72 MEMOIR OF FLEEMING JENKIN 



brothers) changed his way of life, and was called 

 to the bar when past thirty. A Commission of 

 Inquiry into the state of the poor in Dorsetshire 

 gave him an opportunity of proving his true talents ; 

 and he was appointed a Poor Law Inspector, first 

 at Worcester, next at Manchester, where he had to 

 deal with the potato famine and the Irish immigra- 

 tion of the 'forties, and finally in London, where he 

 again distinguished himself during an epidemic of 

 cholera. He was then advanced to the Permanent 

 Secretaryship of Her Majesty's Office of Works 

 and Public Buildings ; a position which he filled 

 with perfect competence, but with an extreme of 

 modesty ; and on his retirement, in 1868, he was 

 made a Companion of the Bath. While apprentice 

 to a Norwich attorney, Alfred Austin was a frequent 

 visitor in the house of Mr. Barren, a rallying place 

 in those days of intellectual society. Edward 

 Barren, the son of a rich saddler or leather mer- 

 chant in the Borough, was a man typical of the 

 time. When he was a child, he had once been patted 

 on the head in his father's shop by no less a man 

 than Samuel Johnson, as the Doctor went round 

 the Borough canvassing for Mr. Thrale ; and the 

 child was true to this early consecration. ' A life 

 of lettered ease spent in provincial retirement,' it is 

 thus that the biographer of that remarkable man, 

 William Taylor, announces his subject ; and the 

 phrase is equally descriptive of the life of Edward 



