A GREAT VICTORIAN.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 626, 4 October 1909, Page 8

A GREAT VICTORIAN.

THE;. LATE SiR-THEODORE: MARTIN. ■ Very.quietly now- the gioat' 'literary .figures of the .Victorian ago,arc, passing away, (says the "Daily Mail 1, ), Sir Theodore Martin, who' died ■on Wednesday morning, was ; among. the first :pf ' them, as .■. well 1 ' as among , the Inst. He was at the height of, his popularity m a- writer :during.'the Crimean, WaK '. He would remember Sir .Walter. Scott' 'in .the old Sessions 'House-at Edinburgh;' Dlclte'us and Thackeray he .would meet at his .clut; Carlyle,. Fronde, .and Tennyson werb among■ his intimates. ;Yet he." has lived, active-minded still, to see,all his.contemporaries .and.eventhbso of this succeeding: generation, die before ■ him. .'. Never any man surely lived a busier, fuller life. He was a solicitor by/profession,.senior partner, of-a firm. concerned chiefly with Parliamentary business. Often he would be engaged over this from nino in tho morning till dinner-time, yet' after dinner he wonld sit down and write till the.earlj-hours. In this way he produced such a. quantity of work as might well be'.the labour of a life-time but which was actually the fruit , of a busy solicitor's, spare ..time.,' \.' ■~..' ■, V Hard work,, ho used to\say, was the true elixir of life. It certainly was so in; his case. As.a writer Sir Theodore will.be.remembered by two works of very different character—one th.! "Life of the Prince Consort"; the-other the "Bon Gaul tier Ballads."-; The latter date back to the forties. . They were-a series of exceptionally amusing parodies, which are capital reading even now. Mr. Martin, then , a young