218 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



literary tastes. She was the author of two little volumes 

 of published poems of a religious cast ; she was almost as 

 great a lover of verse as he was himself. She was sympa- 

 thetic, gentle, quick, eminently intelligent. He, on the 

 other hand, little accustomed to the company of any 

 woman but his aged mother, felt himself awkward with 

 girls. He had no small-talk, no common change of con- 

 versation. The charm of Emily Bowes lay in the maturity 

 of her mind, the gravity of her tastes. Yet it was quite 

 abruptly, and without premeditation, that he took the step 

 of asking for her hand. It was on Sunday evening, 

 September 17, 1848, that the sudden resolution took him 

 as he was about to say farewell to her at her garden-gate. 

 When he reflected that he had proposed marriage to her, 

 and that she had not rejected him, there was a moment of 

 intense remorse. He was too poor, he reflected, too little 

 likely to make a proper competence, to have the right to 

 link another life to his own. But she was accustomed to 

 poverty, she loved him already, she believed in his future, 

 and she was eminently careless about luxury. They were 

 betrothed, and, after a short delay, they were married at 

 Tottenham, on November 22, 1848, from the house of the 

 late Mr. Robert Howard, whose venerable and beloved 

 widow still survives as I write these lines. 



It is necessary, however, to go back a little to resume 

 an account of the literary activity of 1848, which was very 

 considerable. We have seen that the reviewers complained 

 of the want of figures to accompany The Birds of Jamaica. 

 In January, 1848, Philip Gosse sent out circulars proposing 

 to publish by subscription a folio volume of lithographic 

 drawings, coloured by hand, if desired, of one hundred and 

 twenty species of Jamaica birds, very largely new to science. 

 This work was to be issued in monthly parts. The 

 response was so immediately favourable, that in March he 



