Two of the greatest literary names connected with the county are those of William Cowper the poet, and Charles Lamb, author of the _Essays of Elia_, unsurpassed as a master of delicately humorous prose, whether as essayist or letter-writer. The former was born at Berkhampstead rectory in the year 1731; but Lamb was chiefly a visitor to the county, though, as he tells us in the _Essays_, he was once a Hertfordshire landowner, and his cottage at West Hill Green, about 2½ miles from Puckeridge, still exists. Mackery End Farm was the residence of the Brutons, who were his relatives, and it was to their house that his visits were made; so that the neighbourhood is essentially Lamb’s country. It is a question whether the Lyttons or the beauties of Knebworth, their home, are the more famous. The great novelist, author of _The Last Days of Pompeii_, _The Caxtons_, and innumerable other tales, as well as such successful plays as _The Lady of Lyons_ and _Money_, was best known to readers in the middle of the last century as Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, though he began life as Mr Bulwer and died Lord Lytton. His son, poet, Ambassador, and Viceroy, who wrote under the name of “Owen Meredith,” was scarcely less distinguished, and received an Earldom in 1880. Here, too, mention may be made of Mrs Thrale, the friend of Dr Johnson, who was often at Offley Place, where her husband, whose family was long connected with St Albans, was born. Offley Place was at this time a fine old Elizabethan mansion, although it has since been rebuilt. Gadebridge Park, Hemel Hempstead, was the residence of the great surgeon Sir Astley Paston Cooper. But a greater distinction attaches to the name of Rothamsted, near Harpenden, as being the residence of the late Sir John Bennet Lawes, Bart., who, with his scientific colleague Sir Henry Gilbert, conducted the experiments which made their names famous throughout the agricultural world. Sir John Lawes first obtained the idea of using fossilised phosphates for manure from Professor Henslow, the great Cambridge botanist (himself sometime a resident at Hall Place, St Albans), who sent him specimens obtained from the Essex “Crag,” with a suggestion that they might be used as a source of phosphoric acid. Yarrell, the naturalist, lies buried in Bayford churchyard, with many members of his family. Last in the scientific and literary list, we have the name of Sir John Evans, the great antiquarian and numismatist of Nash Mills, Hemel Hempstead, who died so recently as 1908. To Evans, in conjunction with the late Sir Joseph Prestwich, is mainly due the credit of definitely establishing the fact that the so-called flint “celts” are really the work of prehistoric man. His most important and best work is _Ancient Stone Implements_. [Illustration: Charles Lamb] [Illustration: William Cowper]