absolute fidelity his night thoughts and experiences, and he will have some idea of the causes which impelled him with irresistible power to drown thought and remembrance in the Lethe of alcohol. Yet it must not be thought that he yielded unresistingly to its temptations. Against it he would strive hard, and for a time perhaps successfully, so that he would seem to have overcome his enemy: but the spell would at last prove too powerful for him, and he would remain enslaved by it for a season, until he was left at last utterly exhausted and unnerved. To see him when he was in this condition was a most painful sight, and it used to afflict me in no ordinary degree. I must be excused, however, from dwelling further upon this painful subject: let it suffice to say, that he became more and more a victim of intemperance, until it ultimately hastened, if it did not cause his death. Of the last few months of his life I need not say much. The reader will see by the dates affixed to the poems in the early part of this volume, that his poetic powers had only been lying dormant, and that the vein of his genius was by no means exhausted. The poems here printed will, I think, bear comparison with the best of his earlier productions, with the possible exception of "Weddah and Om-el-Bonain." Even this masterpiece of narrative poetry he might have equalled or surpassed if he had lived, for he stated that he had conceived the story of another poem which he thought would give full scope to his powers. But this, like much else, was to remain unaccomplished: he was taken ill on June 1, 1882, and being removed to University College Hospital, died there on June 3. He was buried at Highgate cemetery,
