I enjoyed my new position, on the whole, without
analysis, as a great improvement on the bank; and for the
rest, my inner mind was brimful of love and poetry, and
usually all external things appeared trivial save in their
relation to it."

Of Allingham's early song-writing, his friend Arthur Hughes says:--

"Rossetti, and I think Allingham himself, told me, in the
early days of our acquaintance, how in remote Ballyshannon,
where he was a clerk in the Customs, in evening walks he
would hear the Irish girls at their cottage doors singing old
ballads, which he would pick up. If they were broken or
incomplete, he would add to them or finish them; if they were
improper he would refine them. He could not get them sung
till he got the Dublin Catnach of that day to print them, on
long strips of blue paper, like old songs, and if about the
sea, with the old rough woodcut of a ship on the top. He
either gave them away or they were sold in the neighborhood.
Then, in his evening walks, he had at last the pleasure of
hearing some of his own ballads sung at the cottage doors by
the blooming lasses, who were quite unaware that it was the
author who was passing by."

In 1850 Allingham published a small volume of lyrics whose freshness and
delicacy seemed to announce a new singer, and four years later his 'Day
and Night Songs' strengthened this impression. Stationed as revenue
officer in various parts of England, he wrote much verse, and published
also the 'The Rambles of Patricius Walker,' a collection of essays upon
his walks through England; 'Lawrence Bloomfield in Ireland,' the tale of
a young landlord's efforts to improve the condition of his tenantry; an
anthology, 'Nightingale Valley' (1862), and an excellent collection of
English ballads, 'The Ballad Book' (1865).

In 1870 he gladly embraced an opportunity to leave the Customs for the
position of assistant editor of Fraser's Magazine under Froude, whom he
afterward succeeded as editor. He was now a member of a brilliant
literary circle, knew Tennyson, Ruskin, and Carlyle, and was admitted
into the warm friendship of the Pre-Raphaelites. But in no way does he
reflect the Pre-Raphaelite spirit by which he was surrounded; nor does
he write his lyrics in the metres and rhythms of mediaeval France. He is
as oblivious of rondeaux, ballades, and roundels, as he is of fair
damosels with