of Clarke, betraying a guilty knowledge of the true bones, he was wrought to a confession of their deposit.  The learned homicide was seized and arraigned, and a trial of uncommon interest was wound up by a defence as memorable as the tragedy itself for eloquence and ingenuity—­too ingenious for innocence, and eloquent enough to do credit even to that long premeditation which the interval between the deed and its discovery had afforded.  That this dreary period had not passed without paroxysms of remorse may be inferred from a fact of affecting interest.  The late Admiral Burney was a scholar at the school at Lynn in Norfolk when Aram was an usher, subsequent to his crime.  The Admiral stated that Aram was beloved by the boys, and that he used to discourse to them of murder, not occasionally, as I have written elsewhere, but constantly, and in somewhat of the spirit ascribed to him in the poem.

“For the more imaginative part of the version I must refer back to one of those unaccountable visions which come upon us like frightful monsters thrown up by storms from the great black deeps of slumber.  A lifeless body, in love and relationship the nearest and dearest, was imposed upon my back, with an overwhelming sense of obligation—­not of filial piety merely, but some awful responsibility, equally vague and intense, and involving, as it seemed, inexpiable sin, horrors unutterable, torments intolerable—­to bury my dead, like Abraham, out of my sight.  In vain I attempted, again and again, to obey the mysterious mandate—­by some dreadful process the burthen was replaced with a more stupendous weight of injunction, and an apalling conviction of the impossibility of its fulfilment.  My mental anguish was indescribable;—­the mighty agonies of souls tortured on the supernatural racks of sleep are not to be penned—­and if in sketching those that belong to blood-guiltiness I have been at all successful, I owe it mainly to the uninvoked inspiration of that terrible dream.”

The introduction of Admiral Burney’s name makes it likely that Hood may have owed his first interest in the story to Charles Lamb.  The circumstance that the book over which the gentle boy was poring when questioned by the usher was called the Death of Abel, is by no means forced or unnatural.  Salomon Gessner’s prose poem, Der Tod Abels, published in 1758, attained an astonishing popularity throughout Europe, and appeared in an English version somewhere about the time of the discovery of Aram’s crime.]

I.

’Twas in the prime of summer time,
  An evening calm and cool,
And four-and-twenty happy boys
  Came bounding out of school: 
There were some that ran and some that leapt,
  Like troutlets in a pool.

II.

Away they sped with gamesome minds,
  And souls untouch’d by sin;
To a level mead they came, and there
  They drave the wickets in: 
Pleasantly shone the setting sun
  Over the town of Lynn.