WAUGH, EDWIN (1817-1890)

—Poet, s. of a shoemaker, was b. at Rochdale and, after a little schooling, apprenticed to a printer. He read eagerly, and became a istant sec. to the Lancashire Public School A ociation. He first attracted attention by his sketches of Lancashire life and character in the Manchester Examiner . He wrote also in prose Factory Folk , Besom Ben Stories , and The Chimney Corner . His best work was, perhaps, his dialect songs, coll. as Poems and Songs (1859), which brought him great local fame. He was po e ed of considerable literary gift, and has been called "the Lancashire Burns." WEBBE, WILLIAM ( b. 1550). —Critic and translator. Almost nothing is known of him except that he was at Camb. and acted as tutor in certain distinguished families, and was a friend of Spenser. He wrote a Discourse of English Poetrie (1586), in which he discu es metre, rhyme (the use of which he reprehends), and reviews English poetry up to his own day. He also translated the first two of the Eclogues of Virgil in singularly unmelodious hexameters.