My thanks are due to Sir Edmund Gosse's corre- spondents who have fondly lent the letters which appear in the pages which follow, also to Mr.
Edward Mwsh, who has read the proofs and given me much informa- tion connected with the subject of the Memoir. Also to Mr. Leslie E. Bliss, Librarian of the Henry E. Hunting- don Library, California, for his fondness in providing photostatic copies of many valuable letters to Robert Browning and others; and to Mr.
IN A diary kept by Philip Henry Gosse, the distinguished naturalist, there is die following entry dated September 2ist, "E deliv- ered of a son. Received green swallow from Jamaica. Philip Henry Gosse was the son of Thomas Gosse โ , a miniature painter; and his wife Hannah Best, the daughter of a Worcestershire yeoman. There is no need to look further into the Gosse genealogy for traditions of industry and book- ishness. Thomas Gosse, a painter by profession, was an indefatigable writer, and though never contriving to publish a single line, was unwearying in the variety and multiplicity of his literary efforts.
Dialogues, tales, epic poems, philosophical treatises and allegories raced from his pen. His wife, recognising that these activities brought no money to the pool, classed them under a general indict- ment as "that cursed writin'. The literary tradition was there, and it was too strong to be repressed. Philip Henry Gosse, born in , was the second son of this marriage. At an early age he was sent as a clerk to a counting-house in Newfoundland.
Carrying with him the atmosphere of Puritan- ism in which he had been brought up, he held aloof from the frivolities with which the Colonists beguiled their leisure, and went his own way, developing his natural aptitude for zoology and bot- any, and acquiring the spirit of religious fervour which was to domi- nate his future years.
