bulk of his countrymen.

CLARKE, CHARLES COWDEN (1787-1877), English author and Shakespearian
scholar, was born at Enfield, Middlesex, on the 15th of December 1787.
His father, John Clarke, was a schoolmaster, among whose pupils was John
Keats. Charles Clarke taught Keats his letters, and encouraged his love
of poetry. He knew Charles and Mary Lamb, and afterwards became
acquainted with Shelley, Leigh Hunt, Coleridge and Hazlitt. Clarke
became a music publisher in partnership with Alfred Novello, and married
in 1828 his partner's sister, Mary Victoria (1809-1898), the eldest
daughter of Vincent Novello. In the year after her marriage Mrs Cowden
Clarke began her valuable Shakespeare concordance, which was eventually
issued in eighteen monthly parts (1844-1845), and in volume form in
1845 as _The Complete Concordance to Shakespeare, being a Verbal Index
to all the Passages in the Dramatic Works of the Poet_. This work
superseded the _Copious Index to ... Shakespeare_ (1790) of Samuel
Ayscough, and the _Complete Verbal Index ..._ (1805-1807) of Francis
Twiss. Charles Cowden Clarke published many useful books, and edited the
text for John Nichol's edition of the British poets; but his most
important work consisted of lectures delivered between 1834 and 1856 on
Shakespeare and other literary subjects. Some of the more notable series
were published, among them being _Shakespeare's Characters, chiefly
those subordinate_ (1863), and _Moliere's Characters_ (1865). In 1859 he
published a volume of original poems, _Carmina Minima_. For some years
after their marriage the Cowden Clarkes lived with the Novellos in
London. In 1849 Vincent Novello with his wife removed to Nice, where he
was joined by the Clarkes in 1856. After his death they lived at Genoa
at the "Villa Novello." They collaborated in _The Shakespeare Key,
unlocking the Treasures of his Style ..._ (1879), and in an edition of
Shakespeare for Messrs Cassell, which was issued in weekly parts, and
completed in 1868. It was reissued in 1886 as _Cassell's Illustrated
Shakespeare_. Charles Clarke died on the 13th of March 1877 at Genoa,
and his wife survived him until the 12th of January 1898. Among Mrs
Cowden Clarke's other works may be mentioned _The Girlhood of
Shakespeare's Heroines_ (3 vols., 1850-1852), and a translation of
Berlioz's _Treatise upon Modern Instrumentation and Orchestration_
(1856).

See _Recollections of Writers_ (1898), a joint work by the Cl