WELLS, CHARLES JEREMIAH English poet, was born in London, probably in the year 1798. He was educated at Cowden Clarke's school at Edmonton, with Tom Keats, the younger brother of the poet, and with R. H. Horne. He met John Keats, but later quarrelled with him.
In 1822 he published Stories after Nature, and in 1823, under the pseudonym of H. L. Howard, Joseph and his Brethren. For the next three years Wells saw Hazlitt, as he said, "every night," but in 1827 the two men were estranged. Wells was now prac tising as a solicitor in London, but he went to live in the country, first in South Wales and then at Broxbourne, Herts, on account of his health. In 184o he left England for good. He settled at Quimper, in Brittany, where he lived for some years. A story called Claribel appeared in 1845, and one or two slight sketches later, but several tragedies and a great deal of miscellaneous verse belonging to these years are lost. Wells stated in a letter to Horne (November 1877) that he had composed eight or ten volumes of poetry during his life, but that, having in vain attempted to find a publisher for any of them, he burned the whole mass of mss. at his wife's death in 1874. The only work he had re tained was a revised form of Joseph and his Brethren, which was praised in 1838 by Wade, and again, with great warmth, by Horne, in his New Spirit of the Age, in 1844. The drama was
then once more forgotten, until in 1863 it was read and ve hemently praised by D. G. Rossetti. The tide turned at last; Joseph and his Brethren became a kind of shibboleth—a rite of initiation into the true poetic culture—but still the world at large remained indifferent. Swinburne wrote an eloquent study of it in the Fortnightly Review in 1875, and the drama itself was re printed in 1876. Between 1876 and 1878 Wells added various scenes, which are in the possession of Mr. Buxton Forman, who published one of them in 1895. After leaving Quimper, Wells went to reside at Marseilles, where he held a professorial chair. He died on Feb. 17, 1879.
The famous Joseph and his Brethren, concerning which criti cism has recovered its self-possession, is an overgrown specimen of the pseudo-Jacobean drama in verse which was popular in ultra-poetical circles between 182o and 183o. Its merits are those of rich versification, a rather florid and voluble eloquence and a subtle trick of reserve, akin to that displayed by Webster and Cyril Toumeur in moments of impassioned dialogue.
In 1909 a reprint was published of Joseph and his Brethren, with Swinburne's essay, and reminiscences by T. Watts-Dunton.