wife, "whose image," he says, "endears the recollections of a delightful tour, as it cheers and graces the journey of life." This inscription is characteristic of the affectionate nature of Talfoord, which overflowed with kindness to all his relatives and friends. Having now "given hostages to fortune," the young barrister applied himself assiduously to his profession. He rose into extensive practice, and in 1833 was rewarded with a silk-gown, or made serjeant-at-law, on which occasion he was heartily congratulated by his friends, Charles Lamb being among the number. Higher honours were soon to follow. In 1835 he was returned to Parliament as representative for his native town, and the same year he printed for private circulation his tragedy of Ion. He had no hope, as he has stated, of his drama being found capable of representation on the stage; its severe classic fable and incidents were remote from the ordinary range of human sympathies. But Mr Macready the actor, a better judge of stage effect, produced it at Covent Garden Theatre in Talfourd, May 1836, with distinguished success, and it was afterwards received with no less favour in the United States. The name and situation of the hero, as a founding youth, educated in a temple and assisting in its services, were borrowed, as the author states, from the tragedy of Euripides. He had recourse also to the old Grecian notion of destiny, working its results apart from moral agencies, and impelling its victims onwards, as it were, by fascination towards the predoomed and inevitable issue. The city of Argos had been visited by a deadly pestilence consequent on the misrule of its kings, and the oracle had announced that vengeance could only be averted by the extirpation of the guilty royal race. Ion, the foundling, undertakes to slay Adrastus the king, who keeps frantic revelry and uproar in his palace; but the heroic youth turns out to be the son of Adrastus, and in the end, after the royal tyrant had fallen a victim to the popular fury, Ion sacrifices his own life to remove the curse which his ancestry had entailed on the devoted city. Thus a stern and lofty spirit of patriotism pervades the drama; but it is relieved and varied by scenes of deep tenderness and moral beauty, and by a profusion of imagery select and picturesque, though sometimes misplaced where the tragic interest and pathos predominate. Indeed, an excess of ornament, the fruit of an exuberant fancy, characterises both the poetry and prose of Talfourd. His next production was also cast in the classic mould. It was a drama entitled *The Athenian Captive*, which was brought out with success at the Haymarket Theatre. Like *Ion*, the *Athenian Captive* is conceived in the spirit of the Grecian drama; and it also abounds in high-toned romantic sentiment and passion, but the plot is less artistically managed, and the catastrophe less interesting, than those of the first tragedy. The production and success of these two plays were attributed by some parties—disappointed dramatists and critics—to the author's friendship with Mr Macready, and to other personal circumstances. He therefore resolved that his next piece should be offered to manager and actors as the work of a stranger. He produced *Glencoe, or the Fate of the Macdonalds*, which was accepted and passed the ordeal of its first representation in 1840, before the disclosure of the author's name. This play is founded, as the name imports, on that "terrible incident which deepens the impression made on all tourists by the most awful Pass of the Highlands." The massacre of Glencoe, in its genuine historical features, is tragic enough. The rugged solitary glen, the wild freebooter tribe of Mac-Ian, the almost incredible cruelty and treachery of the Campbells, and the wintry midnight scene of death and terror crowning the whole, seem materials exactly shaped and grouped for the stage. The genius of Melodrame could not desire a better combination. Talfourd connected a love-story, somewhat complicated, with the event of the massacre, and introduced personages possessing the refinements of modern society. Such adjuncts were perhaps necessary towards a regular five-act play; but they do not harmonize with the actual scene and its historical associations. The real characters, the Macdonalds and Campbells, and the fiend-like statesman Dalrymple, are too well known, and too strongly imprinted on the imagination, to give place to fictitious scenes and actors. The latter appear as intruders on the wild domain, and they do not excite any strong interest. The play is marked by Talfourd's fine fancy and feeling, but it is altogether an inferior performance, and has not kept possession of the stage. A fourth tragedy, *The Castilian*, founded on Spanish history, completed the dramatist's labours in this department of literature. We believe this play was never acted, and, like *Glencoe*, it is deficient in nationality and true colouring; but in point of literary merit, as respects the delineation of passion and feeling, it is equal to any of its predecessors, except *Ion*, which must be held to be the crowning effort of Talfourd in his favourite field of the drama. The prose works of our author may be considered as, in some measure, accidental productions rather than regular studies. He made journeys to the continent during intervals of professional employment; and having kept a journal, was induced to publish *Vacation Rambles*. One of his most cherished literary friends died, and he was importuned to collect and publish *The Letters of Charles Lamb, with a Sketch of his Life*. He made one striking appearance in the House of Commons, and he was led to put forth to the world a *Speech on the Law of Copyright*. Early in life he wrote a memoir of Mrs Radcliffe the novelist, and he contributed to an encyclopaedia an essay on the Greek drama. His fugitive magazine productions have never been collected. Talfourd's travelling records—*Recollections of a First Visit to the Alps, 1841; The Alps Revisited, 1842; Chamonix Revisited, with Attempt to Ascend Mont Blanc; and Supplement to Vacation Rambles* (containing an account of his journey to Naples, Rome, &c.), are very pleasant, truthful narratives, possessing a sort of biographical interest. The traveller never loses his identity amidst foreign scenes. His passion for theatres and courts of law, his epicurean tastes and propensities, are undisguisedly exhibited. But along with these we have a genuine love of nature in its grandest as well as its loveliest forms, and a large-hearted sympathy with every good and benevolent object. His *Life of Charles Lamb* is a more ambitious performance. It contains some passages of "fine writing," and occasional disquisition, that would be as well away; but few memoirs possess so strong and painful an interest, or have so marked a character of originality. Lamb was unique among literary men, and the life of the delightful humorist deserved to be portrayed at length. In 1849, Serjeant Talfourd was raised to the bench. The welcome intelligence was telegraphed to him from London to Stafford, where he happened to be on the circuit attending the assizes. About five years afterwards, the same wires conveyed from Stafford to London the sad and startling announcement, that Justice Talfourd had died of apoplexy, while delivering his opening charge to the grand jury. He had reviewed the calendar, and from the number of cases of highway robbery which it contained, was led to speak of the evils connected with our artificial state of society. Suddenly he fell forward on the desk, and in a few seconds expired. This solemn and affecting close of a life so honourable, so successful, and happy, took place on the 13th of March 1854, when Talfourd was in his sixtieth year. At the Derby assizes, Mr Justice Coleridge adverted to the melancholy occurrence, and said his deceased friend "was much more than merely a distinguished leader, an eminent judge, or a great ornament of our literature. He had one ruling passion of his life—the doing good to his fellow-creatures in his generation. He was eminently courteous and kind, simple-hearted, of great modesty, of the strictest honour, and of spotless integrity." What higher eulogy could be desired? (n. c.—s.)