But it was the qualities personal to himself, after all, which made these things available for enjoyment.  His desires were moderate; he counted success what more eager and covetous natures might have esteemed comparative failure.  His really strong intellect and wide knowledge and cultivation enabled him to meet the foremost men of letters on equal terms.  His kind heart, generous nature, exuberant fun, and entertaining conversation endeared him to every one and made his company sought by every one; they saved much trouble from coming upon him and lightened what did come.  And no blight could have withered that perennial fountain of jollity, drollery, and light-heartedness.  But these were only the ornaments of a stanchly loyal and honorable nature, and a lovable and unselfish soul.  One of his friends writes of him thus:—­

“The profits of agitating pettifoggers would have materially lessened in a district where he acted as a magistrate; and duels would have been nipped in the bud at his regimental mess.  It is not always an easy task to do as you would be done by; but to think as you would be thought of and thought for, and to feel as you would be felt for, is perhaps still more difficult, as superior powers of tact and intellect are here required in order to second good intentions.  These faculties, backed by an uncompromising love of truth and fair dealing, indefatigable good nature, and a nice sense of what was due to every one in the several relations of life, both gentle and simple, rendered our late friend invaluable, either as an adviser or a peacemaker, in matters of delicate and difficult handling.”

Barham was born in Canterbury, England, December 6th, 1788, and died in London, June 17th, 1845.  His ancestry was superior, the family having derived its name from possessions in Kent in Norman days.  He lost his father—­a genial bon vivant of literary tastes who seems like a reduced copy of his son—­when but five years old; and became heir to a fair estate, including Tappington Hall, the picturesque old gabled mansion so often imaginatively misdescribed in the ‘Ingoldsby Legends,’ but really having the famous blood-stained stairway.  He had an expensive private education, which was nearly ended with his life at the age of fourteen by a carriage accident which shattered and mangled his right arm, crippling it permanently.  As so often happens, the disaster was really a piece of good fortune:  it turned him to or confirmed him in quiet antiquarian scholarship, and established connections which ultimately led to the ‘Legends’; he may owe immortality to it.

After passing through St. Paul’s (London) and Brasenose (Oxford), he studied law, but finally entered the church.  After a couple of small curacies in Kent, he was made rector of Snargate and curate of Warehorn, near Romney Marsh; all four in a district where smuggling was a chief industry, and the Marsh in especial a noted haunt of desperadoes (for smugglers then took their lives in their hands), of which the ‘Legends’ are rich in reminiscences.  In 1819, during this incumbency, he wrote a novel, ‘Baldwin,’ which was a failure; and part of another, ’My Cousin Nicholas,’ which, finished fifteen years later, had fair success as a serial in Blackwood’s Magazine.