WILFRED SCAWEN BLUNT.

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 8286, 17 January 1888, Page 7

WILFRED SCAWEN BLUNT.

Wilfred: Scawen Blunt, who has just been •condemned to two months’ imprisonment m Ireland, is a man of a romantic history and disposition. His wife, Lady Ann Blunt, is a .daughter of Lord Lovelace and of Ada, ißyron’s daughter. Mr B unt is an English country gentleman, and a man of good fami y .and fortune. He is a slight, blonde person of medium height and with refined and wellcut features, His countenance is handsome tand nervous. He has been much at variance •with his countrymen, who, as is natural, do not entertain a high idea of his judgment. ■Some of them, indeed, have not scrupled to say that he was mad. At the time of b.is intervention on behalf of Arabi Pasha certain of •the English papers ascribed his success to the fact that in the East an obliquity of intellect is regarded as an evidence of the Divine favor. But the only evidence of madness which unprejudiced persons will bo able to find in Mr Blunt is that his devotion to certain oppressed nationalities is such that he is -ready to sacrifice his comfort on their behalf. Before he became the friend of Ireland he was the friend of Mohammedans, of the .population of India and the champion of Arabia. Mr Blunt has lived much among Mohammedans and has studied them at homo. He fixed upon Jeddoh, which is the • seaport of Mecca and only forty miles distantfrom tha centre of the Moslem world, as -the beat spot In which to study Mohammedans. He passed much time there with .great profit. In his ‘ Future of Islam’ he -remarks : ‘ It is hardly too much to say that one can learn more of modern Islam in a week at Jeddeh than in a year anywhere else, ior the very shopkeepers discourse of things divine, and even the Frank Vice Consuls prophesy.’ Mr Blunt believes that there is to be a reformation among Mohammedans .similar to that which took place three centuries ago in European Christendom, He • has also spent much time in India studying the problems of that country, and is a strong advocate of Indian self-government. But Mr Blunt is also a poet. He has published ‘ The Wind and the Whirlwind,’ the subject of which is the war iu Egypt. But he has also written upon lighter and brighter subjects. He not long ago acknowledged the authorship of ‘The Love Sonnets of Proteus,’ published by him anonymously • some years since. The title of his little volume is a confession that the • objects of his devotion have changed with some rapidity and facility. The book is dedicated ‘To One in a High Position. This is no doubt Lord Lytton, the allusion evidently being to the latter s residence in India.

To you, a poet, glorious, heaven-born, One who is not a poet, bat a son -Of the earth earthy, sick and travel-worn And weary with a race already run, A bottle lost ere yet his day is done. Comes with this tribute, shattered banners torn

From a defeat. Yon reign in Macedon, My Alexander, as at earlier morn You reigned upon Parnassus, hero, King. I reign no more, not even in those hearts For which these songs were made ; and if I sing

'lis with a harsh and melancholy note At which my own heart like an echo starts, Yet sometimes I can deem you listening, And then all else is instantly forgot.

Mr Blunt tells us that iu these poems he has closed his account with youth. He confesses his errors and imperfections, but with no great contrition. ‘No life,’ he says, ‘is perfect that has not been lived, youth in feeling, manhood in battle, old age in meditation.’ He does not altogether forget the past, assorting that * those only are beyond all hope of wisdom who have never dared to be fools,’

An appeal has been made from the sentence of imprisonment passed upon Mr Blunt, but dismissed. It will be remembered that he and Lady Anne were rather severely handled by the police at the time M the arrest.